Something I share with Laura Demanski, AM’94—apart from, of course, the delightful task of addressing you from this page every now and again—is a fondness for what I can only describe as desperately cute little games.

Even before I officially worked at the Magazine, I remember us bonding over the Japanese mobile game Neko Atsume. The task, so far as we could understand it, was to place goodies throughout our digital yards that would encourage neighborhood cats to visit us. (At the time, no English version was available, so I was mostly guessing about the game’s rules and goals.) Thrillingly, the cats expressed their thanks by leaving silver and gold fish, allowing for the purchase of yet tastier treats and the enticement of yet rarer cats. I’m amazed I accomplished anything at all in 2015, because I absolutely behaved as though collecting cats was my primary vocation.

For someone who’s never thought of herself as a gamer, I’ve had surprisingly intense relationships with certain games throughout my life. How many times did I play through Rockett’s New School in 1998, attempting to engineer the perfect eighth-grade year for my digital avatar? How often did I nearly walk into lampposts hoping to catch a Dratini during the magical summer of Pokémon GO in 2016? How badly did I injure my thumb last winter overplaying Stardew Valley? The answers to these questions are “countless,” “too often,” and “pretty badly”—so maybe I am a little bit of a gamer after all.

I’m not the only one thinking about the importance of games. As you’ll read in “Let the Games Begin,” the University itself has in recent years brought the study of games from the margins to the center of intellectual life on campus—a shift made manifest in the Year of Games, a multidisciplinary program that kicked off this past fall. Our writers Chandler A. Calderon and Shiloh Miller, Class of 2026, attended some of the year’s many events and sent back lively accounts of how UChicagoans and games are playing together.

I hope you’ll read and feel inspired to play too—and I hope that you’ll tell us about how games of all kinds have shaped your life. Are you a euchre whiz? Do you spend your weekends rolling for initiative? Did you perish along the Oregon Trail? Let us know at uchicago-magazine@uchicago.edu.