The Many Diversions of THC's Work Lunches

[TechnoHippyChic]

I've worked from home for years, but there was a time, at the dawn of a new millennium, when I pushed polygons and ran a network in a nondescript engineering building, 8-5, every weekday. The people were pleasant, but the work could be monotonous. Luckily, our lunches were ours to do with as we wished. A temporary respite from the tiresome tedium of technical toil.

Racing to vibrate my victuals' molecules to a state of semi-edibleness, what would it be today? Maybe BF1942's Wake demo, commandeering an aircraft carrier and piloting it to the other side of the island. Zipping ashore and manning an anti-aircraft installation to zap Zeros from the sky.

Or I could become a goddess in Black & White, amazing villagers with tapped houses and manifested miracles. I couldn't bring myself to slap my Creatures' cute faces to discipline them, so they were wild, destructive things.

It wasn't all games, but it was all fun. There were the 100 or so lunches of watching every episode of my beloved Sailor Moon, in its original, subtitled, fullscreen glory. The OG 3D TV, ReBoot. The beautiful Farscape.

Others started to join in my lunchtime gaming. We had a company clan tag and everything. Sooo many lunches of TFC, CS, and eventually BF2. It got rather large at one point, testing the limits of the T1 for non-productive use. Many lunches went shamefully long.

Sadly, the company imploded during the Great Recession, and there seems to be even less time for diversion today.

Post your workplace lunchtime* pursuits.

Spoiler

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.

 

[Lizardizzle]

I'd make a fun response but I'm at lunch right now and have to go back to work in less than a minute.

 

[Ennui]

around the same time (2000-1 or so) my dad's work team would sometimes go in the weekends to game (I guess sometimes they worked too). they had a big interior room with maybe 15 or so networked PCs and that's where I was introduced to CS, HLDM, Delta Force 2, Unreal and basically every other awesome multiplayer FPS from the time. fond memories

these days I never game at lunch unless I'm really hyper addicted to something I can pop in and out of quickly like minecraft or factorio

 

[TechnoHippyChic]

around the same time (2000-1 or so) my dad's work team would sometimes go in the weekends to game (I guess sometimes they worked too). they had a big interior room with maybe 15 or so networked PCs and that's where I was introduced to CS, HLDM, Delta Force 2, Unreal and basically every other awesome multiplayer FPS from the time. fond memories

these days I never game at lunch unless I'm really hyper addicted to something I can pop in and out of quickly like minecraft or factorio

Yes! so many great games back then. I haven't tried factorio, from what I've read it's very addicting and a huge time sink.

I'd make a fun response but I'm at lunch right now and have to go back to work in less than a minute.

Remember to do this, don't leave us hangin. If you've been working all this time, you need another lunch!

Spoiler: Black & White

I've been watching the below playthrough by Pauleh, I'd almost forgotten how fascinating this game was. The AI and Morality system was very innovative for the time, and the floating hand brings to mind things more recent. B&W2 is another one I never got around to, need to put it on the list.

The first episode is all tutorial, but if you stick with it it gets pretty interesting:

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