My relationship to gaming is in constant flux. When I was young, video games were everything to me: I read magazines (shout out PC Zone), visited forums, played with friends, and — most importantly of all — spent countless hours absorbed in a screen.
This didn’t last. Since those early teenage years, it’s been more a strong ebb and flow than consistent obsession. I want to game, but finding something that fits around my adult life is tough.
This battle has been a constant theme in The Rectangle — and isn’t going away any time soon. Because, party people, I’m currently balls deep in an RTS addiction. In a good way, as a salve to much of the nonsense going on in modern life.
All that mean nothing to you? Let me help. RTS stands for real time strategy. It’s a deeply unfashionable type of game where you play as a god-esque figure.
The rough outline is this: you control some sort of faction. More often than not, you have to manage resources, create structures, build an army, and then dominate your opponent. Maybe names like Warcraft or Command & Conquer or Age of Empires mean something to you, but maybe they don’t. The main thing to know is that RTS games are intense and involved and not particularly chill.
My obsession came into being during a few days away with some pals. A LAN weekend, to be precise. We rented a big house in the middle of nowhere, brought our machines, and wiled away hours of glorious June sunshine by staying inside and playing video games.
A few interesting things came up that weekend. One was that the Ally X is a great travel PC; another was that gaming in the same room is so much more fun than doing it online; and I also discovered it is possible to drink your body weight in Pepsi Max.
But the biggest revelation? That was rediscovering RTSs. Or, maybe, just discovering them properly.
In a sob story that’ll truly pull on your heart strings, I was never really able to play RTSs as a youngster. During the genre’s heyday (that’d be the 90s and 2000s), my family didn’t have a computer good enough to game on.
Instead, I watched my friends play at their houses. And, occasionally, when I could have a go, I’d get fucking battered. Not a recipe for a delightful relationship to the genre.
These general factors meant I spent more time in turn-based games, such as the Civilization or the Total War series, titles that didn’t require a powerful computer to run smoothly and you could automate battles.
But, time marches inevitably on, things change. As much as I enjoy gaming, I can’t devote hours to it like I used to. Life is busy, and my current approach is finding moments that gaming fits into.
Turn-based campaigns that require deep-level thought and hundreds of hours don’t work for me any longer, I have a music library to maintain and a novel to write. That long-term concentration itch is scratched.
Instead, I want something shorter, more intense, and engaging. In other words, I want to game in moments that I might just be sitting on the sofa, browsing my phone.
This is where the LAN weekend comes rocketing back into the frame.
Throughout the few days we ran a tournament, mostly on older games. During this battle to the death, we played a game of Warcraft 3 that was up there with the most fun I’ve ever had on a computer.
It was intense, an hour of being completely consumed. That little taste hooked me. Since then, I’ve been on an RTS hype, thinking about them, playing them, and revelling in the pure focus of the game.
There’s something about losing yourself entirely in a tense game that just melts the world away and forces you to concentrate and engage. It’s the opposite of doom scrolling.
Sure, it’s stressful at points, as playing an RTS is technical and creative, a test of dexterity. Which is probably why I’m awful at them. But what they deliver are moments of fun where you enter a flow state and hours melt away.
And all that’s left? Well, that’d be getting an actual dedicated PC to play them right.
God, look at what RTSs have done to your boy.