![]() Sid Meier’s Civilization leads this person to condemn all interactive entertainment in one fell swoop, concluding, “The very nature of video games is addicting.” For months on end the cycle continued until my parents had to take away the game from me ( The Dark Side of the Internet). Of course, I wouldn’t finish the game and so every spare moment of my time was dedicated to strategizing how I would conquer my enemies. I would sit at home on a Saturday night, instead of going out with friends, and play the game until dawn the next day. Or we have the creator of the somberly named “Dark Side of the Internet,” who says of Civ IV:Ī normal game can take up to 50 hours, usually done in many sittings. Joking aside, check out the case of British sci-fi author Iain Banks, who, in 2006, played Civilization IV for three months straight while supposedly working on his next book: “I became a serial addict,” says Banks, “In the end, I had to delete all the saved files and smash the CD”-not to mention having to explain to his publisher why he needed a good long extension ( The Independent, August 2006). We wonder where we might be today if we had said no to one more turn, if we had applied ourselves a little bit harder to chemistry and microbiology… aboard the international space station, figuring out a way to get to Alpha Centauri in real life? At Johns Hopkins, discovering the cure for cancer for, you know, real human beings? President of the United States-of America, rather than Magnusonia? I’m sure I’d at least be rich and famous and popular… We can all laugh about the times we stayed up all night playing Civilization in order to vanquish the Romans or lead the Mongols into space-instead of studying for the chemistry test we had the next morning-but behind the laughter there is, for some of us, a small, pea-sized bit of shame, because that scenario was a little too common because our chemistry grades were a little too low because we worry that we’ve wasted our lives away. The part where I explain that Civilization is addictive in a serious way (i.e. About games, about addiction, about what’s worth doing in life. This time around, as “one more turn” syndrome hit me once again with the force of a ton of morphine, it made me think. But back when I used to play Civ III didn’t really give that fact much thought (at least not as much as my parents may have): I just knew that I liked the game, and kept coming back to it. I played a lot of Civ IIback in the day enough to know, like anyone else who’s ever touched a Civ game, that the things are seriously addictive. I want to write about Civilization, because I recently played the latest iterations of the game after many years away 1 and was struck by the formula’s greatness yet again. So do I really need to write an article on the series? I don’t know, but I want to. Sid Meier was, after all, the second person in history to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame. Civilization is one of those games that has been hallowed nearly time out of mind.
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