I played Age of Empires a lot too. It’s almost like it does take some sort of substantial failure or tragedy to stop playing some of these games. The turned based games have one more turn syndrome that suck you in, but I can say that I wouldn’t have been as interested in history when I was a really young kid without Age of Empires.

MMORPGs really sucked me in more. I’m blessed that I exited that stage of my life in middle school, but I would spend whole days, especially in the summer, playing MapleStory. I remember how I stopped one time: I got hacked. I lost my account information and all my valuable time and work I put into it.

Real life a lot of the times won’t stand tall to the stimulation that comes with video games. That’s great for the industry, but society right now is in some kind of middle ground where we’re not sure what to do with all these games and the obsession of young people across the world to not only turned based strategy games, but RPGs, shooters, sports games, etc. I do think there needs to be a more concrete plan and place for them in education.

But no supervision and system in place makes playing a game like Civ an absolute disaster, even for the best of us.