The Spanish writer and literary critic Gonzalo Torrente Ballester is a great admirer od the art of writing of Miguel de Cervantes. In his essay "El Quijote como juego" ("Quijote as a game") of 1974 he considers the principles of the writing of novels and he searches the basic moments of the famous Spanish novel.
For Torrente the game is the clue for understanding the novel Quijote a he rejects the traditional madness od the protagonist. Quijote is for him a man who wants to be someone else - Alonso Quijano is playing to be don Quijote, deliberately and with a clear purpose.
And the author Cervantes is playing through narrator with the reader.