It’s 2002 and I’ve simply unstuck my legs from the varsity bus seat, run by means of the entrance door and up the steps utilizing all 4 limbs, and rocketed into the pc room. I push the facility button in, pay attention for the static hum, and when that blue sky and open subject 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 all over the 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 previous, so I spend my day working, in the identical room and on the similar 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 packages out and peruse that smorgasbord of colourful shortcuts on my desktop.
There’s no actual motive to make use of desktop icons at this level. I take advantage of search to seek out all the pieces I want on all of my gadgets, and Steam’s library is a wonderfully advantageous place to launch video games from. However it’s not enjoyable. I wish to have a look at my fairly assortment of video games lined up and arranged; I wish 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 hold 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 always making an attempt to promote you on new video games and DLC. I often browse my Steam discovery queue or take a look at what people are saying on boards, however after I’m actually simply sitting right down to play, my gaming time can get eaten into by worldly context and large purple gross sales and recreation updates and different alluring titles to take a look at.
Utilizing marketplaces like Itch.io, which has virtually solely digital rights management-free video games, and GOG, which is completely DRM-free, makes it simpler to separate the online game purchasing from the online game taking part in. While you actually personal your video games, you sometimes don’t need to deal with promoting earlier than you begin taking part in the sport — or, on the very least, you probably 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 solely immersing you within the recreation you wish to play if you wish 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 by means of your platform’s market, give the previous desktop shortcut one other go and bear in mind with me the simplicity of these CD-ROM years.