I’d say the first one that really got me was Roller Coaster Tycoon when I was a kid. It got to a point where I was playing so much that my dreams were all in isometric grid form. Mostly about park designs, but even other dreams were set in that reality.

After that, it was WoW for my first 3 semesters of college. I didn’t go to class most of the time and got academic suspension for a year. After that I was very cautious with MMOrpgs. Never got too invested into a guild again.

Rocket league. Scrolled all the comments and slightly disappointed to not find this one :/

This was a game I was truly addicted. Uninstalled it many times recognising it as an addiction but kept coming back to it. I feel lucky that I could break out of it. It was THAT addictive. Around 1200-1300hrs on that game.

Modded Factorio. I did 450 hours of pyAnodon’s recently and it just broke me. I didn’t win the game. I feel like I lost at it and life.

It seems impossible to manage the side products properly. Ridiculous amount of materials that are all interrelated means that if you are low on one thing, it is very hard to fix it because you need the thing to work to make anything.

Too many recipes means it is very difficult to make modular, adaptable designs to copy and paste. Advanced recipes seem better, but they end up just exacerbating the issue even more.

World of Warcraft. I don’t even try to think about quitting anymore.

I love this thread, so many people passionate about their experiences with games makes me happy.

Most games that spark a Tetris Effect with me, where I’m still playing them in my mind while I’ve put them down hours ago, are industrial automation games. So the likes of Factorio, Satisfactory, Captain Of Industry.

I once calculated my Minecraft hours across all platforms I’ve played on and it’s over HALF A YEAR. I was like mega addicted in middle school, I still play often.

servers SUCK now though, they’re all pay to win and have custom texture packs that look horrible :(

the best one I’ve found (that isn’t private) is UltraVanilla, and I actually found it from firefoxes “Minecraft Indy wiki redirect” plugin which crashed once and there was a little box on the side which mentioned the server bc the person that made the plugin is an admin of the server. When I joined the discord I had already interacted with several members from other modding discords.
As far as I know im the ONLY person that checked it out due to that popup lol

I don’t play on that server because some friends made a different (private) server.

Asheron’s Call hit me at just the right age. That was my mmo. I remember people going on about WoW like it was the most incredible thing, but it always felt like a hollow world to me.

I tried many other mmos over the years but none of them ever hit like the first one.

I think I was really just chasing that sense of wonder I felt at my first one, which is increasingly hard to capture as you move forward through life.

I was in university and had just passed my midterms and as a treat for myself picked up both KOTORs. Mainlined that shit.

Factorio, Europa Universalis IV, Victoria 3, Baldur’s Gate 3 when it was new, and special shout-out to Outer Wilds which hooked me unforgettably

I wasted some 2-3 years of my life in CSGO too when I was younger. All my free time, down the drain basically. It wasn’t even fun after a while, just a hard, tiring grind. Attempted to compete on semi-pro level, somehow got it to my head that it was possible. Did compete ultimately, but none of my teams made it. Never got anywhere and the day I finally got off it was the best day of my adult life. It was bad.

I feel ashamed to admit this out loud. It’s just so cringeworthy. But it does some good to keep my head level and remember the shortcomings of my younger days.

Nowadays the closest I get to “addiction” level is bingeing a few months worth of evenings on the likes of Crusader Kings 3, M&B Bannerlord, Stellaris or Rimworld. Much more sane since it’s not as intensive, it can be paused at any moment, and ultimately there’s an end to it, so it just naturally withers away from my days eventually.

Diablo 2, Skyrim, BL2, BL3, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Valheim, V Rising, Oblivion Remastered, D3, and now Helldivers 2. Roughly in order.

GW2. When i first started playing it many moons ago, I couldn’t stop playing it! It was so addicting.

Civilization, Civilization 2, Civilization 3 and FreeCiv

Just one more turn. Looks up. Where did the day go?

I finally kicked the habit with FreeCiv.

About 20 years ago I played world of warcraft every day and every awaken hour of the day or just about. School was over and I lived with my parents and was “looking for work”. Let’s just say that I played vanilla so much that I had guild members calling in the middle of the night to get together for world boss killing.

Since then I have realized that is not how to go about in life and last time i really got stuck was with Factorio.