The question goes unanswered to this date about the deterioration of PC games lately. We had a number of great games back in the day, some of which I still play. Counter Strike, Counter Strike Source, Team Fortress, Quake, and older Call of Duty. These games had dedicated servers, tournament leagues, and were easy to run on a wide range of computers to allow maximum players. Now they're suffering the age of people getting drawn in like a tractor beam to shiny things, like moths to a flame.

Over the years I have been playing PC games (7 now to my recollection) I have done CAL in Counter Strike: Source, Counter Strike 1.6 and I have done TWL for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty 2 and Americas Army. With those came competition driven gameplay for some, and the casual gameplay for others who were uninterested in doing competition style gameplay where they got to communicate and play strategically with their friends against others who were doing the same thing. It provided more of a challenge, and a bit more depth to games. This has disappeared almost entirely from what I can see with popular games these days. Modern Warfare 2 is a game all my friends want me to play, and I do play it with them, but when we play together, we're in Ventrilo talking. It started out as us playing and actually talking like we're a team, trying to organize where we're all going and where we see people, now it's gotten to the point where we just walk around the game, shooting at what moves, and just talking about unrelated topics with the same success we had before when we were organized like a team.

I'm losing my liking towards new games more and more because of this reason, I don't know if anyone out there agrees, the casual thing is okay, but the team communication stuff makes for a different game altogether, which in my eyes is rather refreshing from the day to day public server playing. Additionally this seems to be rooted with game creators writing for consoles and porting it to run in Windows which in turn gives us juts a cheaper copy of the same game I could go out and buy on my Xbox. The reason I stick to PC gaming is that the lag is a lot less common, this being because we don't match up a player in the middle point of where we all are, or a player at the area of the majority of the players, instead all joining a server that's located in a server farm in a single location, better ping meaning a closer server.

This also suffers in the social part of video games too, that is mainly because you never play with the same guy twice, unless he's on your friends list or something. One more thing that I find disappointing. I really liked the days of the previous Call of Duty games where I hop into the server I play most and I can be familiar with a couple of the regulars, like someone that frequents a bar, paintball field or some other social area so you're always around people you can enjoy talking to, and make some "friends" along the way so playing isn't boring. Lately I have found myself on Modern Warfare 2, Bad Company 2, or something like that playing by myself with my clan tags on, like they really mean you're on some sort of team anymore anyway, playing against a bunch of people I don't know, and basically just sitting quietly in front of my computer until I get sick of it and start playing an old Counter Strike server where I know people on it, or I start playing World of Warcraft again since I have a lot of people I know on that server and we just group up and play together, while actually communicating and having a good time.

As this has become more the case, I have noticed the competitive nature of Counter Strike and Team Fortress go in the same direction as the casual gaming scene. This just means more PC gaming alone. The clan idea will die out, and the fun I originally found in PC gaming will eventually disappear, leaving me with just MMORPG's for the social experience I enjoy so much. Basically saying "Hello again, World of Warcraft" until Star Wars: The Old Republic comes out. Even then, who knows what will happen with that. I honestly am hoping to see a turn for the better in this instance. This may turn me off online gaming as we know it. Even games like Americas Army have suffered, once a "simulation" shooter, now just run 'n' gun with the same mechanics as any standard game (take Call of Duty as another example here I suppose) just with some of the old features of the original game.

Now taking this all into account, in the rare case there's a game that still provides this. Take Left 4 Dead. It does the matchmaking thing, and the random players thing, but it does do a teamwork sort of thing too, especially in versus. A little organization makes the game a little more intense and challenging, which I think is fantastic.

All in all my conclusion to all of this is laying at the point where I say "Do I waste my high end i7 gaming rig on old games like Counter Strike and hope for games to get back to the standard I got so used to playing" or do I just quit trying to play shooters the way I want and just play them casually and do MMORPG's for the mild social experience I enjoy?

Yeah I did use a lot of mainstream game titles in this because they're the easiest examples. I wonder if anyone else would like to see PC games go back to the Casual or Tournament idea or if it's they prefer the casual means they're diverting to?