When King Ælla of Northumbria was captured by the Sons of Lodbrok they subjected him to the Blood Eagle. Ælla had his back sliced open, his ribs torn from his spine, and his lungs pulled through the wound to form wings. The Sons of Lodbrok were four brothers — all sons of the Viking ruler Ragnar Lodbrok. King Ælla had murdered their father by casting him into a pit of snakes.

The eldest Son of Lodbrok — Ivar the Boneless, sits atop his throne in the Petty Kingdom of Sudreyjar. He has conquered all of Scotland and scattered the noble houses to the four winds. Indeed Hugh Mac Ailpin, the son of King Donald himself, now resides in my court. A ruler in exile.

Now Ivar’s attention has turned to Ireland. Its lords are distrustful of each other and reticent to help in times of need. It would be a simple matter of picking them off one by one. What Ireland needs is a figurehead it can rally behind, a banner it can unite under. For the past twenty years of game time that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do with my friend Chris.

We started at opposite ends of the island and formed small kingdoms by usurping titles from our neighbours. Ivar was busy in Scotland but he tasted victory far faster than we could have anticipated. Now he has cut a swath through the south of Ireland and decimated our armies. My lands have been mostly untouched but Chris now holds just a single province. Ivar has declared war on him and marches his army south to finish the job, six thousand Viking warriors descend on him.

I considered the game lost and was simply seeing it through to the end when a message from the King of England arrived. A marriage offer for my second son to his first daughter. It would be matrilineal of course — any children would be of the mother’s line. I turn the idea over in my head. An alliance with the King of England could turn this whole war around. Without it we will definitely lose. Then again the children that resulted from this marriage may also have a claim on my own lands in the future.

Truth be told it didn’t take much time to decide. When faced with the prospect of annihilation I would prefer it to be far into the future. I sign the marriage proposal and twelve thousand English soldiers flood Ireland via the thirteen mile stretch of sea that separates Galloway and Ulster. Ivar’s grip on Ireland falters, and in our wake Colin “The Just” de Pitlochry rises out of the Scottish peasantry and leads a revolt against his Viking lords. We are saved. But what is the cost? We might not know for many years.

Crusader Kings 2 is a game about choices. Who do you marry? Where do you invade? How high do you set taxes? All of these decisions affect the outcome of the game. If you’ve decided that the choices in games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age are meaningless then this might be the game for you. Every choice matters, though you may not feel it for a generation or more.

The marriage offer made to my son was a result of elaborate in-game systems. If my son did not have such a high Stewardship score the offer might not have been made. If the King of England and I had not both been of the same culture and religion then I may have been passed over in favour of another. If England had been borne a Prince then there certainly would have been no Princess to marry.

Now I have another choice. With my Kingdom saved do I turn my back on the King of England? Do I send assassins after my newly married son? So that no children can come of his union. What of the rightful Kings of Scotland who wait in my court? Do I attempt to reclaim Scotland on their behalf? Or has Colin “The Just” earned his chance to prove himself as ruler of a Kingdom?

I can’t wait to find out.

Hi, I'm Anthony and I'm 36 years old, and I've been playing video games for about 30 years now. I've spent the last few years offline in an increasingly online world. Let me show you around.

Three years ago I was living in a leafy suburb of Melbourne called Surrey Hills. I had a few house mates a great Internet connection and all the games we could play; life was great. When one of my house mates moved interstate to work in the mining industry I decided that I should consider buying a house before I got too old. The repayment schedule was probably going to be set at 30 years given my age and income and if I waited too much longer I might not have a chance.

So I looked around at houses in developing areas but they quickly moved out of my price range as Melbourne was undergoing a real-estate boom at the time. After sitting down with my parents we decided to investigate building a house. This ended up being the only way I could get a house, as the price for land was set and I wasn't competing against investors or couples with a larger borrowing capacity than me. The deal was signed and I moved back in with my parents for twelve months whilst the house was built. This is not a good feeling for a 33 year old, but I was happy for the opportunity.

When my house was finally complete I was one of only three people living in the estate as most of the houses weren't complete yet. There were a couple of tense evenings where my street was used for burnout practice and half-completed houses were broken into to steal fittings, but it wasn't too bad. I was in my own home, and there would be no more rental inspections; something that I hated whilst renting.

As the estate become more populated I noticed my Internet starting to get slower and slower. I'm a network engineer in my day job, so I put my skills to work and found large amounts of latency present almost as soon as the packets left my ADSL modem. As the months rolled on this turned into large amounts of packet loss. It finally settled down into a regular speed of 1.2kb - 5kb/sec and about 10% packet loss — slower than an analogue modem. Calls to my ISP confirmed my worst fears; the telephone exchange I was on was congested.

Laying copper pairs in the ground is expensive. So the national carrier here in Australia relies on a much cheaper method of getting phone lines to new houses called a Customer Multiplexer (CMUX). Rather than having copper run back to the telephone exchange, a CMUX provides a short run of copper to the house and then a fibre or Ethernet link back to the telephone exchange. If you load a CMUX up with more people than that link to the telephone exchange can carry then you’re going to get congestion.

People in this situation find themselves stuck in Limbo as their ISP can’t do anything about this. They can complain to the carrier, but the carrier’s only contractual agreement is to provide a working telephone line. 3G/4G services in this environment also suffer as they have their own issues with congestion, people on congested ADSL flock to them as an alternative. 3G in my area was often worse, and on school holidays it was unusable.

So here’s a list of things you can’t do on a congested telephone exchange:

• Watch Youtube
• Log on to Steam
• Sign in to XBox Live/PSN
• Use Ventrilo/Mumble/Teamspeak
• Download music from iTunes

So why have it at all, right? In most cases your ISP will offer to release you from your contract when you suffer exchange congestion. But this means you'll lose your spot in an already congested environment and may be completely without Internet even after the problem is resolved. The most common advice given to those on a congested exchanges is to switch your Internet plan to the cheapest one you can find to hang onto your phone line, and wait.

How long did I wait exactly?

Three years. It took three years for the national carrier to upgrade my exchange to support the number people they’d sold telephone lines to. How did I survive? Well Steam offline mode works well, and I’d download newer games from friends houses or take my PC into work to activate or download software. There were sacrifices though, I was a big MMO player at the time and I had to cancel the few I was subscribed to, quit guilds and cancel the Ventrilo server I was renting.

I skipped Diablo 3, and skipped SimCity. Most people would say I was lucky, but I would have at least liked to have had the choice.

I've bought both the original XBox and Xbox 360 but I won’t be getting an XBox One. Why? Because there’s too many people who are in the same situation I was. Microsoft is turning it’s back on people who play games, just like you and me. This isn't about us and our games any more, it’s about them and what they can get away with.

I won’t be a part of it.