“Evaluation: Erratic.”
                –Pandemic Legacy (Season 0)

                I have an older brother, so I knew about Yoda long before I first watched the movie. I knew he was a teacher, silly and wise. Even if I didn’t know, I think the story—its shape, and the tropes it plays with—tells me to pay attention to this little figure in a little hut. His performance of unimportance is important. His power is just beneath the surface of the swamp, ready to rise. In that respect Yoda is different from almost all the other little creatures we see throughout Star Wars. His difference, his distinctness, is highlighted in everything from the camera’s attention to the precision of his character design to his humor.
                All the video and board games I’ve played build with something like this signaling. A game (by one definition) is about what I can do, and can’t do. It’s important for me to understand why landing on someone else’s Monopoly property led to me losing money. Playing the game (by this definition) is understanding, and pushing the rules around. Even in social deduction games where the point is that everyone doesn’t know the rules, the goal is to figure them out. To learn the limits of my doing, and to use my doings toward a goal. The game is about our agency.
                Which is why it stuck out to me last night when, playing the excellent Pandemic Legacy (Season 0), I had no idea why our team spies received the psychological evaluation: “Erratic.” I’m sure there was a reason. I bet it makes sense. But in this post I’m not really looking for it. I’m interested in the consistency with which I’ve learned that games are about my actions. I’m interested in how much of my life happens for bewildering reasons I can never sort out. How much of my engagement with the world unfolds beyond and outside my ability to control events. And here I am, walking through the rain I didn’t expect, trying to fix the doorknob that I didn’t know was broken. Making friends with someone who happened to say hello. What would a game be like if it celebrated the way that things go unpredictably, without any reference to my plan? Does anyone know a game like that?