C. Thi Nguyen

I like rock climbing.

I've been really into yo-yo lately, like modern yo-yos, wild competitive yo-yos, like this super intense world.

And like it's become clear to me that I like games which are super hard, where there's always a harder thing to learn and where I can lose myself in absorption and hit like some nonverbal state where I'm super into like the moment.

Like what I love is this moment where this really hard thing comes into view that I couldn't have before.

And so running a marathon is really boring to me.

Rock climbing is great because over and over again, when you're rock climbing, you're like, this climb is impossible.

Oh, move your hips this way.

Oh my God, I got it.

Or like pay just a little bit more attention to where your thumb is.

Oh, I love that.

And so I can hop games and move between them and find the one that works for me.

And

For me, playfulness, the best account of what playfulness is comes from Maria Lugones, feminist philosopher.

And what she says is playfulness is the spirit of moving lightly and easily between rule sets and normative worlds.

Playfulness is the spirit of not being in a world and treating its goals dogmatically, but being able to shift between worlds and shift between rule sets and try on and off different conceptions of how we're supposed to do and what we're supposed to do.

I think like a really rich relationship with games is about the spirit of playfulness.

I mean, there's terrible ways to relate to games.

You can grow up and the only sport anywhere around you is like football and you hate it, but you think you have to play it, right?

That is a very non-playful relationship.

to a game.