Latter Day Sinner

I am a first generation commercial gamer. I played the Atari when it came out at seven. By twelve I had branched out to Dungeons & Dragons. A few years later I worked all summer to afford a Commodore 64, a disk drive, a cassette recorder, and enough games to keep me out of any real trouble for several years. I went to a very expensive college and pissed away what was probably an opportunity of a lifetime because I spent almost every waking hour in the computer lab. I came back to my hometown and played Nintendo and Super Nintendo for years. Somehow I found time between my games to have a kid, get married and have more kids. Fortunately my wife Stephanie also plays video games, so our bond is eternal. I’ve gone through more computers than I can count, had a wonderful collection of DOS CD-ROMs, and broke down and got a Steam account when disks stopped mattering,. Then there came cell phone and mobile games. I have held down jobs, remain faithfully married, and done my best raising our children. But I still wonder if I would have had a more productive life if I didn’t enjoy video games so much.