As is sometimes the case in life, love blossomed in the backseat of a car, and heartbreak ensued shortly after. It was 2004, the car was a Vauxhall Astra—in a shade of red that would give way to peeling pink years later—and in the back sat me and a copy of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. The love was sharp and immediate: suppressed weapons, a hi-tech font and a hero with smoldering green night vision goggles. The heartbreak was predictable, but cast no less shadow over the months and years to come.
Coming home first and condemning the PC CD-ROM to time indefinite, and with no chance of parole, in my father’s laptop – a Bible thick Toshiba, in business blue. Second, the promise of a lavish CGI opening film – bustling ports, busier US Navy SEALs, the extremely rendered splash of dirty water. Finally a barrage of alarming messages: the white X on a bright red badge, daubed like a plague cross on a cursed house, accompanied by the compelling gust of a Windows XP error sound. Then nothing. The title of that game came from the villain’s plan, who spoke the phrase “pandora morn” into a coded telephone every twenty-four hours, thus delaying the onset of Armageddon. But it felt like a nasty personal joke: The promise of suspense kept them permanently at bay. Wherever the Toshiba ended up, that disk is probably still buried in it – a shiny rondelle, hissing like an egg cracked in a hot pan and hardening into a silver sludge.
Of course I was a fool. The laptop—packing a DVD drive and adorning it with diamond-like media player buttons—wasn’t built to debunk reality. It was meant for word processors, emails, and a little light surfing – modest functions, which would eventually grind to a halt amid a sticky deluge of Dr. pepper. This fundamental problem would have been obvious to any reasonably experienced PC game player. The problem was that it was not a reasonable experience to play PC games. For starters, it took deep reserves of cash, in addition to the audacity and audacity to suggest that those filthy blocks under our desks—heavy and buzzing, the hue of unbrushed teeth—may be redecorated in devotion to our leisure.
Even now, it’s hard to shake the idea that when we play a game on a PC, we’re misbehaving on a fundamental level – distracting these rightly boring machines from their true and sensible purpose. When someone on Twitter the absence of Fez on PC, and the game’s creator, Phil Fish, replied, “BOO HOO. PCs are for spreadsheets,” it was clear that Fish, who grew up in the grip of Nintendo, outside of the teasing urge to tease, felt something deeply To watch a seasoned PC wrangler forecast a game’s ills – curiously not panicked, even intrigued by the challenge – and prescribe a trip into the dark part of its databases, there to jump to a particular column. scrolling and replacing the word “FALSE” with the word “TRUE” is to feel the trace of the spreadsheet, yet the fact remains that Fezdespite Fish’s answer, used to be brought to the PC, where an audience waited to eat it. And all you have to do is head over to YouTube and take a look at the sun-drenched meadows of Red Dead Redemption II, as they filter through the chambers of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090, to find out why the wait and possible worry is worth it. Oh, and the price of that particular graphics card? £1,399. BOOHOE.
Enter the Steam Deck, the portable gaming PC that sizzles across the land under pressure. The company responsible for this brutal sheet of glass and brushed plastic is Valve, which ships it directly to customers. This approach has the downside of being slow, but the benefits are that (a) Valve can take out scalpers, who like to buy in bulk and raise the price, (b) allow the company to gauge its sales – about 6,400 shipped per week, already quickly set to double – more accurate, and (c) when you receive your Deck it will show the address of Valve Corporation, which is not only appropriate, as the shape of the package would suggest you have a length of pipe, but as an additional advantage of feeling implicit in something secret.
This feeling is only amplified when you open it. Housed in a sturdy sleeve, the Deck is wrapped in a card that reads, “Your games are going places.” The inside of the box is decorated with suggestions where those places might be. “In a hammock” and “in the subway” are joined by more intriguing ideas: “in a test room” – of course – “en un submarine”, “sulla ruota panoramica” and, best of all, “sur le trône”. Indeed, as is the case with the Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck nestles in those homey nooks — the beds, the couches, the tops of stairs. No wonder Shigeru Miyamoto is the setting of The Legend of Zelda as “a miniature garden that you can put in a drawer and revisit whenever you want”, and said that someone’s game collection is a “drawer full of playgrounds”. Play has always been inextricably intertwined with the home. It might be a joy to go places with your games, but the real fun is when those places – the submarines, the test chambers and the miniature gardens – can be folded away into the furniture.
Not that the Switch comparison is that useful. Of course, both consoles need to be rocked, perhaps with the help of a lap; or to be secured above the chest, with your elbows planted into the mattress like a pair of pitons. But these creatures were designed by very different companies. While Nintendo likes to tuck you into its hardware and wrap the duvet tight around your neck, following the example of its main game, Valve gives you a crowbar and lets you pry. Install Windows, access the Epic Game Store and GOG, flip it over and use it to carry cups of steaming tea, or use it as a self-defense tool – you can pretty much do whatever you want. Those at Valve may have looked at the panorama of the portable gaming space and saw an opportunity for a pleasant and fruitful disruption, but they don’t seem to be desperate for sur le trône.
So, who are these thousands who have joined the digital queue, eager to put down their deposits – pay for the opportunity to pay? There will be many who are already proud PC owners, eager to break away from their desks. But so will there be many like me: those bruised by PC gaming; those who want it to be given to them in a kinder format; in other words, those who need comfort. That’s my experience over the past few weeks. At first I treated it as if it were a traditional game console. This was partly due to Aperture Desk Job, which is free, and which gives you a tour of the Steam Deck’s many features. The irony—in a game meant to sell you on a portable device—that its hero, as befits the title, was chained to a desk was both welcome and oddly fitting.
I’ve been spending a lot of time at my desk the past few days. Not playing the Steam Deck, but rather engaging in the much better activity of schedule to play on the Steam Deck. Aperture Desk Job was not – like, say, Astro’s playroom– a tour of the upcoming games, all designed with the deck’s features in mind. It was, in fact, the most entertaining guide ever made, for a gadget whose functions are there to help you play games designed for other hardware. Coincidentally, the romance of PC gaming is remarkably similar for the person who doesn’t have the necessary equipment as it is for the person who does. Both are swept up in the dream of the possible. Hence the lists, scratched off in feverish strokes of ballpoint pen, of games I can finally play. Thief: The Dark Project, System shock, STALKER, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Games that have been hidden from me for years. Games locked in a locked box. Love has blossomed again. Pandora is coming today!
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