I'll never forget the moment of realization I experienced when I was about fourteen, and it clicked in my head that all video games were essentially just sets o

I'll never forget the moment of realization I experienced when I was about fourteen, and it clicked in my head that all video games were essentially just sets of cartesian coordinates being drawn on the screen, and pressing the controls was just changing numbers. It was actually kind of a shattering moment, realizing there was no magic. After that, every game I played with friends, I struggled to enjoy the magic because all I could think about was "holding this button is just increasing or decreasing a number". I stumbled upon this moment of realization by accidentally opening a debug overlay in what was probably a NES emulator. Naturally I had a look around and stumbled across a set of numbers that consistently changed as I moved my character on the screen.