This Gaming Place

PC gamers have habitats. Riding the wings of our aviary brethren, we attentively plan, assemble, and maintain our nests to the archetypal stature they so well deserve. To where will we end without this constant care? The answer is simple: console-dom. The norm is not of meticulous appreciation on the other side of this fictitious gaming fence; to them, a gaming environment is not something to be crafted out of love, versatility, and personality. PC gamers require these characteristics listed to survive. For those uninitiated to the realm of PC gaming or those seeking advice, this article will dish out the do’s and don’ts for a proper gaming home.

Was it Kierkegaard or Dick Van Patten who said,
“If you label me, you negate me?”

Starting

The first task is asking yourself what kind of gamer you truly are. Are you a weekend warrior? Do you play one game exclusively? How much do you play on a weekly basis? It’s these questions that will be the groundwork for which you build your habitat. For convenience sake, here’s a small laundry list to get you started:

• Are you comfortable gaming naked?
• What does your food and beverage diet consist of?
• Do you prefer Quake or Unreal? (Studies show those that prefer the former are generally better gamers and human beings.)

There’s no mandatory or established set of questions that one has to ask when preparing their gaming place, but don’t fret – you can ask yourself pretty much any query that comes to mind. It’s really not that important. However, it is imperative to ask enough of these questions to know yourself. We can’t have PC gamers that don’t know themselves; you might as well jump the fence at that point.

Assembling

Now that you’re all zenned up, it’s time to begin the process of gathering the materials that will make up your gaming kingdom. The following tips will be incredibly helpful in beginning to construct a proper PC gaming environment.

This should be a given. If you don’t have a decent computer, you won’t have as great an experience as you ought to. Throughout the entire history of PC gaming, this is the best time ever to become  one of its practitioners. Prices are affordable, the range of choice is vast, and, in the end, it’s cheaper than console gaming. For your place to prosper, you’ll need the hardware to suit you; mice, keyboards, graphics cards, everything. No idea where to start? No problem! Check out the all-inclusive guide on Game Central’s hardware forum. Moving on.

Perhaps the single-most important piece of equipment in creating a prolific PC gaming place is the desk upon which you game. It’s the heart, the soul, and the mother lode as it were, in the PC gamer-sphere. If the desk were a member in society, it would be the leader, the philosopher, and the law enforcer. As the first building block to a habitat, you must invest a large majority of your time in the choosing of your cherished desk. Take this quote by Confucius, “If the bedrock where you build your disposition is dry, you can fuck shit up.”

Do not get a desk like the above pictured. It’s my desk in my apartment at school. As you can tell by the picture, the design of the desk doesn’t allow for any form of comfort, nor is it designed for anything besides academic activities. If you’re a gamer pursuing scholarly studies, I heartily recommend either not living on campus or burning the desk and getting a proper gaming one. (For God’s sakes, do not actually burn your college desk. -Chris)

The strongest things to look for when on the prowl for a serviceable gaming platform are the following:

• A nice and even surface.
  • It is essential to have your mouse and keyboard on the same level.
• Lots o’ space.
  • Just as a first-aid kit in the bathroom, quick and easy access to the map of Ferelden can mean life or death.
• A color that doesn’t resemble excrement. Unless that’s what you feel your personality suits.
  • Included are brown, bright red, green, and canary yellow.

Take your decision seriously, as the choosing of the desk is one that will ferment throughout your gaming life. Treat it with care, even when playing me in Quake Live, as it is very fragile.

The yang to the yin: the gluteus maximus rest-us device. Like the desk, the chair can make all the difference in the overall enjoyment of the hobby. Not effectively choosing a proper chair could result in the worst physical conditions possible, including notredameism, elephantmanism, and hangnails.

Let’s take a look at my chair.

Do not get a chair like the the above pictured. It’s the bane of my gaming existence; quite frankly, it makes me a horrible human being. The only real upside to it is how I can rock back and forth, like an old grandma. That’s probably who this chair was made for.

Now, let’s see how we can improve upon this. First and most importantly, all chairs that one should even consider for a gaming habitat must have arm rests. If you’re going to hunker over a keyboard and mouse for long periods of time (it’s safe to assume PC gamers will be doing this), a place to keep your upper appendages relaxed for such a job is vital. The only way I survive is pulling out the keyboard tray from underneath the main surface and awkwardly holding my arms in a Thriller zombie-like pose. Like this:

This is uncomfortable.

Kill me.

A chair with the ability to change its height is also  convenient. Sometimes you might like to sit higher, as the commander in Command & Conquer 4 would, and other times you’d want to sit lower, like when playing an MMO, to achieve maximum laziness. Another thing to keep in mind is the sitter’s actual material. It all comes down to personal preferences for this – but allow me to make some suggestions. There is absolutely no reason to own a chair made of leather, unless you have a back sweat fetish when gaming hardcore in mid-summer evenings. This uncomfortability is on the same level as sans-arm rests. I highly recommend chairs made of the crap that car seats are made of. Not leather, the fabric stuff. It’s not too soft, nor too hard – a nice moderation of the two. Actually, kind of like what my chair is…

This is an encapsulation of a large number of elements in the habitat. By the term “environment,” I’m referring not just to the room and space on earth where you play, but the status and materials within that realm. If you’re gaming in a closet, you’re gonna have some problems. Some essential considerations and crucial items: quick access to food/a toilet, your games, room temperature, various hand tools, clothes, etc. For the ideal PC gaming home, access to all of the aforementioned items (and many others) are highly important.

Just as with the introductory questions, the environmental factors are all subjective, but it should be no surprise that a lot of them are common throughout the entire PC gamer world. To illustrate some of these, see the images below.

This is the customization stage. Everything involving your experiential involvement with your computer falls under this category. How you place your hardware, your monitor settings, your overclocking, among others. This is the job of the technician and the computer specialist.

Lights on.

Lights off.

Comfort is the main focus of sensational change. This means adjusting your habitat according to your body’s needs and desires, based on your perceptual experience. Maybe you like the smell of Febreze© penetrating through your nostrils. Or you game whilst wearing shorts and a ballcap. Perhaps you like the temperature at a pleasant 68 degrees Fahrenheit at all times. For me, I like no lights. The less light, the more immersive a game, and thus the better an experience.

A fact of this life is the need to satisfy ourselves – not just desires, but bodily, socially, and others. To be an effective PC gamer, cutting down a handful of those processes without leaving one’s zone is the ideal approach. Here are several examples.

Pepsii & Hot Pockets.

Pringles & Mountain Dews.

Food. Food is good. As are consumable liquids for hydration fulfillment. Yet again for PC gamers, it’s down to preference, but the selections illustrated are my preferences. Finding the perfect product for optimal price and the one that causes the least bathroom breaks are recommended.

Books, games, computers.

Wallets, tissues, keys.

Having a stash of things either to replace or do aside from the activities within the gamersphere are necessities. These can be books, magazines, albums – maybe even another person. Just something for the “just in case” scenario. Highlighted on the right is a PC gamer’s requirement: tissues.

Finishing

With all of this in mind, I hope you go about creating yourself the best place to practice your favorite hobby. While indeed gaming is the most exciting and ever-changing hobby around, I hope these foundational bases continue to help you throughout the progression of PC gaming.

Of course, all of this can change when you migrate.