It was only three weeks ago that that damned game came in the mail. It's so strange to think about; it feels like it was years ago.

I still don't understand where it came from, but I was what you might call a "serious gamer", and the PC game of the year wasn't something to miss. An indie release, I'd ordered it directly from the company's website. Skaianet. Who the hell are they? It keeps me up at night, sometimes. How did they make this game? And why? Sometimes I imagine that one of those bastards somehow survived, that I can just find some scrawny little developer asshole and demand that he give me the answers. I want to know something, for certain, to have some real understanding of this awful thing. But I know it's just a fantasy; I'm sure everyone from Skaianet is dead now.

So I spent four weeks in agony. There were no real reviews, no playthroughs or leaked clips of the gameplay. The buzz was intense, but there was no substance. It was like the game was being kept under wraps, but really under wraps. As in no information. Nada.

By that fourth week it was really bugging me. I was pacing nervously, glancing outside to check the flag on the mailbox more often than could possibly be healthy. When my mom asked me what I was watching for out the window like that, I could hardly understand the question. What did she mean, what was I watching for? Wasn't Sburb, the game of the year, the center of her life as it was of mine?

She probably thought I was crazy. In my hours of stupid trawling through PC gaming forums and shady websites, I managed to track down exactly one review, in the online edition of Game Bro magazine. "Why the 'Game of the Year' or Whatever isn't as good as some other stuff I like that's better", the title read. I groaned. A joke. A sick joke. What kind of a website does satirical game reviews, anyway? Who would even read that? I clicked through anyway, to see if the article had any real information on the game. "Subscription Needed, Doggg!" the website informed me. I think that was the point at which I swore out loud.

My mom then came into the room, wondering what I was doing and has she really just heard that foul language out of my mouth? I told her that she had. She wasn't amused. "Don't be smart with me, young man! Go up to your room! You are grounded at least for the rest of today!"

I had already hurriedly closed off my tabs on instinct when she came into the room. Now, with her standing directly behind me and ready to watch me go up to my room, I simply held down the power button until the computer screen went dark. It's a terrible habit, but I didn't really much care at that point. I trudged up the stairs to my room.

I did not appreciate being grounded, and thus torn away from my perpetual quest for Sburb information, but I decided it would probably be good for me. I flopped down onto my bed. My impatience for this game was starting to become an obsession. It was too secret; too widely praised for how little there was to find about it. I seemed doomed to find out nothing about this game beyond "Immersive Multiplayer Sandbox Simulation" until it actually showed up in my mailbox.

I took out my phone (which I was not supposed to have with me, as I was grounded) and texted my friend Robert. He had ordered a copy of Sburb as well, so we could play it together online, but he was probably not as obsessed as me and could probably calm me down a little bit. "Hey, what's up. Did your Sburb come yet?" I asked him. A pause. "Nope. I'm not tearing my hair out about it, though. Indie companies can be pretty unreliable about shipping," he sent back. I scowled facetiously at no one in particular. "What makes you think I'm tearing my hair out? You know what a patient soul I am," I wrote. "Ha!" he texted back. "But seriously though, that fuckin game had better show up soon. This thing is driving me up a wall. You know there's no demos or anything online? Not one YouTube video. Some people must have already gotten it though, right?" I said. After a moment, he wrote "Just take it easy. The game will come when it comes."

At that moment, I happened to glance up from the screen and out the window. Outside, I saw the mailman walk up to our mailbox. I watched him intently. Then, out of his satchel he pulled a pair of square envelopes, like discs. I couldn't see what was written on them, but there was obviously some kind of big green logo...

I held my breath. It couldn't be. But it was, of course it was, it had to be! There was no mistaking it.

Now, just a few weeks later, I look back on that moment and imagine what would have happened if I had acted differently. What if I hadn't looked up at the window, and I had missed the game until that evening, or even the next day? What if I had just stayed put, put my excitement on hold, waited until I was ungrounded before getting my hands on it? Sometimes I wish I had. Because if I hadn't gone out of my room, snuck downstairs and taken that game right then, on that day, then I would have died within 24 hours. And then I wouldn't be forced to live through what it did to me.