Derek Thompson

Before I was a writer, I was an actor, and I loved acting.

I loved the opportunity to pretend to be somebody else.

I can't explain why that was so fun for me, but it was just the most exhilarating feeling to pretend to be someone else for a bounded period of time.

And in a way, I wonder if you accept this additional definition.

Games are an organized process by which we and other people

enter into a space where we become a little bit someone else.

We become the person that the game wants us to be.

And just to explain what I mean by that,

My friends in DC, my best friends in DC, we have game nights from time to time.

And there's two very different kinds of games that we play on game night.

One game is Hanabi, which is a cooperative card game in which you play cards from one to five in different colors.

And the other games we play are Wingspan and Settlers of Catan, which are competitive games.

And when I think about my own heartbeat, when I think about the degree to which my face gets flush throughout the game, these games work me over.

The cheap way to say it would be that I don't just play the game, the game plays me.

But at a much deeper level, I am electing to have my body, my hormonal disposition,

changed by a set of rules that I and my best friends are electing to participate in.

And I become as collaborative or as competitive as the game makes me become.

And there's something interesting about games that essentially we become this different person that's defined by a set of rules that we elect to participate in.

It works you over completely.

I clearly needed the wheat.