// or // How Video Games Prepare for Life
I’ve always loved Video Games growing up. I don’t play many now but that’s because I decided to start a business and career from scratch 6 years ago which ultimately entails designing my own game.
I’m a particular fan of MMORPGs and First Person Shooters, in which I’ve logged 10,000s of hours. Counter Strike Source was probably my favorite shooter. When I was younger, 17-22 or so, I also fell into love with beatboxing.
I’d sit in front of my computer for hours, much of my free time, and beatbox while I tried to get better at quick-scoping. I’d take breaks to poorly strum on my $100 acoustic guitar, watch videos, and look up endless information. Eventually this became such a habit - as I added 100’s of hours onto my in-game time, I also added 100’s of hours onto my beatboxing and playing.
What I realize this was doing was synchronizing my hand-eye coordination with my beats and breath. My hand-eye coordination with a mouse became so instinctual that I can now quick-scope targets in my art and music production software. This has translated to all manners of live music production as everything is mostly just hand-eye-voice coordination and rhythm keeping, sometimes utilizing other parts of the body.
The Trial of Music is often not hearing the tune but figuring out the best way to let out your inner orchestra with the restriction of translation from your mind’s imagination, to your body, to then your instrument(s) of choice. The easier it is to get that music out into the world, the closer to the source it’ll will be and the more representative it’ll be of you as an individual.
Generally, the faster and more accurate that music travels from your brain into the world the “better” it’ll likely sound too, being closer to the pure source of inspiration of our imaginations, at the very least giving us more time to refine it in post-production. That doesn’t mean playing music fast, that means the less time a thought takes to travel down your nervous system, into an instrument that can project it, the closer to the actual thought it’ll be - this is why the voice is so powerful, it’s currently the physically closest instrument to the human mind that exists.
I’ve always played RPGs in the same way. I’m that player who does everything. Collects everything, checks every nook and cranny of playable area. I do all the side quests before the main story line. If there’s a skill requirement I make sure my skills are 20 levels above what’s necessary. If there’s an item that will save time throughout the game I get that item before even starting.
I take absurd lengths of time to prepare before even playing the what many consider the game, while others are already seemingly far ahead.
Every time I play a game like this, and I do mean every time… When I start the actual main story, or start to do the popular PvE/PvP everyone else is doing, I’m so over-leveled, over-powered, and over-trained that nothing very much feels like a challenge. I quickly catch up to those that ran ahead, and I just as quickly pass them in achievement and resources.
Interestingly enough this eventually creates a sensation of boredom within a game which becomes inescapable while playing in someone else’s construct, which has borders by definition of its existence.
I’ve found that this habit of behavior, call it a personality trait by now, has fully extended into my life. I’m so over-trained and over-leveled without even starting the main story line that I can already feel the familiar sensation that I always get in RPGs.
The feeling I get before I plow through the entire plot line like it’s not even there.
If there’s any advice I can give to a younger crowd, while still as an “unknown”, it’s this:
Play. Play a lot. Play video games, play music, play with life and art. Let it soak into your being. Multi-task while you do it. Train yourself to focus on multiple things at once. Take the hard and long path. Make it fun. Make it a survival mechanism like breathing. Set yourself to this, without thought, without worry of time, and promise yourself no matter what happens you’ll always keep playing. Remember when you do this, write down the date. Every few years look back, just for a moment, just to see how far you’ve gone, then keep going forward.
Someday you’ll realize, none of it was a waste of time, eventually your life will meet you and you won’t even have to try, for everything to be always perfect, each moment will just rhyme.
turnnoffyourmind
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