Thoughts
Back in 2016ish, I wrote 6,000 words of a book. The plot hinged around a huge game. I found out about Jon Bois years later.
I understood when writing *TAOM* how a game could provide sufficient motivation to push a story forward, and could create conflict without necessitating evil. In many ways, this sort of conflict (that doesn't threaten the fate of the world) is much more similar to the kinds of conflicts normal people face in our every day lives. The characters can have emotional responses to the conflict of the game, and in some ways, these responses seem more real.
Most people, and most authors, do not understand the way that games link to stories. They think that the value in a game is only in being interactive, or else in being physically impressive. What Jon Bois understands is that any time you have a game, you have a story. Jon Bois has dedicated his life to telling stories about games, historical, modern, and fictional. He's found incredible stories from seemingly inconsequential moments in sports, and he's used sports to tell incredible stories about humans.
I didn't realize how similar this was to my own goals with *TAOM* until *20020*. *20020* is just a story about a fictional game, and I think this is the first time Jon has done that. *The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles* went for humor, *17776* tried to do a lot with big themes of human nature, and with everyone else, Jon Bois has pretended to be informative, more than just a story.
*I highly recommend reading 20020, a story about a game (that includes footballs, I don't want to mislead you by calling it a "football game"): https://www.sbnation.com/secret-base/21410129/20020*