Once upon a time, long before the age of computing, we thought of games as falling into two rough categories: games of skill and games of chance. The outcome of a game of skill is determined by the abilities of its winners or losers, whether physical prowess, accuracy at hitting a target, or skill at making careful strategic decisions. Decisive displays of skill — even when the results go poorly — can be breathtaking to watch, and frequently fill stadiums. Games of chance, where winning or losing hinges on the inherently unpredictable tumbling of dice, or a disordered stack of cards, or a digital random-number generator, can also provide watchable spectacle as we wait to see whether a player has that ineffable blessing we call “luck,” which the ancient Romans associated with the goddess Fortuna. (Of course, these logics of play may blend and merge, as in the high-skill, high-chance game of poker.)

By the close of the 20th century, a third form rose to prominence: games of labor, in which a player advances towards success, or at least completion, by putting more time into playing. The tasks required of a labor-game player might resemble the actual work of running a small business, preparing and delivering food to order, or cultivating crops. Alternately, labor in games can take the form of fetching items for simulated quest-givers, collecting natural resources, or grinding experience points by killing a never-ending crowd of monsters. No matter the guise, there’s usually little chance of mistake or unluckiness in completing these near-rote tasks — you just have to keep at it and never give up! Games of skill let us marvel at the peak of human prowess, and games of chance led us to ponder who might have the blessing of the gods, but games of labor offer a different sort of fantasy: if you put in an hour of play work, you’ll surely earn a hour’s worth of play reward, and gradually strive your way to success.

Once upon a time, we gathered in stadiums and casinos to watch the unpredictable outcomes of games of chance and skill. Later, we sat together in basement family-rooms and comfy couches to see if a friend or sibling or neighbor — whoever’s wrested authority over the controller in the moment — could figure out how to beat the boss of level four. Games have always accrued a social element; even games of labor, which mostly thrive on cyclical, solitary effort, may come wedded to a compelling story or unfolding landscape of possibilities that fosters our mutual wonder about what could happen next. Much later on, we watch one streamer grip the controller during a live playthrough, and we shout along in the torrent of chat messages that fuels parasocial vibes. Besides the affordances of screens and pseudonymity, the presence or absence of our bodies makes for key differences between watching a live stream and sitting together in a darkened room, watching someone play. Our bodies are there together, shifting and sweating and getting hungry. Any one of us could take our turn next, to drive the tale forward.

Naomi Clark is Department Chair of NYU’s Game Center.