It’s 2002 and I’ve simply unstuck my legs from the varsity bus seat, run via the entrance door and up the steps utilizing all 4 limbs, and rocketed into the pc room. I push the ability button in, pay attention for the static hum, and when that blue sky and open area load up, my buffet of laptop recreation icons invitations me in.
In 2024, sitting right down to play PC video games is a bit much less romantic. For one, there’s no laptop room — it’s all laptop in every single place on a regular basis now, which is a nightmare my 2002 self thought can be a dream. I’m additionally now not 7 years outdated, so I spend my day working, in the identical room and on the identical laptop that I remodel into my gaming den within the night. However one factor is similar as again then: When it’s time to recreation, I shut all my applications out and peruse that smorgasbord of colourful shortcuts on my desktop.
There’s no actual cause to make use of desktop icons at this level. I take advantage of search to seek out all the things I would like on all of my units, and Steam’s library is a superbly effective place to launch video games from. Nevertheless it’s not enjoyable. I need to have a look at my fairly assortment of video games lined up and arranged; I need to strive to determine what objects or characters the designers selected for the icons. Only a candy, nostalgic double-click and I’m in Baldur’s Gate or Arranger or Sims 4 — and what a pleasant reminder, too, that we don’t need to preserve CD-ROMs close by to run sure video games anymore.
I feel there’s one thing extra tangible to all of this, although, and that’s the truth that recreation platforms are continuously attempting to promote you on new video games and DLC. I sometimes browse my Steam discovery queue or try what people are saying on boards, however once I’m actually simply sitting right down to play, my gaming time can get eaten into by worldly context and massive crimson gross sales and recreation updates and different alluring titles to take a look at.
Utilizing marketplaces like Itch.io, which has virtually completely digital rights management-free video games, and GOG, which is fully DRM-free, makes it simpler to separate the online game procuring from the online game taking part in. Whenever you actually personal your video games, you sometimes don’t need to take care of promoting earlier than you begin taking part in the sport — or, on the very least, you possible received’t see advertisements that push you to obtain different video games. My desktop shortcuts imply I can take away these distractions, as a result of the publishers and studios — in addition to gamers like me — have a vested curiosity in completely immersing you within the recreation you need to play once you need to play it.
Launching video games proper from the desktop makes me really feel like my video games are the escape I like them to be, away from the satirically banal promise of extra, new, higher. So if you end up spending the primary 10 minutes of your gaming time scrolling via your platform’s market, give the outdated desktop shortcut one other go and keep in mind with me the simplicity of these CD-ROM years.
