Jared Polis’ Legendary Gaming Campaign
Reason magazine has dubbed Rep. Jared Polis the “Gamer Congressman,” an honor earned by virtue of a lifetime spent mercilessly battling one’s way through fantasy worlds and virtual war zones.
The Colorado Democrat touched on a few of his favorite virtual pastimes — “I don’t really watch much TV. So, it’s a much more interactive thing, I think, to do with your spare time,” he told the interviewer — during a discussion that also touched on intellectual property rights, cyber-regulatory issues and blah-blah-blah.
We here at HOH were much more interested in getting to the bottom of the role-playing and online strategy games that have kept Polis glued to glowing computer screens for approaching four decades.
2000s
- Age of Mythology
- Rome
- Later versions of Civilization
- Diablo and Diablo II
- Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights II
- Defense of the Ancients
- League of Legends (which he still plays)
- Heroes of Might and Magic (later editions)
1990s
- Warcraft and Warcraft II
- Heroes of Might and Magic (earlier additions)
Late ’80s/’90s
- Dungeons and Dragons Pool of Radiance and sequels (Commodore 64)
- Mail Order Monsters (C64)
- Civilization (early editions)
- SimCity
1980s
- Battle of Britain
- Wizardry
- Ultima
- Elite
- Bard’s Tale
Very first game
- Dungeon! (on Apple II+)
Make sure to drop us a line (hoh@rollcall.com ) if you stumble across the seasoned adventurer in any MMORPG environments (That’s massively multiplayer online role-playing games to you and me, Russ.) any time soon.