The Master Race PC Syndrome – known as the “Glorious PC Gaming Master Race” – was born in 2008. The zero patient is Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, the unofficial responsible for the The Escapist magazine. The clinical case is the video review by The Witcher, the original chapter of the Geralt saga, from which Croshaw associated the idea of Nazi Germany’s race race (Master Race) to fanatics of PC gamers’ use in terms of supremacy technology. At the same time, Croshaw calls “dirty console peasants” the owners of video game consoles. In six years, the piece generated over 400 comments and 650 like on The Escapist’s site.
“He wanted to be ironic,” says Croshaw in 2013. “He wanted to illustrate what I perceived as an elitist behavior of some branch of PC users,” says the author in the same part of 2013.
Since 2010, the outbreak has expanded with a virulence incredible. In that year, the Facebook page “Glorious PC Gaming Master Race” opens, in 2011 the subreddit r / pcmasterrace. The specialized press begins to officially use the term in 2012, when VG 24/7 publishes an article on modding referring to the “glorious PC gaming master race”. On November 25th of the same year, Kotaku publishes a digital illustration (the one you see above) by Saenji Oh, who immediately becomes the videoplayer equivalent of “The Fourth State” of Volpedo.
What is born as a disgrace to a community of players today is a symptom of pride. The same deciphering engine of the “PC Master Race” concept today is a prestige, a medal to be exhibited everywhere and against anyone who does not think of him as the sick person, especially against the dirty
peasants. With the typical frenzy of Web 2.0, the disease expands at disarming speed and to date it is possible to record a staggering number of PC Master Race Syndrome cases. Symptoms Identification
Master Race PC Syndrome is a fierce and relentless, but not invincible flaw. Like any disease, the first step is to understand if you are afflicted. The first major discriminator is owning the proverbial “gaming pc”, where a hardware configuration can be used to make video games released in the last 365 days to a minimum level of detail. If you only play at Hearthstone , League of Legends or Prato Fiorito – that is by technological impossibility or personal preference – you are 99% healthy.
For everyone else, we decided to highlight three main areas – Language, Priority and Psychology – in which group the most common symptoms of the syndrome of the PC Master Race, with which we recommend comparing your personal experiences. Anyone can be
hit, there are no age groups, sex, race or favorite religions. A known case, among many, is that the actor Terry Crews that in addition to being a huge fan of Overwatch , recently published in Instagram in July last year, a video in which he proudly displays his sensational newly purchased hardware configuration, ready to be transformed into a PC for him and his son.
Language
It is not exclusive to the Master Race PC Syndrome, but we have noticed that those who suffer from this disease tend to prefer excessive use of the English language, or of properly-spoken English, which are put in excessively in inappropriate contexts. In particular, there is a kind of attachment to certain terminologies, a kind of Oedipus complex in technology.
The trend is a high use of English terms
in proportion to Italian ones. If on an average day, talking about technology, you just can not stand under the threshold of 35% of the English words related to the consumer electronics world (in our case video games) including teraflops, fps, stuttering, anti-aliasing , and another series of words that are not very useful and unknown to most, fall into the range of people at risk.
There is a particular phrase that, during our revelations, was linked to 100% of PC Master Race Syndrome. If, even once in a lifetime, you have spoken the phrase in question – or you have heard it from your dear – know that there is no chance that you will not be afflicted with the disease.
The phrase (or its most resonant declinations) is: “My console does the games for yours.”
Priority
Living with PC Master Race Syndrome shows a sudden change in its priorities. Subjects studied have serious deficits in terms of compiling what we call “the correct order of things”.
The sphere of interest is of course the technology: having a concentrated focus on research and development of the most performing hardware at 90-d
ay intervals makes you vulnerable.Other behaviors that, if detected, make people afflicted by the syndrome: having a gaming mouse with more than four ke
ys without being a professional player; look for updated drivers for hardware in less than 45 days intervals; calculate so-called “live expenses” such as rentals, bills, various rates and possibly survival related to any purchases of technology products; invest in tec
hnology at the expense of food and personal hygiene; invest in your own configuration a sum equal to the gross domestic product of an African country, and then pirate every single game due to its excessive cost.
