Now, I would often play my GBA SP and DS LIte back when I was still required to go to church. Not only during the normal preaching, (which would often go in excess of an hour, (thanks Pentecostal based evangelical (but nondenominational) based pastors.), but also to while away the nearly endless and somewhat long worship services that often turned into "lingering services" that would extend upwards of three hours at times.

Now, by age 15 I was already having doubts of the Faith, thanks to my pastors (including the youth pastor) preaching that the world was due to end in what they called, "The Rapture", a term coined by some nutcake in the 1800s which was then turned into a new method of inflicting fear and control. As such, I would listen less and play more. Headphones of course weren't allowed, That, and the SP didn't even have a proper Headphone port, showing that Nintendo once again innovated before it was popular, removing the 3.5 jack before Apple did.

This continued until I was 18 when I finally confronted my parents in an offhand way about my renouncement of the Faith.

I've never gamed at a funeral, but I bet some of you have. So what are your stories of desecration via electronic entertainment?

I don't know if this counts, but back when I was in high school, it was very common for students to play games on graphing calculators during class. This was helped along by exploits in some graphing calculators (like the TI-85) that allowed execution of arbitrary machine code, and deliberate features in some later ones (like the TI-86) that allowed the same.

From what I hear, cell phones have replaced this use of graphing calculators (though somebody still went to the trouble of getting a Game Boy emulator to run on a graphing calculator).

Under the army.
In the barracks.
After three days of driving a tank and lifting brocken tracks from the mud.

A nice and simple Rolemaster session of 6 hours.

Too bad you couldn't play Diablo on that thing... or Doom.

In no particular order, cases where I feel in retrospect that maybe my gaming addiction went a bit too far:

1. At some point I used to play Zuma's Revenge with my mobile phone in the toilet at my work, while taking my daily morning dump. One time I had been sitting on the toilet seat so long playing that my legs were all cramped (hard to get up from the toilet seat) and I think I had a red round mark at the back of my legs and butt from the toilet ring.

2. A couple of times at work (years ago), when it was a bit slower at work and I had nothing specific to do, I went to our "machine room" laboratory which is full of big-ass noisy servers, found a peaceful corner somewhere in there away from other people's gazes (something that was not possible in the open (modern) office), and played something on my (work) laptop.

The servers were VERY loud, one was supposed to use ear-protection there, so in order to hear game audio, I used earplugs, on top of which I put hearing protection headphones. That actually worked pretty well, the headphones muted the server noise quite well so I could hear the audio from the earplugs.

3. Even worse, I think I've played Team Fortress 2 a couple of times at the office, during office hours. It was some slower time when there weren't much of workers there (most were on summer vacations), and so were our customers too so projects happened to be quite slow at that point.

4. As a tiny kid, I didn't want to go to the countryside with my parents to visit my old grandmother, unless I could get my gaming computer with me (one that is attached to a TV). Because my grandmother didn't have a "modern" TV to which to connect the computer (her TV was some veeery old black&white TV, not even sure if it still worked), my parents allowed me to take also our big-ass TV tube to the countryside, just so that I could connect my gaming computer to it. I am kinda amazed they agreed to go through such hoops just to bring me with them, the TV was hard to fit into the car trunk.


This didn't happen to me but my workmate: we had some info meeting with our boss where he had some important announcement. Suddenly my workmates phone started playing a very loud tune. It was obvious it was from a game, I think it was that "guide a red bouncing ball through the perils" that came with many Nokia phones, e.g. the Nokia Communicator.

My workmate's face was just as red as that bouncing ball.

Once, on a really cold winter night where I had missed the last train, I sat in the entrance to a closed shop, playing FTL. I must have looked quite the weirdo, which, of course, I am not.

Not to me, but this would probably qualify.

Last train? So did you play it until morning, warming up from the burning batteries of your mobile (or whatever device you were using for playing FTL)?

Technically, I would have been able to play GBA's Doom port, but I doubt my overprotective parents would have let that happen. Oh, I am well aware of this pre-cellphone era of gaming. After all, they could only do so much to control the influx of stealthy game systems in school. That sounds like the perfect time. I mean no, it's not a good use of taxpayer money or your assigned time, but I'd tell my CO that some field R&R is required after three days in a tank. Wow, you really would have to be an addict to be playing Reach of all things.

I played Diablo 1 during history class in high school.

The teacher didn't even notice everyone behind me was just watching my screen for an entire hour. Good times.

As manager of a warehouse, I let my minions set up a D&D table on the main floor by reception. Priorities man, priorities! got many puzzled looks from vendors and suits. previous to that we'd use work servers to set up private lan parties for games during the night shift. didnt worry bout getting in trouble as our boss was the worst of us for wasting time playing it. course when we got behind in work he'd run around yelling at us for show during the day in front of HIS boss . lol, good times

Well, Diablo is a great aquarium simulation. Just with more blood.
Man, that sounds like the place I'd like to have worked.

This was awkward.

LOLOL

During my wife's delivery. You've been in labor for like 10 hours now, It's time for Doom.

That did not go over well at all...