Amid the bustle of the team meal, held in a swank hotel conference room, Gordon Hayward sat in silence. Plate of chicken cordon bleu untouched, he typed and clicked furiously on his laptop.
“Yo, playin’ more of that StarCraft again?” Diante Garrett asked, approaching the empty table.
“Actually, just putting together a new gaming rig on PCPartPicker,” Gordon responded. “My friend Dave showed up at our latest LAN party with his new rig, and he made me look like a fool with his 120 FPS and three-second startup times.” Diante sat down next to him, looking at the laptop screen curiously and reading down the list of parts.
“2x 500 GB SSD…3x 4TB WD Black HD…2x EVGA GeForce GTX 780 video card…dude, I have no idea what any of this stuff means.” Diante commented, chomping on a plate of dinner rolls. “What does liquid cooling do? I thought you weren’t supposed to get electric stuff wet.”
Gordon was barely paying attention to his teammate. “It’s to keep the CPU from overheating. Since I’m going to be overclocking the heck out of this whole system, I gotta have flawless airflow and downright frigid temps.”
“And what’s with the all the LED strips? You gonna have a rave or somethin’?”
“It’s been proven that blue LEDs increase your responsiveness and alertness when playing video games. I figure, the more blue LED’s, the better. Plus, it matches the pure liquid ice that flows through my veins when I destroy my opposition.”
Diante laughed. “Liquid ice? Don’t you mean water?”
Adding a $200 Filco keyboard to his list, Gordon merely shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever.”
“So, other than StarCraft, what are you gonna play on this bad boy? The new GTA?”
Gordon shook his head. “Not out on PC yet.”
“Okay, how about DOTA?”
With frightening suddenness, Gordon slammed his laptop shut and glared at Diante. “Don’t mention that game around me. DOTA is for casuals. There’s no strategy, no tactics, no technique, just like all battle arena games. A bunch of pretty graphics and effects for kids to drool over, that’s all DOTA has to offer. No, I only play StarCraft, a game that has stood the test of time and remains a bastion of the RTS genre. Shame on Blizzard for releasing drivel such as the entire World of Warcraft series and tarnishing their pristine reputation among true gamers such as myself.”
Leaving his food untouched, Gordon put away his laptop and stood up. “Anyway, it was nice chatting, Diante, but I gotta go somewhere where people won’t insinuate that I would stoop so low as to play casual games. I have a reputation, you know.”
Flabbergasted, Diante watched Gordon walk out of the room. He was about to chow down on the left-behind food when Gordon stuck his head back around the door frame.
“Oh, and Diante? If you ever tell anyone that I was ricing my computer with extraneous LED’s, I’ll punch your face two hundred years into the future.”