Playing games does something to us. When I pick up a skipping rope or a rubber ball, my entire body remembers how I used them in the past, and, though I may hurt tomorrow, I am still able to skip to the rhymes learned half a century ago. The ritual, the rhythm, and awareness of play remains embedded not just in our brains but also in our bodies. Tied closely to our past, games are also passed on from one group of children to the next: they entail history, tradition, and challenge all in one. Games give us something to strive for, a connection to others, and the ability to handle loss and victory. They teach us to understand the distinctions between different contexts as we handle the balance between make-believe and real, and they are consistent examples of the value of rules, structure, and limitations, and how these ludic elements also offer opportunities: how restrictions can be turned into advantages, how systems can be overcome or worked around. Games teach us how to cheat, how to notice and reveal cheating, as well as how to recognise broken systems and how they influence our interactions. They are lessons in fairness and in systemic bias, in the importance of practice and the value of strategy and tactics.

When we speak of game studies, we tend to start with Dutch historian of culture Johan Huizinga, who published Homo Ludens in 1938 (Huizinga, 2000).