VenusGaming

I grew up as a PC gamer. From the little green and black version of Oregon Trail I played on a 3″ TV-Radio screen, to Commodore 64s and Amigas, up to the modern computer. So I’ve had a lot of experience with dying computers, and yesterday, it was my husbands. Now I’ve seen the stages of grief associated with computer death, and they go something like this:

1. “Oh shi-”. This is when the computer, in its dying throes, does something clearly not good.  Maybe it doesn’t boot up; maybe it gets stuck in a reboot cycle; or, in the case of many gaming computer failures, the graphics go completely on the blitz.

2. “Maybe I can fix it.” Common to the denial phase in the grief of a living being, this is when the user, although clearly presented with an unfixable situation, begins to rationalize a way they can mend the computer. The case comes apart, and here comes the unplugging and replugging of cards and cables, the compressed air, the scrambling for spare parts. As the do-it-yourself work fails, it leads into stage three.

3. Violent anger. Every curse word in the book comes out during this phase. Now, of course, everyone handles anger differently: some swear and throw things around, like my father; some swear and cry, like me; but there’s always some swearing involved. Look, us gamers take our computers very seriously.

4. “I need a new computer.” This is the acceptance phase, when all the credit cards, bank accounts, and hidden savings get reviewed for the possibility of purchasing a new computer. This often also involves the begging of family and friends for spare computers - and in my family, this usually works quite well (we all know the horrors of being computerless.) I’ve only had to pay for a single computer so far - and it’s a laptop for school and work, that I paid for with retroactive financial aid payments. In our case, my husband is being given a hurrah from his mother: a new computer for Christmas. A good thing too; his computer somehow managed to last two years despite its lack of any decent hardware.

So when your computer decides to flop, don’t despair. Look at it as a new beginning, a chance to renew your gaming experience with new hardware.