Winning is fun. Getting achievements is neat. Challenging yourself against others, mastering and breaking systems, exploration and creativity, all of these are aspects of the gaming experience. But for me, the real draw over the long term is the same as for books or movies or any other form of culture. Each game, down to its tiniest detail, its triumphs of design and what it leaves shown but unspoken atmospherically, is a new lens to look at life through.
Each one lets you see things you would have otherwise missed. Each one is a source of illumination and also a filter for the world, narratively, sure, but also from a systems perspective. Whereas a book or a film shows you the similarities and differences in other people or disparate or even unreal milieus, games show you the machine code that runs the unseen but ever-present systems in everyday life. And they let you play with it ๐