Was it always like this? Since I can’t find a comprehensive study of class vis-a-vis videogame consumption between the 1980s and the present day, I asked my friends (and my Twitter followers) for their anecdotal evidence. I had assumed that consoles and handhelds were the more accessible answer for poorer players, given that buying a console has a lower up-front cost than building one’s own PC. On the contrary, I heard over and over again that PCs were the go-to gaming experience for lower-class players in earlier decades. Consoles were considered a luxury—an expensive item with “playing” as its sole functionality likely did not sound like a justifiable cost for people pinching pennies.