The ball was only six pounds and you could hear the pins snickering as it drunkenly rolled down the lane, pinballing from the bumper covering the right gutter to the left. Somehow, magically, it struck squarely between the one and three and, unlike a heavier ball’s urethane devastation, the small green ball bounced gleefully between pins, knocking some down and wobbling others. When all was said and done, however, the snickering had stopped and all ten pins lay prone, defeated. Harry stopped jumping up and down and turned to face me with a smile as big as Christmas morning.

I wrote recently that I think the distinctive art of game design resides in tailoring the elements of the game itself (mechanics, art, etc.) to create the experiences of players. Blizzard has created a particular experience to which I connected very deeply, and it illustrates that idea well. When I play Overwatch, I play a lot of Reinhardt, a character who carries a massive hammer and can generate a wide shield. One reason, I confess, is because I’m so bad at aiming in fast-paced games that a meleé-focused character helps avoid a weakness so exaggerated that one wonders whether I must reach superheroic heights in other areas [He doesn’t. -ed.]. But the other is that his shield evokes for me a particular ideal of fatherhood. I don’t much go in for tradition, or belonging, or the comforts of occupying clearly-identified roles, so the power of this one over me earned some attention.