We are all playing Games

September 2025: This topic has been on my mind for years and I want to finally put down some thoughts on it.

I was at a networking event with a friend who has started and sold multiple successful gaming companies. We welcome someone to the chat and after learning what my friend does/did he apologizes and says “I don’t play games”. Almost unconsciously, because this topic has been on my mind for too long and needed to get out, I blurt out “We all play games, sometimes we’re just not aware we are and what game we are playing”. I go on to describe my experience for the past 3 years with my solar system, optimizing my house consumption of energy to match the solar peak, the battery capacity and other elements to get the reward of matching solar supply with house demand. It was a one minute description so I didn’t have time to go into details. For example, that the game I realized I was playing (only after a year of playing it) is only fun in the summer when I could achieve energy independence, is frustrating in the shoulder seasons and is so futile in the winter that I end up DELETING the solar monitoring app during the winter.

This is one of the games I realized my brain (and I) was playing after a year of partaking into it. I then realized my brain is probably playing dozens if not hundreds or thousands of other games and everyone else is as well. We just have to discover what they are. How fascinating!