I am guilty of this myself, of course. When Half Life started and the creators were showing me the living, breathing world outside of the rail car, I was too busy to notice, trying to jump out of the car through the window. In Half Life 2, when Alyx was telling me something important, I couldn’t hear it over the explosions of the grenades I kept throwing at her.

This week’s This American Life has a story about how babies are like scientists, and by doing things like, say, dropping their forks on the ground, they’re actually working out the logic of the world. Because each game is different, with different rules and different logic, players have to do their own experiments. It’s just a bonus that these experiments so often lead to hilarious, ridiculous situations.