Gatekeeping In PC Gaming

Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time away from my main desktop at home, forcing me to put my laptop to use in order to work on classwork or surf the web. The laptop in question is nothing special, but it represents the bare minimum of what modern gaming can be in 2021, and that’s something none of the PC YouTubers would ever say. My Laptop is an HP with a Ryzen 4500u and 8GB of RAM, it has no graphics card and has to use the onboard graphics processor in the Ryzen chip. And because I waited for a sale I got it for the low low price of $649.99. But to my surprise, I have been able to have a very decent gaming experience on the laptop and I’ve been able to question what hardware you truly need to be able to game on PC in 2021. 

Simulating a new consumer trying to begin PC gaming I googled “Gaming PC 2021” and the first non-ad-related result was from pcgamer.com. Most of the recommended PCs are well over $2,000, and even under the best deals category, there's nothing under $1,000. And on a surface level, PC gaming is very exclusive and expensive, and if you were in middle school you could never afford a Gaming PC.

This is also how many online tech reviewers make it seem, that if you don't have the latest or greatest tech then your computer is old and slow, and that’s something I believed. After buying my first computer I began to do extra research online and slowly replaced every part in the whole system until it met the standards that I made up for myself from the reviews. And I know I’m not the only one. 

Since then I have been working at a PC hardware store, and my experiences with the younger generation prove that other people feel the same pressure. Often I have kids come in with their parents looking for gaming PCs. Most often these kids come in looking for $1,000 components totaling to $4,000 systems, something their parents are not interested in. But these kids have only been shown that side of the tech space. 

As I’ve experimented with gaming on my very basic laptop I’ve learned that you don’t need these crazy high-end components to have a very solid experience. Initially, I started things off slow as I had no expectations for my laptop at all. GTA San Andreas, a classic but a game from 2004. I thought the laptop would struggle a little, but it was no problem. I was able to play the whole game, and from that moment on I realized how open-ended gaming could be. 

Fortnite, Rocket League, and Minecraft were all fine. And these are some of the most popular games of today, even if they aren't the most demanding. But a more demanding title that has really grabbed me lately is the Latest Forza installment, Horizon 5. Even a short viewing of the launch trailer shows you that this is a beautiful game, but that also means it is the most intensive game available for me to test with. And while the game didn't look as good as the trailer it was still playable, and with my Xbox controller, I was racing just as well as I was on my main desktop.

A screenshot from the Forza Horizon 5 intro scene running on my laptop.

To me the journey was very exciting, testing the limits of my hardware and exploring how cheaply you could play these new games. It also made me reflect on how much I’ve spent on my desktop over the years and if I really had to make it as crazy as it is. But these kids don’t have that same hands-on experience, if only they knew their standards were so high, and that it doesn’t have to be the best of the best all the time. That they can still have amazing experiences on lower-end hardware.

Jack Slater

Jack is a professional writing student at Algonquin College and has a passion for tech and cars!