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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2466 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

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Just reminded of why I cannot play video games (at all). Whole weekend and part of this morning were taken up by civ, when I should have been doing other things.

This is a point in favor of my thinking that video games are better now than ever. All of the video game equivalents of crack cocaine have generally released within the last 15 years. I got horribly addicted to Caves of Qud, Dwarf Fortress, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (I think @TracingWoodgrains may have played all three of these? He had an AAQC on roguelikes on the subreddit), Escape from Tarkov, Mount and Blade Warband, and likely others that I don't remember right now. Maybe that's just my brain being different as an adult somehow, but "gaming crack" seems like it's alive and well. Plus, you can still play all the old stuff!

Civ dates back to the early 90s, and Dwarf Fortress to the early 2000s. For another example, people used to get in trouble playing Doom at work because the game was just that good. There were very addictive games being made 20-30 years ago too.

Doom in particular got people in trouble not only for being ridiculously addictive, but also because it used broadcast packets to run its multiplayer code. So a few people gaming could have a disproportionate impact on the entire office LAN.

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