IT was 1989. One week before the final exams in my first year at NUS Law School. My ambitions were all messed up.
I should have been preparing to ace my grades but the only card up my sleeves was my foolish but foolproof strategy to conquer Japan as shogun Oda Nobunaga.
That year, almost two decades ago, I had discovered the wonders of strategy-based computer games in the computer labs of Raffles Hall and the law library.
While my classmates laboured over 50-page legal cases and my hostel mates worked on assignments, I was irrigating fields in my provinces and whipping my men into fighting fit machines.
I knew I should be studying but somehow I just could not stop playing. One hour more. Half hour more. Oh, it's morning already? Time to sleep.
I would have suffered utter defeat at the exams hall but for my tutorial and hostel mate, who literally ripped out the twin floppy disks from the PC and crushed them with her scrawny hands.
Without Honshu to conquer, I switched on my afterburners for a one-week non-stop study quest for my salvation. I passed by a whisker of Cs and Ds, and learned one big lesson - if I wanted to return to the fight, I had to first balance work with play.
All these years, I never stopped cybergaming, through my studies to my career, to marriage and fatherhood.
But I never faltered when it came to the crunch - should I continue blasting aliens or attend to my crying baby? Should I continue playing after 3am or face the wrath of my wife?
When I was an undergraduate, cybergamers were a novelty. Some called us freaks. Today, you would be hard pressed to find a male youth of sound mind who has never played video games.
I can only sympathise with the kids today with the tough choices they have to make everyday. In my university days, it was text-heavy single player games on tiny monochrome screens. Today, it is massively multiplayer online games (MMOG)with dazzling graphics and movie cut scenes on super sharp LCD screens.
Modern MMOGs like World Of Warcraft - where you join thousands of other gamers to explore virtual lands and thrash monsters - make money from the monthly S$20 subscription that we pay. These game companies keep adding new exciting places to explore and new super-duper weapons to die for to keep their cash registers ringing. They are designed to be addictive from the beginning.
So what draws millions of gamers around the world these addictive MMOGs?
Some, mostly females, play to make new friends for chit-chat and share recipes while throwing virtual fishing lines into ponds.
Some, especially the younger kids, do it out of peer pressure to show that they are with the 'in' crowd.
Many men are out to flex their more powerful armour and swords and display their virtual alpha male instincts to kick the posterior of their weaker fellowmen.
Even corporations are in - setting up sweatshops in third world countries to accumulate rare game items and virtual gold to sell to real players who are just are willing to fork out real dough for virtual goods to get a headstart.
You even get spam in your in-game mail systems with companies offering you the best real money to virtual currency exchange rates.
But for the most of us, we are just there to have a jolly good time exploring new lands and develop our lowly level one peasant into a level 99 superman.
I probably would have scored more As and Bs and drank more booze if I played less games.
But give up on commanding arquebusiers and samurais, cutting up aliens for research, transforming into a black panther and exploring infernal mountains on a flying griffin? No way.
