You are presented with an urgent problem you didn’t make.

There is a time limit to solve it, and there are agents poised to make it worse.

The information you need to solve it is scattered and hidden behind locked doors and in random places, some of it needs decoding, and some of it is false.

You quickly scan, run around, collect and parse the info. Some of it conflicts. You learn the environment as quick as you can, decide what to believe, formulate a plan and set out to solve the problem.

While you are solving it you are bombarded with missiles and distractions, the terrain shifts without warning, it is very noisy, one of your controls stops working, you can only move in one direction and then it switches and you can only move in the opposite direction. You have to pause and fix the controls.

While you are fixing the controls the game reboots and starts from the beginning. The problem is slightly different.

This time while you are playing there is a loud voice shouting at you about how bad you are at this game.

You manage to go up some levels. Now there are other players involved and they don’t seem to understand the game, which is not surprising, but it makes it harder to see the goal.

You decide to give up on teamwork and go solo, maverick, to reach the end before time’s up. This makes everyone hate you, but you can move faster.

You reach the goal and solve the problem. Yay! Suddenly everyone else loses interest in the game. It never happened. Nobody likes that game. A new game has come out. I bet you don’t know how to play it.