New Delhi, June 5 -- Our story begins at 3am, during the 2022 football World Cup held in Qatar. I had just lost five straight games of FIFA on the PlayStation to someone I previously considered a friend, before he wronged me like this. I left his house in a fit of rage, accusing him of cheating somehow. He called me a sore loser and slammed the door shut. It sounds dramatic, but this is a pretty ordinary session of playing FIFA. Over a period of three decades, this one little video game has left in its wake a trail of amateur fist-fights, broken friendships, and remotes flung at televisions in disgust (with hours of controller-smashing footage available on YouTube).

This has been a ritual of sorts in the urban metro worlds I move in. Dur...