Life As an RPG

My favorite game genre are role-playing games (RPGs). The main feature of this genre is character progression through equipment upgrades, skill points, and class advancements. The games are designed to reward players for investing time and effort. 

Most RPGs can be summarized as followed:

1. Kill monsters
2. Get upgrade
3. Kill stronger monsters
4. Get better upgrades
5. Return to Step 3

But they're really fun!

The Grind 

When my character improves through leveling up or new equipment, I feel a sense of satisfaction. The progress is something I worked hard towards, and which makes me want to play more and progress even further beyond! This carrot-on-a-stick game design keeps the player engaged, even if the gameplay itself becomes tedious.

By applying these game design principals to real-life, how would you describe yourself as a player character? As we go through life, level up by gaining experience through practice, trials, and conflicts. Every person has different skill-levels and capabilities, giving us a diverse number of “classes”. We could summarize ourselves with a variety of stats:

• Strength: This describes how strong and healthy our body is
  • Physical strength and fitness
  • Balanced diet and regular sleep
• Dexterity: This describes hobbies that require great skill and focus
  • Artful hobbies that allow for self-expression
  • Creative writing, poetry
  • Music, cooking, and photography
• Intelligence: This describes both knowledge and wisdom. What's the difference?
  • Knowledge: What we know about our world; expanded by reading, watching, and observing information. It's the internal database of our mind.
  • Wisdom: How we logically interact with our world. It is the application of knowledge in decision-making and problem-solving. This can practiced with riddles, brainteasers, and of course, engineering. 
  • For example, a computer can have massive storage space (knowledge), but without a good processor (wisdom), it can’t run complex programs
• Spirit: This describes our emotional health as we experience life.
  • Willpower to pursue our passions and push ourselves to greatness (without it, we might not even get out of bed). 
  • As social creatures, we all seek to belong in society. We seek acceptance from our peers, but we should also seek acceptance of ourselves.
  • Good emotional health allows control of destructive mindsets (laziness, haziness, denial) and productive ones (motivated, organized, truthful). 

Who Controls Us? 

What is the driving force that makes us follow our dreams? In a game, the player is an omniscient force that drives a character to tirelessly charge forward in their journey. Our brain is literally piloting the body to explore the world as it desires (that's as immersive as it gets). The controlling player's willpower makes the character progress; otherwise the character would forever stay at level 1.

With our personal development, we need to find the same internal willpower to push ourselves to grow daily. Not a huge amount, but some progress over time that sums up to something meaningful.

Ironically, role-playing games were started for more immersive (realistic) game experiences. These stats were used for players to summarize and compare a character’s talents (strong barbarian vs. smart wizard). So it comes full-circle to use these gameplay mechanics to describe what skills we gain through our time-investments.

In summary, this is just a fun way for me to explore how a well-rounded person might be composed. I don’t think any one of these stats should be neglected, as they each give unique perspectives. And unlike a game, we can’t just reroll another character, so it’s best to try multiple builds while we can.