A strange little side quest
Even a quick game like Call of Duty: Zombies sits on top of decades — and sometimes centuries — of ideas. The word 'checkmate' is linked to the Persian expression 'shah mat', used when the king was trapped. That old idea kept changing rather than disappearing. Pac-Man went on sale in 1980, and its creator Toru Iwatani famously linked the character's shape to a pizza with a slice missing. The details change, but the appeal of learning a system and trying again is remarkably persistent.
