I started playing Rise of Nations during my post graduate days as a student. The second year of post grad was filled with high energy bursts of activity followed with lazy days of meandering nothing. Lazy is an understatement here. Anyways, I found the game interface slick, experience interesting, but the sad part was that the computer always ended up kicking my a$$. I was playing the game the way I used to play AOE. That was’nt enough. Why should I build another town when the one that I have is well secure? In the midst of placements, and general frolicking, I soon gave up the game. I started playing the game again almost 4 years later, this time with friends who were a whole decade younger to me.
The multi-player environment followed by the zest to get better and better (not to mention the competitive levels of the other players, you know who you are :-)) egged me on to find more stuff about this game. In fact TIME magazine has done a piece on this game and how it enables elder people to slow their mental decline. Next time someone asks me why I play this game, I simply say – capacity building ;-) (I hone my multi-tasking skills!)