When I moved out to Boston from Chicago everyone kept talking about “the game of the scene” and I had no idea what they were talking about. Instead of playing “the game,” I was playing in the style I was taught—and experienced success at—back at iO in Chicago. I looked for relationship and emotional connection over a single focal point. And of course there’s overlap between the two (a scene with a strong game should also have strong relationships, and an emotional resonant scene should probably have some discernible pattern as well), but without fully understanding my new environment, I was making moves that, while theoretically “good,” weren’t connecting with the other members of my team who had been trained a different way. I was being an invasive species, incapable of adapting.