Everybody Wants to Rule the World

A new game builds on the addictive appeal of Sid Meier’s Civilization.

- By Spencer Kornhaber

If the point of life was simply to enjoy the moment that you’re in, we’d all be playing video games constantly. The likes of Minecraft and Zelda turn the drag of time into a silvery chute you drop into and emerge from after hours in a state of flow. No other activity, it becomes clearer every year, can compete in delivering kicks per second— and gaming’s magnetic pull is bending civilization itself. The $179 billion gaming industry is by now bigger than the global movie business and North American professional sports combined, and its decades-long rise has been credited with declines in reading, TV viewership, workforce participation, and even sex.

Much of my childhood was spent in that silvery chute, where I commanded alien armies and cast spells. But then one week during my sophomore year in high school, a realization hit me: Spending so much time questing on a screen might get in the way of other quests—for a driver’s license, a social life, a career. I quit gaming outright, and I mostly stayed away as adulthood unfolded—until the boring horror of 2020’s shutdowns arrived. Netflix and novels couldn’t distract me from scrolling through the news or counting the fibers in my couch pillows. A friend in another city suggested that we game together remotely, and I felt a pang. The real world was out of control, but here was an opportunity for me to play emperor.