Based On A True Story

The existential crisis every new game developer faces when they realize their entire career is just figuring out how to make different shapes not pass through each other. After years of education and dreams of creating the next Elden Ring, it all boils down to "wait, is that box touching that other box?" and "why is this character's arm suddenly disappearing into the wall?" The veterans with the gun have always known the truth - collision detection is the real final boss that never goes away.

That face when your game compiles without errors but crashes immediately at runtime. The classic "smile through the pain" moment every game dev knows too well. You're not stupid—you're just experiencing the traditional baptism by fire where everything works perfectly in your head but the computer has other plans. It's that special kind of suffering that makes you question your career choices while simultaneously reaching for more coffee.

That spider living in your PC case for two years just got evicted by a nuclear thermal event. Turns out cranking those settings to 4K ultra transforms your $3000 gaming rig into a functional space heater. The spider probably thought Chernobyl was happening all over again. Your GPU is now technically classified as a weapon of mass destruction in 12 countries. But hey, those ray-traced reflections look nice for the 8 minutes before thermal throttling kicks in.

The evolution of GPU power requirements is getting ridiculous. Remember when a simple 6-pin connector was enough? Now NVIDIA's over here like "Your new graphics card requires *checks notes* breadboard jumper wires and direct access to your local power plant." Next gen they'll just skip the middleman and require you to build a small nuclear reactor in your basement. The RGB lighting alone will probably require its own dedicated circuit breaker.

When you install a new game but forget that your gaming rig needs to compile shaders before you can actually play. That moment when you hit "Play" all excited, only to be stopped dead in your tracks by the dreaded "Compiling Shaders: 1 of 9378" progress bar. The betrayal! Your evening plans suddenly held hostage by the GPU equivalent of watching paint dry. And somehow it's always when you've only got a small window of free time to play. Those shaders might as well be compiling your disappointment in real-time.

Remember when games fit on a 1.44MB floppy? Now Call of Duty is like that friend who keeps saying "just one more beer" but shows up to your house with a U-Haul full of storage requirements. At 105GB, SpongeBob thinks the madness has peaked, but Patrick knows better - slapping us with a 300GB reality check. Your SSD isn't crying, it's having a full-on existential crisis. And game developers are just sitting there like "What? It's just 4K textures of the same gun from 37 slightly different angles."