I really like this piece by Graham Smith at Jank: “Tinkering with games is as good as playing them”. Having spent so ...

I really like this piece by Graham Smith at Jank: “Tinkering with games is as good as playing them”. Having spent so many hours working on my own Destiny 2-related data and stats tools, there is something very resonant in the notion that the computer is not just the vehicle for playing the game, but for doing things about the game: I’m defining tinkering broadly here as anything that involves reaching beneath your computer’s glossy façade. The machine, which may be in front of you right now, is pretending that it is a tool of simple productivity, an obelisk of user-friendly efficiency. It is not. Your computer is 8000 rats in a burlap sack. To tinker is to reach inside the bag, remove a rat, and make friends with it. If you’ve ever spent several weeks trying to build the perfect collection of Skyrim mods only to then not follow through with playing the game, you might be a tinkerer, too. Perhaps you’ve spent several hours curating your Steam Wishlist, sorting your library into…