In March 2020, about one month into the COVID19 lockdown in Canada, I decided that it was time to resurrect that old hobby of mine – playing video games. I am not a serious gamer, I am not a competitive gamer but I enjoy certain games. Back in the day, I completed the full game of GTA Vice City and loved it. I loved that you could drive a tank, shoot at the cops and even commandeer a police helicopter. I also loved the in-game radio stations and those radio stations were how I discovered several metal bands including Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Slayer. The Vice City radio stations were also my first introduction to US talk radio and some of the insanity that people peddle via AM radio “flamethrowers”.

Besides Vice City, I loved playing the Fifa football series, mostly because I loved football. Some of my friends owned PlayStation 2s or Xboxes but PC gaming was for me. There was a certain thrill to playing a game that was not supposed to work on your system, because your hardware was too old or too weak.

Back to 2020. Via reddit, I discovered that several game studios were handing out free games and I created an Epic Games account solely for the Tomb Raider giveaway. That was the first game franchise that I recognized, so I had to see what the new games were like. Very good. I downloaded the game and started playing on my 2015 Thinkpad, and the experience was mediocre. The laptop hardware was old and not designed for gaming. I had to get a better tool for the job so a gaming computer it was. True to my Indian heritage, I scoured Farcebook and found someone, relatively far away from our home selling a used PC. At the time, I had not owned a PC for almost a decade and only used laptops and I had no idea how to decode hardware specs. Ok, the inter webs and YouTuba had the answers, but the answers would take hours of decoding and understanding to be useful. So I decided to just buy the computer and figure it out from there.

I ended up with an AMD Zen 2 processor which was relatively ok for the time and an AMD RX580 graphics card. At the time, I had no idea what any of this even meant so I fired up some games and decided to see how they worked. They worked well! So well that I decided to make my first game purchase on Steam, incidentally the first game I bought legally and digitally. To be clear, I had purchased games in the past, just on CDs and DVDs. This time, I paid for Assassins Creed Origins and had a blast with the game. It looked amazing, the game was enjoyable and I loved the ability to switch between a controller and a mouse depending on the situation in-game. Eventually, I bought more controllers, a $ 50 PS4, a PS Vita and finally a Steam Deck. Gaming during the pandemic was excellent. I played a few online games, lost Fifa football matches to kids in Brazil and India, and even resumed playing Age of Empires!

I love PC gaming. I love the options it gives you and the fact that piracy is still possible. Piracy, however, is not strictly necessary. My Stream library includes about 10 games that I purchased over the last five years, all on sale. My Epic Games library includes hundreds of games, none of which I’ve paid for. Yes, all free. I can play these games on the computer, on my Steam Deck and even stream them on my iPad. Really amazing value, great enjoyment and I recommend that you also become a PC gamer. There is a game for you. There is a game for everyone.