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Early home computer games, like the early console games, often mimicked (and sometimes ripped off) popular arcade games like Frogger, Centipede, Pac-Man, and Space Invaders. But for a time in the late 1980s and much of the 1990s, personal computers held some clear advantages over console gaming. The versatility of keyboards, compared with the relatively simple early console controllers, allowed for ambitious puzzle-solving games like Myst. Moreover, faster processing speeds gave some computer games richer, more detailed three-dimensional (3-D) graphics. Many of the most popular, early, first-person shooter games like Doom and Quake were developed for home computers rather than traditional video game consoles. As consoles caught up with greater processing speeds and disc-based games in the late 1990s, elaborate computer games attracted less attention.

But computer-based gaming survives in the form of certain genres not often seen on consoles. Examples include the digitization of card and board games. In video games, players identify with a playing position on the screen; in digital versions of card and board games, players remain positioned outside the field of play.

The early days of the personal computer saw the creation of electronic versions of Solitaire; electronic versions of games like Hearts, Spades, and Chess followed. Currently, players can build their skills by playing against the computer and then test their skills by competing in online matches with other people. Sometimes players start online and then transfer their skills to traditional environments. For example, in 2003, Chris Moneymaker (his real name), an accountant from Tennessee, paid $39 to enter a qualifying tournament at PokerStars.com. He moved from online poker to the face-to-face gaming tables of Las Vegas, where he ended up taking home the $2.5 million grand prize of the World Series of Poker. One of the largest and most vibrant types of electronic gaming performs the reverse action, transferring real-world action into a gaming environment: online fantasy sports. Fantasy sports games eventually became a key component of Internet-connected social gaming.