Come the apocalypse, your PC-using games nut will be up on the high ground, email client in hand, moving troops around hither and thither with a sweeping command of battle strategy not seen since the mods did the rockers one sunny bank holiday in Brighton. Of course, the basic problem for PC users has never been the hardware or the software - it's always been the wetware. While your average PC gamer has evolved into a fearsome creature able to type, chew gum and build cities while fixing hardware faults and coping with the kind of GPFs that would reduce a PSX gamer to a frustrated mess, it's the people end of the problem that always gets in the way.

Ask a console gamer how a game played and you'll be told: "It was great. Very fast. You should play it." Ask a PC gamer the same question and the answer will probably start with: "Well, once I'd downloaded the Direct-X upgrade and the patch for the 3dfx card from the States, all I had to do was reconfigure virtual memory and then watch the DVD..." You see, they're obsessed, obsessed with novelty and, well, things. It doesn't matter what the things are as long as they're not sentient - that way madness lies.

So, come the great day of reckoning when the gamers fight it out for supremacy, the PC gamers will be giving out orders left, right and centre... but no-one will be listening or reading the thousands of letters of command that they send. Never mind, eh?


Tim Smith is moving to Australia