i swer i’m not high…
Video games are (usually) designed in such a way that there is a guaranteed path to victory. You just need to find it. So failing means you found one more path that doesn’t lead to victory. That mindset helps motivate me to keep trying until I find the path that the designers made for me to find.
Life is not that way, unfortunately. There are plenty of no-win scenarios. Running into those makes me want to curl up in a ball under a blanket and run away from my problems.
I’m currently experiencing this, which is why I’m on lemmy instead of working. I’m currently in database hell and I can’t find the way out.
I’d say in video games you can always find a way to win a battle. In real life more often you need to find a way out from the battle.
There are plenty of no-win scenarios.
This was something great about the Witcher 3. More than one quest, you end up with choices between one shitty outcome or another with no happy ending. For a fantasy game in a magical world, it wasn’t afraid to be realistic.
In life there’s no isolated consequences neither a guaranteed path to success
This is a critical piece of the puzzle and I love that you pointed it out. Bare necessities aside (shelter, food, etc), we start out with a set of win conditions (from parents, friends, etc), but ultimately we can determine them ourselves. In most democracies, nobody can tell you how to live your life.
Same with competitive sports. As a tennis player, if I lose a match I’m usually doubly motivated to get back out there for another one.
Jane McGonigal has a TED Talk about exactly this: https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world
“Don’t go hollow, now.”
There is so much focus on the lore of Miyazaki’s games, but not enough about how it also has hella meta commentary on games and players, too. One of the main ones is how death doesn’t matter, and no matter how hard things get you, the player, can overcome all these obstacles and beat the game if you persist. There are examples of those who do survive until the end, and many examples of those who give up at various stages of the game, much like how real players would if they find themselves unable to beat a particular boss necessary to complete the game. The NPC’s stories often mirror that of a player who faces the same objectives.
Miyazaki? As in Hayao Miyazaki, the Studio Ghibli director? What video games has he done?
No, there’s a Hidetaka Miyazaki now, the head of FromSoftware who is unrelated to Hayao Miyazaki as far as I know. It took me a while to figure that out.
Ohhh!
Thank you, this makes much more sense in the context of modern FromSoft games!
Ah yes, Hidetaka “No such thing as too many poison swamps” Miyazaki
The group of Intellect Devourers, when you’re lv 1 in the beginning of Baldur’s Gate 3, proved this shower thought about 5 times for me.
This is what I love about the Souls genre. It’s a great feeling to chase.
I found that I really, really enjoy extremely hard video games, ever since I did some koan training.
My therapist told me this exact thing last week.
