STARCRAFT

The last game I ever got completely "immersed" in was StarCraft. I first learned to play it in 1998 or so and got fairly good at it rather quickly (probably had something to do with playing it through the night, stopping only when the sun would rudely interrupt). I guess this is sort of an admission: friends used to come over to my place carrying their PC towers and monitors...20 minutes later we'd have a LAN (Local Area Network) of mass intergalactic war.The game was simple enough: Choose one of three clans, Terran (human), Zerg (insect-ish), or Protos (advanced alien), build up your base, develop an army and optional perimeter defense, do some recon with scouts to locate enemy base(s), and the rest is where things get ugly...

You take everything you got and annihilate your enemies before they get a jump on you. This is when the multitasking goes to a whole new level. Commanding a full-blown attack while continuing to build forces at (by this time) your multiple base locations. After you kill your enemies (including helpless workers) and destroy all their structures you can proclaim "VICTORY!" and then start all over again.

And then there's Battle.net, which at this time is strictly an online network for StarCraft games that connects and ranks players on a worldwide scale. This adds another 6 months to my gaming addiction.