It all started with that one spreadsheet: a trifle to amuse myself between bouts of frenzied editing and marathon writing sessions. It was called “the Database”—an inside joke shared by me and no one else—and it was my attempt at listing every videogame I had ever played in my life. At first, I thought it insurmountable; the kind of self-ordained project that I would sink a few careless hours into before cosigning to the same dustbin shared by my teenage projects. After all, I had spent most of my life playing videogames, or at least what felt like it. How…