Random Thoughts 2: Arbitrary Speculations
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aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
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I have that book too, although right now it's stuck up in my closet.
I just got a spam email from myself offering substances to enlarge body parts I don't even have. Email spoofing is pretty funny sometimes.
I just got a spam email from myself offering substances to enlarge body parts I don't even have. Email spoofing is pretty funny sometimes.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
"It's a video game! Don't question plot holes! Just buy it and enjoy it! [choking noises]"
I forgot just how addictive Civ is. I spent most of my time from Wednesday evening to 10 pm yesterday night playing a domination victory on a large map in C3C. Of course I was Germany, with fascism, blitzing the world with Panzers. It was fun to put on a bad German accent and pretend I wasn't content until I'd turned 2/3 of the world into Lebensraum.
I didn't shower. I ate delivery pizza. I got nothing else done. When I finally won, the elapsed time was 49 hours 21 minutes. I'd spent maybe four hours on Tuesday starting the game; the other 45 hours went by in the space of 72 hours. I was willing to work 15 hour shifts in three back-to-back days just to win the game. And then what did I do after I won it? Started another game and wasted another 7 hours, finally going to bed around 5 am. And I want to play even more today.
That is a frightening addictive binge. I mean, I'm (obviously) prone to addictive behaviors and am hardly moderate with alcohol when I drink, but a drinking binge ends after a couple of days having burned itself out with a massive hangover. This is what I imagine meth to be. Video game addiction is not just real, but absolutely on par with any addictive drug.
It's kind of mind-boggling when you consider that this is a game that came out in 2001. Most more modern games are vastly more immersive. There are people living in entire parallel realities that barely even intersect with ours, and I'm not just talking about the Breitbart set. I wonder if this is a big part of why the proportion of prime-age men not in the workforce is so much higher today than in the past. I'm also tempted to speculate that this is part of why automation-driven unemployment doesn't show up in the stats. The rate of video game addiction is proportional to the same thing automation is - the amount of computing power available.
Certainly that's not the full story. But I wonder if it's a piece of it.
I didn't shower. I ate delivery pizza. I got nothing else done. When I finally won, the elapsed time was 49 hours 21 minutes. I'd spent maybe four hours on Tuesday starting the game; the other 45 hours went by in the space of 72 hours. I was willing to work 15 hour shifts in three back-to-back days just to win the game. And then what did I do after I won it? Started another game and wasted another 7 hours, finally going to bed around 5 am. And I want to play even more today.
That is a frightening addictive binge. I mean, I'm (obviously) prone to addictive behaviors and am hardly moderate with alcohol when I drink, but a drinking binge ends after a couple of days having burned itself out with a massive hangover. This is what I imagine meth to be. Video game addiction is not just real, but absolutely on par with any addictive drug.
It's kind of mind-boggling when you consider that this is a game that came out in 2001. Most more modern games are vastly more immersive. There are people living in entire parallel realities that barely even intersect with ours, and I'm not just talking about the Breitbart set. I wonder if this is a big part of why the proportion of prime-age men not in the workforce is so much higher today than in the past. I'm also tempted to speculate that this is part of why automation-driven unemployment doesn't show up in the stats. The rate of video game addiction is proportional to the same thing automation is - the amount of computing power available.
Certainly that's not the full story. But I wonder if it's a piece of it.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Naw dawg you're just on a bender. It'll pass.
C'mon, I've done my Civ benders too. And on Wesnoth and Quake and Age of Empires (both I and II) and Freespace, and Vice City a couple years ago in a flashback moment, and Fallout, and many more… it's good to, once in a while, let go.
aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
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I've been wanting to play some Civ 4 but I lost my CD in the move and it's probably up in the closet with half my other stuff.
Oh I'm not actually concerned or anything - shouldn't have used the word "frightening". "Spectacular" or "enormous" or something would be better.
I've gone on them plenty of times before and they're the whole reason this site exists! I'm just amazed at how thoroughly it drew me in. And I thought I'd throw in some arbitrary speculations about the nature of technology-induced un(der)employment. When in Rome...
aimeeandbeatles
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That requires money to spare.
It's not a big issue now because I got the stepladder and found the disc.
Bit of a scary price. I've never tried Civ IV.
What would be considered a discount price?
In which currency?
I just bought it on Steam last month. It was $8.49 CDN for the base game and the necessary expansion packs (All you really need is the base game and Beyond the Sword), they also threw in Colonization. So, four games for less than $10. Definitely a win for me, since my install disk wouldn't read in Windows 10.
aimeeandbeatles
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If you have GOG or Steam account, you can add it to your wishlists and it'll email you when it's on sale.
I've recently gone fishing for old games prices (not that I don't have about a dozen games to play the hell out of now that I've managed to get them running; I might be done with them by the end of the year)… found that Warcraft III is/was at about USD 4.00… I distinctly remember it being at $40-ish when it just came out and supermarkets still carried physical copies of vidjamagames. They overpriced videogames. The bastards.
I was pretty much going to post this.
Thanks. I do have a GOG account (only ever bought one game, back when my Windows XP computer could still access the internet). I have never had a Steam account.
How do I get one?
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