It all started with a game of Left 4 Dead 2. Well, if truth be told it started a much longer time ago when the PCI slot died and things got progressively worse as my LAN started to drop intermittently and my computer clock kept resetting itself each time I turned booted. It's been a year since then. But I digress.
As I started Left 4 Dead 2, I came to notice the flickering of green dots on the screen. They were all over the Steam overlay. It reminded me a lot of the time my old 8800GTX fried. That was years ago and it caused much grief to my much younger, more impatient self. At the time, it wasn't something I could deal with.
This, however, was.
In any case, the game started just fine and as I waited for an absent player to show up (he said he was cleaning up) I started, once again, to notice the flickering of green dots–this time in the clouds in "No Mercy"'s night sky. With AllTalk enabled in the game, I informed my friends of my predicament and I figured it to be a monitor issue–for I'd failed to take notice the appearance of the dots. At the time, I imagined the problem to be the result of a recent Windows Update, which had a tendency to slow down the game. The game too, had started to glitch beyond the green dots. I would've taken that as a confirmation of my suspicions had the game not crashed at that point–and not to the desktop but to a black screen. Pressing the numlock key on my keyboard didn't register anything, either. The computer had well and truly froze up.
I informed my friend through the Mac that I was going to reboot the PC, to see if the situation would improve. I wouldn't be back for a while, I said. I needed to fix my PC.
What hope I had left was short-lived. When at first the computer booted to Windows, the screen flooded with flickering green dots. The situation was critical. A second reboot caused the computer to permanently stall at the BIOS screen. And now, the computer can start up no longer.
I'm coming to terms with the death of my PC. For four long years the computer had served me, and in two separate countries. It traveled across a great distance on the bumpiest of bus rides, but it survived.
I'm optimistic that I can salvage the hard drives. With any luck, I'll be able to salvage the graphics card–assuming it wasn't at fault in the first place. But the rest of it has to go. It's been a long time coming, but the computer has finally sounded its death knell.
This scenario, small as it may seem, echoes what it’s like to be a PC gamer. [it's not really an 'echo', because this is actually literally what it is. Consider comparing it to a trucker losing his rig, or a racer driver's car being destroyed- not quite the same danger, but the exaggeration will produce a mildly comic effect]
This scenario is what it's like to be a PC gamer. It's not too different from being a trucker who loses his beloved rig or a racer who totals his car. While gamers don't face quite the same danger as the daredevils who risk their lives for the glory of the racetrack, the loss is no less emotional.
PC gaming is a hobby that requires a lot of dedication and– dare I say it, much sacrifice–especially when it comes to the constant maintenance and upgrades of your gaming rig. In many ways, picking the parts best suited for your rig is a lot like decking out your character in an RPG. You grow attached to it–it’s well and truly yours. It’s not some standard device you picked out of a store. It’s an extension of yourself.
To watch it keel over and die, well–it gives you a sense of disbelief at first. Perhaps you’ll experience shock even though you know it’s been a long time coming. It can be a little hard to accept. You’re left wondering if there’s anything you can save. Any small part of it that you can carry over to your next rig. A fragment.
I carried my computer over to the local computer store where I usually order new parts and watched as they dismantled it piece by piece. The graphics card and the motherboard were irreparably damaged, but the hard drives and a few other parts were salvageable. The time I'd spent with games on the computer had not been lost. The data would still be with me in the new rig that I would have to build.
If machines had souls, this is how they’d be reincarnated.
