PC Gamer will broadcast the fifth PC Gaming Show live from E3 on Twitch on Monday, June 10 at 10 AM Pacific.
Last year 1.9 million people watched the PC Gaming Show live. As our annual showcase of unrevealed PC games and hardware returns, I can't help but feel like I'm repeating the same line every year. PC gaming is vibrant. We're in a golden age. Our hobby has never been more exceptional, diverse, and affordable. Duh. All of this was true in 2015, and it's how I describe PC gaming today.
By now, the dynamism of PC gaming is self-evident. We take for granted that the PC offers the widest variety of games (8,954 released on Steam last year), that our platform is a rich gateway to high-end wonders like 240Hz displays or ray-traced Quake, passionate communities, helpful and experimental mods, and experiences you can't have anywhere else.
Vibrancy is the status quo, but if you look at the recent timeline more closely, you can see some of the individual trends that created this golden period. League of Legends and Dota 2 made PC gaming the de facto platform for modern competitive games, paving the way for CS:GO and Apex Legends. VR's re-emergence brought with it a new reason to build powerful rigs. Itch.io has become an incubator for indie gems and a space for game jams dedicated to Tom Hanks. The ease of sharing gameplay clips through programs like GeForce Experience has made PC gaming more social. Japanese developers have embraced PC gaming enthusiastically in the last few years, delivering perfect ports and restored classics.
Every year our hobby finds new ways to surprise us. That's part of the reason it's essential that E3 remains a showcase for the PC's biggest games, as well as the hardware innovations that will make the next battle royale phenomenon possible. As we assemble this year's lineup of reveals, trailers, and interviews, it's also never been more important that we hold up the work of independent creators, the creative core of our hobby. You only have to go back a few days for an example of a breakout release: Risk of Rain 2, a 2D platformer gone 3D from a 10-person team. More broadly, Slay the Spire and Baba Is You are mentioned in the same breath with Sekiro and Apex Legends as our favorite games of the year.
Putting the PC Gaming Show together takes months of work from dozens of people on our team, but it's a privilege to celebrate the best our platform has to offer, and to give PC gaming the stage it deserves. Look forward to more announcements about who you'll see at E3 in the coming weeks.
We're broadcasting the PC Gaming Show on Monday, June 10 at 10 AM PT. Watch it live on twitch.tv/pcgamer, or on Facebook or YouTube. If you're near Los Angeles, we'd love to see you in the crowd of The Mayan Theater. Keep an eye on pcgamingshow.com for updates, tickets, and press registration coming soon.
Game developers—there's still time to reveal your next game at this year's PC Gaming Show. Fill out this quick form or contact me at evan@pcgamer.com.
