My wife gave me a copy of WarCraft II for Christmas of 1996, about two weeks before my first daughter was born.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s never given me another video game since.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t begin to calculate the hours I wasted sneaking off to play that game. Just one more level. Just let me finish this. I\u2019ll be there in a second. I\u2019m almost done, I swear. It put a strain on my marriage, on my health, and on my professional career. And for what? Was killing orcs really that much fun?<\/p>\n
Yes, it was. That\u2019s why I need to stay far, far away from anything where I get to command digital armies. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always been a bit of a computer geek, even back in the days when I spent my paper route money to buy an Atari 400, which featured a really annoying plastic keyboard and all data had to be saved on audiotapes. It took about a half an hour to save even the most simple computer programs. Dreadful.<\/p>\n
But I played all the games. I wasted those half hours. I remember loading up \u201cStates and Capitols,\u201d a game on tape where you guessed what the capital cities were of every state in the country. You can probably google a similar program somewhere today that would take about two seconds to load. Those aren\u2019t the games that interest me now, anyway. They don\u2019t waste nearly enough time.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m into God Games.<\/p>\n
God Games are the ones where you essentially rule the universe and play out the consequences of your decisions. WarCraft is probably the best one out there, so I\u2019ve scrupulously avoided getting anywhere near the whole World of Warcraft thing. I love my wife and I want to stay married.<\/p>\n
The ones that have wasted most of my time since the initial WarCraft have been the SimCity and Civilization games. Especially Civilization, versions II, III, and IV. I keep deluding myself into thinking that every time I boot one of these suckers up, I\u2019ll only play for an hour or so. At the end of a day wasted in front of one of these things, I\u2019m left with a feeling of ennui and crippling guilt. Don\u2019t try this at home.<\/p>\n
On the surface, this looks like a fairly innocuous temptation. After all, it could be worse. I don\u2019t do porn; I\u2019m a complete teetotaler; I haven\u2019t gambled in almost two decades. And these games are educational, right? You learn about civilizations and city management and interesting stuff, so how could it be bad?<\/p>\n
Trust me. It is.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve tossed all my Civ CDs and gone cold turkey. As long as I stay away from the hard stuff, I\u2019m OK.<\/p>\n
Rumors are that Civilization V will be released next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mywife gave me a copy of WarCraft II for Christmas of 1996, about two weeks before my first daughter was born. She\u2019s never given me another video game since. I can\u2019t begin to calculate the hours I wasted sneaking off to play that game. Just one more level. Just let me finish this. I\u2019ll be ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4955,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions\/4955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}