Telegram founder Pavel Durov has unexpectedly become a champion for all those children whose mothers drag them away from their computers. In a recent post, he admitted that in his youth, he played through all the cult strategy games of the era and even won prize money in StarCraft tournaments.

Durov listed the games that shaped him as an entrepreneur: Warcraft 2, Command & Conquer, Transport Tycoon, Age of Empires, Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, SimCity, X-Com, and a dozen other titles from that era.

According to him, these were the games that taught him planning, timing, resource allocation, and risk management - skills that later formed the foundation of VK and Telegram.

"These games taught me planning, timing, resource allocation, and risk management," the entrepreneur explained.

Many entrepreneurs and top managers say the same. Strategy games require thinking several moves ahead, keeping dozens of variables in mind simultaneously, and making decisions under conditions of incomplete information which is exactly what any leader faces every day.

Thus, 90s classics have received an unexpected rehabilitation from one of the world's most famous tech entrepreneurs.

This is an argument that can now be presented to one's wife along with a pause in the game.