QUOTE : Imagine you’re a playwright on an experimental theater production. You get to write the lines for every character — except one. The protagonist is played by a random audience member who is pulled on stage and thrust into the role with no script or training. Think that sounds hard? Now imagine that this audience member is drunk. And he’s distracted because he’s texting on his cellphone. And he’s decided to amuse himself by deliberately interfering with the story. He randomly tosses insults at other cast members, steals objects off the stage, and doesn’t even show up for the climactic scene. For a playwright, this is a writing nightmare. The fool on stage will disrupt his finely crafted turns of dialogue, contradict his characterization, and break his story. Game designers face this every day because games give players agency.