Well I’ve braked in the last two days, after my mad 4GW, 5GW, globalization spurt of the past week or so.  I’m amazed that I can devote myself to topics I would never have addressed two or three years ago, when I was ass-deep in convoluted debates over poetry — a subject I don’t much care to debate these days.  Well, such is emergence.  As a teen, I jumped as deeply into strategic gaming:

Although, I did not much like Civilization until the video games came out.  Risk (not pictured, because I couldn’t find the box I remember!) was a standby when my friends and I did not want the complexity of other games or did not have enough time to play the longer lasting games.  Axis and Allies, a grand, euphoric endeavor, was a sign that we were really going to get serious.  Diplomacy, a wicked delight for me, perturbed my friends for the same reason, I suspect. Shogun was a personal favorite of mine. Titan was probably the best of them all, because of its complexity and variety of pieces, terrain, and battle tactics.  There were others.  (Chess: not one of my favorites, but an occasional departure.)

I remember almost precisely when the thrill of group strategic gaming left me:  a game of Diplomacy, I think it was, in the barracks at DLI, when I could not bring myself to be as ruthless and conniving as I had been when a younger teen.  Or maybe it was Axis and Allies.  In any case, the thrill of dominating others had left me, and I remember noticing this fact at the very time such a desire to dominate would have benefited me, in that surreal world of novice soldiers playing at being real commanders.

Of course, a fumbled relationship some three or four years later taught me that the thrill of domination had not quite left me — a much more devastating realization — but after that, it was gone for good.