On games you cannot lose: the objection is that there are no stakes,…

On games you cannot lose: the objection is that there are no stakes, and I think the objection has the mechanism backwards.

Stakes are not the only thing that produces attention. A game where nothing can go wrong turns out to be a game where I try things. I will plant the odd crop, rearrange the whole layout, waste a season, because wasting a season costs me nothing except a season. In a game with real failure I play the safe line every time and I have played the safe line for twenty years.

Turns out I was never risk-tolerant, I was just never given a space where risk was free, which is a slightly bleak thing to learn about yourself from a game about carrots.