Even the slightest law change required months of carefully crafted diplomacy, buttering up this count or that chief until I’d won enough support. I thought I was so clever, but as it turns out, it’s nearly impossible to get anything done when you have to reach consensus among two dozen vassals, as opposed to only dealing directly with a small handful of middle-management types. To put a medieval spin on this, I established an empire but made the mistake of letting my vassals rule relatively independently as counts rather than place more powerful dukes or even kings below me. But there’s a social theory, known as Dunbar’s Number, that speculates that there’s an upper limit to the number of meaningful social connections we’re capable of maintaining. Man is a gregarious creature by nature-it only makes sense that we want to expand our social circles as much as possible. A few close friends are better than a lot of acquaintances I was left with two choices: Either halt any progress to keep fighting a stream of civil wars, or abdicate my Spanish throne to pacify my curmudgeonly nobles and give up everything I’d won in the first place. I spent the next 60 in-game years putting down civil wars from Spanish dukes who resented the rule of an Irish usurper. I won the war with ease, but the invasion turned out to be a major mistake. Eager to flex my monarchical muscles and bolstered by the false confidence of a numerical advantage, I decided to wage a war for conquest on a Spanish kingdom-after all, two crowns are better than one, right? Take for example the time I crowned myself king of Ireland. But temperance is just as important a virtue as strength. Some might even say we’re biologically hardwired to demonstrate superiority.

In games, as in life, we’re constantly given opportunities to prove our worth and assert our success. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should Despite a century of historical distance, Paradox Interactive’s monarch simulator Crusader Kings 2 has imparted many a wise word that can still be useful, even in this modern world of ours. Whether or not you feel the argument holds water, the fact is that games can teach us many valuable life lessons. The claim that success in games has no real-world corollary is brought up not infrequently, the idea being that time spent playing a videogame is time that could be better spent doing literally anything else.

It’s common practice among detractors of the medium to malign videogames as mindless escapism.

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