The PC Master Race, sometimes referred to by its original phrasing as the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race, is both a subculture and a tongue-in-cheek term of superiority for PC gaming used among gamers, and used to compare PC gaming to console gaming. In current parlance, the term is used by PC enthusiasts both to describe themselves as a group, as well as their belief in the superiority of the PC platform in comparison to consoles, often citing features like more advanced graphics, free online play, backwards compatibility, modifications, upgradability, customization, lower cost-over-time, and performance. Popular imagery, discussion, and media referencing the term also commonly describes console users as "dirty console peasants" and people who play on PC as the "Glorious PC Gaming Master Race".
Contents
Origin
The term "Glorious PC Gaming Master Race" was first used by writer Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw in 2008, in the online gaming magazine The Escapist in which he video-reviewed the role-playing game The Witcher. Croshaw explained that his initial intent in referencing Nazi Germany's master race ideology when he coined the term was to poke fun at an elitist attitude he perceived among some PC gamers at the time of the game's release:
"It was intended to be ironic, to illustrate what I perceived at the time to be an elitist attitude among a certain kind of PC gamer. People who invest in expensive gaming PCs and continually spend money to make sure the tech in their brightly-lit tower cases is up to date. Who actually prefer games that are temperamental to get running and that have complicated keyboard interfaces, just because it discourages new or 'casual' players who will in some way taint the entire community with their presence. I meant it as a dig."
Reappropriation and popularization
The term caught on quickly, but with a different meaning than originally implied by Ben Croshaw. It is now being used as an expression of pride among PC gamers, who view their PC platform as superior to traditional video game consoles due to its ever-expandable and upgradable hardware, graphical potential, affordability, game library, mod support, optional mouse and keyboard input, and other popular reasons. This change in meaning and widespread popularity can be linked back to the creation and popularization of the "PC Master Race" subreddit created by reddit user Pedro19 in 2011, which had accumulated over seven hundred and fifty thousand members by early 2017.
While The Escapist continued to popularize the term's (or at least the term "Glorious PC Gaming Master Race") usage in later episodes for several years, writers in more mainstream computer-related and gaming-related publications tended to avoid using the term because of its negative associations, such as Nazism. In early 2015, Tyler Wilde, executive editor of PC Gamer, suggested the term should be abandoned altogether in an article titled "Let's stop calling ourselves the PC Master Race". "It worked as a hyperbolic joke when it was first said as a hyperbolic joke, and I did think it was a little funny to embrace the criticism ironically—for a moment, [but] when I see kids unironically boasting about their 'master race' affiliation on forums, I cringe." Tyler instead suggested replacing the term, and offered examples such as "Fearsome Keyboard People" and "PC Thunder Cats". The article was met by some disagreement from others who believed the term's usage was acceptable. While Ben Croshaw acknowledged the term's reference to and origins from Nazi Germany, he countered that those who use the term without knowing of the association can be viewed positively as a sign that those ideals and their historic Nazi associations had faded from the public mind. He also made a reference to attempts to incite the term's abandonment as being part of a sort of "thought police", criticizing Tyler Wilde's article.
The rapid growth of the shortened and now re-appropriated "PC Master Race" associated communities has attracted the attention of related computer hardware and game companies, as well as celebrities such as Terry Crews. Since 2015, several large technology companies have partnered with the PC Master Race group to organize contests, events and giveaways, such as AMD, Corsair, Cooler Master, Oculus VR, Nzxt, and Nvidia.
By several accounts, the term has become an internet meme.
The term is a launching point for debates about the relative popularity of gaming platforms. A report by Julian Arenzon in the New York Daily News suggested that digital distribution of games to personal computers is becoming more prevalent within the gaming community, and that there has been a trend away from physical game systems as well as physical discs. Reviewer Paul Tassi in Forbes suggested that in the platform battle, PCs have an edge because they were a "necessity" for everyday life while consoles were a "luxury" costing hundreds of dollars and only offering a few additional games or features over that of what a PC already offers.