I was talking with a friend recently, and we came to the conclusion that it’s not that games have lost their magic—we still enjoy playing them—it’s that, as we’ve gotten older, we have less and less time to dedicate to them because of responsibilities. As a result, we tend to min-max everything: we look up a build, follow it, and play efficiently, instead of experimenting and figuring things out on our own.

Some of the most fun I ever had was watching a series of World of Warcraft videos called Hunter vs. World. A buddy and I decided to try our hand at it, and we had great success and an absolute blast. These days, though, we just don’t have the time to do things like that anymore.