C. Thi Nguyen

That crucial massive difference is it's interconnected to the rest of the world.

So crucial, I think one of the crucial things

Concepts from a lot of theorizing about games and play is that games are weirdly detached from the rest of the world.

There's this concept that in the game scholarship that says one of the things, this is from an anthropologist named Johan Huizinga.

And he says in the book Homo Ludens, that what games and play are is an activity that occurs in something called a magic circle.

And a magic circle is a space in time that's separated in some way from normal life.

The way that there's a scholar, Annika Warren, and the way she puts it is we've created this meaning boundary where meanings change.

And I mean, that sounds fancy, but what it really means is you and I could be... I mean, I could be best friends with Ryan and hate David, but we play basketball and David's on my team and Ryan's the other team and it doesn't matter what my social relationships are.

Those are canceled.

And I am all in for cooperating with David and trying to destroy Ryan.

And then afterwards, like, it doesn't matter, right?

It would be really weird for people to like...

who were on the opposite team to be like emotionally hurt that I blocked their pass, right?

So another thing that's really important about games is that in not all, but in most games, the points are unattached from ordinary life.

So if you, if I, I mean,

I mean, this is, I can feel a question back there, and I think maybe I'm jumping the gun on the answer, but one quick answer to a lot of questions is, in a game, if I go all out and ignore, think about nothing but the point, and think about nothing but maxing out my point at the expense of everybody else, then nothing changes in the world when the game is over.

It does not matter if I slayed my spouse or my spouse slayed me.

The thing that makes it okay...

I mean, you know, my kids have just gotten to the age where I can play video.

I've been playing a lot of super smash with my like eight or nine year old.