[center] **"Trials & Testing"** [/center] [I grew up on hand-me-downs. I took what I could from my older siblings and through that was introduced to a number of my favorite video games, almost solely Nintendo though. Eventually something slipped through. One of my childhood best friends was showing me PC gaming on his computer for the first time. We were probably like 8 or 9. Portal 2, Mirror’s Edge. Did he also introduce me to Terraria? Wow I have literally never seen graphics like this in my life. I don’t have anything like this at home. Playing these games at his home was so much fun. Portal 2 blew my mind. Proceed to not own an advanced PC capable of running games for like 8 years. Become tolerant of everydaying Minecraft with friends at like 10 FPS for almost a decade. I would even install modpacks and if I could manage 8 FPS I would be relieved that it was playable by my standards. Skype gaming buddies used to complain about 50 FPS. This really pissed me off. Save up at first minimum wage job making like $10 an hour. I then buy a Windows “gaming” laptop. I shouldn’t have done this. Can’t run shit Rinse and repeat like 3 times until I get anything remotely decent. Why is tech like this?] --- >>Portal 2 to me almost two decades later represents a benchmark; a symbol of performance in my personal goals. When I was 10 I looked upon these technological capabilities as something I must earn. I wasn’t raised with expensive console gifts or advanced hardware being passed to me easily. The limited experience of playing these games at friends’ houses became a personal heaven for me. At home I could only live vicariously through Let’s Plays and informational content. I occasionally would attempt modern games on our family computer and immediately get depressed as it was unplayable 99% of the time. FOMO sucks. >>Technology was always something I associated with immense effort and labor growing up. It was truly novel to me in the sense that I would constantly itch to play these games which materialized maybe a few times a year. It felt inspiring and worth pursuing at the time. I arrived at treating these video games (and art hardware specs) as a concrete gift to myself for years of patience and hard work as a young man and before that, a growing adolescent. >>When I finally got comfortable with my first decent computer capable of running games, I felt self made. I was working a really terrible entry level job still. It was not fulfilling or well paying in any way, shape, or form. I still felt wealthy as fuck when I booted up my first 60 FPS game. >>It actually meant something to me, and is a vector for my years of labor and passion.