John Misczak

Way back in the summer of 1998, I had finally scrounged up enough money between my allowance and my birthday to get an N64. I had been playing it for almost two years at the houses of friends and neighbors, trying my hand at games that any millennial would be familiar with: Goldeneye and Mario 64. The system itself was a massive leap from the Sega Genesis I had gotten for Christmas a few years prior, and I dove right into what felt at the time as very immersive 3D visuals.

In May of 2013, as Microsoft prepared to launch its new XBox console, they announced plans to tie all copies of an XBox game, both physical and digital, to a license that had to be authorized and deauthorized from your console via an online check that had to occur once a day. The outcry from the gaming community at the time was so loud and visceral that Microsoft quickly backpedaled on these plans. The damage was done, however; the first impression had been made, and for years afterwards, consumers continued to think that the XBox had some draconian DRM controls that limited their ability to share games with friends. Sony gleefully capitalized on this situation at E3 that year by mocking Microsoft with a short video demonstrating how easy it was to share a game on their new Playstation 4 system.

Way back in 2016, I initially tried out an ultrawide monitor in hopes of simplifying my desk setup. Instead of running two different monitors connected to a desktop and my work laptop, I thought a single 34” ultrawide one would clean up a lot of cables. I bought a Dell U3415W because it was one of the few monitors at the time that had a built-in KVM for switching between my two computers. And for several years this worked great! My display cable and power cable clutter got cut in half, and it allowed me to run everything off the monitor’s USB hub instead of keeping a separate one.