this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
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Chapotraphouse
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The comments talking about how bad or expensive PC gaming was in the '90s make it seem like every new video game released on PC required the absolutely newest components and wouldn't work on anything else. As if games didn't support ranges of hardware back then. Also even if they didn't, it says a lot about the economy people could afford to upgrade their PCs so often.
YMMV. I distinctly remember not being able to get audio in some games without a sound blaster sound card. I remember games requiring a 3rds voodoo card to run as well.
Yeah my first PC had a Sound Blaster, but no Voodoo and only 8MB of RAM, 90MHz processor, and around 800ish MB for the HD. I eventually found another 8MB of RAM in my uncle's basement that let me finally play StarCraft (no sound, lowest speed).
Still, had that computer for over a decade. I was always digging around used/clearance bins looking for old games to play.
It just wasn't as convenient as "pop it in and turn it on". Nowadays, with most people being PC literate for work, it just isn't intimidating anymore. Well that, and most consoles can be just a frustrating to deal with, with the exception of like Nintendo.
People are absolutely not PC literate for work. I am 30 amd i was never even taught typing in school, i had to learn from playing RuneScape back in the day. I have a willingness to learn new things, but i have worked with plenty of people that couldn't even figure out how to open their Outlook after their computer had to restart.
Fair enough. I'd modify it to 'more people than in the 90's' as opposed to 'most'.
Tough for me to say though, my father was among the first engineering derived CS degrees so computers have been ubiquitous to me for my entire life.
And I still primarily played on consoles up until I graduated college.
I've actually heard that PC literacy is declining because young people don't have PCs, they just have tablets and smart phones.
Oh yeah, file storage and navigation literacy is in the toilet lol As well as just like basic Excel knowledge. I regularly run into people far younger than me who cannot navigate their own file systems or run a spreadsheet (stuff I learned middle school and highschool) without explicit guidance. And that isn't even getting into basic updates or how to navigate a Bios, which I learned as a kid just from just fucking around with old computer hardware. Shit is basically Legos these days (which honestly thank god, it was a huge pain in the ass having to sauder things).
Idk if it is tablets and smart phones specifically, but I personally blame Apple. They are the most responsible party in the appification of everything, and their status purely as a branded social symbol, good and reasonably priced hardware and software specs be damned, is what I find is the most common culprit. And it's not as if Apple doesn't have ok file storage navigation, it's just that of you aren't explicitly using it for those things, it is possible to never really run into it, whereas Microsoft is always just janky enough to require knowledge for basic operations. This is not praise for Microsoft btw, it is just that you learn the most by struggling with the tech.
Ultimately though, I think it really comes from the fact that most people just operate everything through their browser or apps and barely actually interact with their operating system. By creating a better user experience we have decreased the general computer knowledge.