'PC Gaming is Rediscovering Itself,' Says Supreme Commander Creator Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor, designer of classic PC real-time strategy game Total Annihilation and president of Gas Powered Games, thinks that the PC isn't dead, but rather is repositioning itself as a different kind of gaming platform.

"We've pushed the limits of high system requirements, and I think the rate at which people are buying crazy new hardware has slowed," he commented to Gamasutra. "I think we've come out of that turbulent ten years," referring to the ten years since the advent of graphics acceleration hardware in games and its rapid progress since.

The next Gas Powered Game, Demigod, aims to respect the idea that most game-capable PCs are not high-end. "If you look at Demigod, it's still wildly state of the art -- in our trailer, people asked if that was prerendered or from the game, [and] it's all in-game. But it's scalable; there's level of detail [adjustment]."

Taylor was quick to credit Blizzard for creatively using in-game art to make a game visually impressive instead of relying on bleeding-edge graphics technology in games like Warcraft III and World of Warcraft. He may be crediting Blizzard for more than that: Demigod is said to be a studio take on Warcraft III modification Defense of the Ancients.

PC gaming may even go much more casual, and Taylor is okay with that. Online games found on social networking sites, like Scrabulous, are "just genius," he asserted. "We go from 10 million and 20 million people to 200 million people. Where were those 180 million people? They were there all along, waiting patiently, so they could join the fun. Now we have no excuses."