Computer Games Crouching behind a piece of twisted metal, I waited for the mortar explosions to calm down. As soon as I could no longer hear the thunderous roar of the explosions, I came out of my hiding place and ran onto the beach. The sound of a bullet rang out in the silence and I looked to see where the shooter was hiding. The enemy chambered another round and fired his sniper rifle. The bullet hit the flesh and I fell to the ground. A few minutes before, Willis and I were sitting on the couch, listening to loud punk music. It was too hot outside to do anything and the flies were out anyway. The interior was cooler and more hospitable, but boredom had set in. “The Day of Defeat?” Willis asked in a muffled drawl. “Yeah,” I replied and bounded up the stairs. Within minutes, Willis and I had booted up his computer, connected to the Internet, and connected to a Day of Defeat clan server. Suddenly we were no longer in the messy upstairs of Willis' house, but on a virtual battlefield, slowly moving toward an enemy encampment on the beach. Within seconds, I was killed by an enemy sniper who was carefully protecting his team's base. Willis took over, choosing a more accurate rifle rather than the cumbersome machine gun I had chosen. Willis' computer desk was a pile of gaming equipment and disks. On the shelf above the desk, a row of outdated games were lined up with surgical precision. The old games were never used, so they were never out of use. Under the shelf on the desk are a stack of new games, their packaging and cases, manuals and strategy guides. A PC Gamer magazine was among the countless stacks of demo discs Willis had collected here and there. The brand new 19-inch Elements monitor emerged from the mess, emitting a cold, bluish glow. The keyboard sported a custom keycap, turning the standard set of keys into the control panel of a complex helicopter, and the W, A, D, and S keys – the keys commonly used to control a character – were stained and worn compared to the rest of the new and clean keys. The brand new high-precision optical mouse glowed a dull reddish color and sat on a cat-themed mouse pad that Willis' father had purchased..