How Life is Like, or Unlike a Game

By Oscar North. Oscar is an Intern working at Research Through Gaming Ltd as a Research Game Developer. He is studying at the City University London.

“Are you winning?”. A question I was often asked as a youngster playing video games. “No… I’m playing Mario. I’m doing well but you don’t win until the end!” I’d reply. What is it these older non-gamers don’t understand?
Of course games are essentially about ‘winning’. Some games have no win state but you’re winning as long as you continue to progress. In this aspect, life is very much like a game. Unlike Mario, there is no giant boss at the end of life to defeat, or the imprisoned princess to rescue, but everybody
wants to ‘win’ at life. Life would actually make a pretty boring game. Nobody would want to play a game where you spend the first hour and a half commuting to reach the target objective. Only to have to stop and use the toilet every now and again.
There is plenty of adventure and excitement out there in the real world but most of us are just too busy and prefer our adventures packaged on a disc or as a downloadable app.
In games we are driven to collect points and earn achievements. In life we find ourself driven to earn money and improve our living standards. Whether it’s to get a promotion, buy a nicer house or just self improvement through developing new skills. There are no numbers and statistics to represent ‘experience points’ or ‘levelling up’ in life but it’s the same desire that drives us to progress and win.
For example, if in a game you unlock dollars for completing tasks or defeating enemies. Once the player finds they have nothing to spend these in-game dollars on, they become pointless and have no value. You could easily say real dollars (or any other currency) are the same in the sense that we work hard to earn them, but if we had nothing to spend our money on, they would have no value.

Ever played one of the Sims games only to find yourself getting bored once you had upgraded all the furniture to the best models and built yourself the perfect pad? Well you might find yourself in the same situation in real life if you won the lottery and ran out of things to buy. A good game will present the player with various challenges and compelling choices. A good life requires the same. A life without any challenges would be a very boring life indeed! Imagine life as a game where we each play as ourselves as the protagonist. The ultimate goal or ‘win state’ will vary for each of us but everybody wants to be winning. Maybe your ‘princess’ is to become super famous, or become a multi-millionaire or perhaps just to find true love and start a family. It’s interesting because the goal is up to you. As is what defines winning or failing, but we all play to win no matter what hand we’re dealt with or what challenges or difficult decisions are sprung upon us.
Now I’m still a pretty young guy, so am only at the early levels of my game of life, but I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say that we all want to win at life.

So… are you winning?