But then one week during my sophomore year in high school, a realization hit me: Spending so much time questing on a screen might get in the way of other quests-for a driver’s license, a social life, a career. Much of my childhood was spent in that silvery chute, where I commanded alien armies and cast spells. The $179 billion gaming industry is by now bigger than the global movie business and North American professional sports combined, and its decades-long rise has been credited with declines in reading, TV viewership, workforce participation, and even sex. No other activity, it becomes clearer every year, can compete in delivering kicks per second-and gaming’s magnetic pull is bending civilization itself. The likes of Minecraft and Zelda turn the drag of time into a silvery chute you drop into and emerge from after hours in a state of flow. If the point of life was simply to enjoy the moment that you’re in, we’d all be playing video games constantly.

Illustration by Katie Martin images by Universal Images Group / Sylvain Grandadam / Print Collector / Getty

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