6 ways video games can help you make the most out of your life

Never hide behind exploding barrels.  Seriously.

I think this one is pretty self-explanatory.

If you stick to the expected path, you’ll miss awesome stuff.

Obviously, some games are more linear than others, but pretty much every game has a main quest — a single, linear path that you can, if you so choose, barrel through straight to the finish line; never mind the other little paths you see along the way.  The last boss is this way?  Then this way it is.

Of course, you’re going to miss things.  Maybe it’s an awesome new item (like this Invincible Spear of Doom you’ve been hearing so much about), a super fun side-quest or enemy, or even just a scenic route through the mountains, an alternate path fraught with peril, excitement, and beauty.  I dunno.  But my point is that neither will you unless you check it out.

Once you reach a certain point in life (post college years, probably; they’re a doozy), it’s easy to feel like the next several years are decided for you, like each choice is just a series of inputs waiting to be entered.  But there is no one path to, well, anything, and you never know what you’re find down that strange path into the woods.

Wait.  That made it sound like I was telling you to go wander around in the woods.  That’s not what I meant, although hey, whatever floats your boat.

If something is giving you a hard time, pause.  Take a minute.

I’ve always thought that one of the best things about games is the ability to pause — to put everything on hold while you go to the bathroom, or go get a snack, or chastise your cat, Barbara, for climbing on the screen door.  It doesn’t matter how many enemies you’re surrounded by, or if you’re perched precariously over a gigantic vat of, I dunno, lava or something.  For the time that the game is paused, nothing is going to happen to you.  You are safe.

Obviously things don’t work like this in real life.  Even when you’re overwhelmed or need to take a break, or tell Barbara to get the f*ck off of the fridge, life keeps on moving all around you, oblivious and indifferent to your wants and needs.  The ninjas are coming, and one way or another, you’re going to have to deal with it.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s not still something to be learned here.  When life is overwhelming and it seems like there are a million different demands on your time and energy, it never hurts to just press pause for a moment.  Take some time for yourself, read a book, go sit on a beach or something.  The ninjas will be there when you get back.

You have to work hard to have nice stuff.

In many games, but especially in MMOs, the disparity between the equipment you have when you start versus the Invincible Spears of Doom (or whatever) that you see other players walking around with can seem overwhelming.  There’s an Invincible Spear of Doom in the shop, but it costs One Kajillion Gold, and do you know how long that’s gonna take me to get?  I just want it now.

Yeah, well I just want a ferrari.  And a pet monkey.  And a mansion in the shape of my last initial.  But it’s gonna be a while before I get any of these things, because they cost money, and money doesn’t grow on… well, you know the rest.  Back before things like rent or electric bills were even a consideration for me, games taught me that if I wanted to own cool stuff, then it was going to take time and effort.

Unless you’re already rich.  Then you just buy it.  But where’s the fun in that?

No boss is unbeatable.

This may sound preachy and obnoxious, but in life, the temptation is often there to just give up.  To stop worrying about work or school, and just go get stoned and play Modern Warfare until your eyes bleed.  While we’re told our whole childhoods that we can do ANYTHING, what we aren’t told is that most of the time, ANYTHING is hard.

I’m as guilty of this as anybody, especially when it comes to games.  Growing up, if a boss took me more than 10 tries, it wasn’t uncommon for me to fling the controller and declare how stupid the boss was, and I don’t know how anyone could like this game, because it’s so clearly stupid.  But then, sure enough, a week or two later I would pick up the controller and try again.  And still get the crap kicked out of me.  And then I would try again, and eventually, through immense trial and error, I would strike the killing blow, and the boss would fall.

It was the greatest feeling in the world.  And it’s something that happens in life, too, whether it’s finding a job after a year of unemployment, getting a date with that girl after asking three times, or successfully installing a stove after six straight months of microwave dinners.  These little victories are everywhere.

When it comes to hobbies like playing video games, reading comic books, or obsessively watching films and tv shows, it’s easy to lose yourself in the mindless enjoyment of these things, rather than seeking out lessons to be learned.  Although, admittedly, I went to college for theater and got a degree for dicking around all day, so it’s entirely possible that I just don’t take anything as seriously as I should.

Even so, I firmly believe that there are lessons to be learned everywhere, and video games are no exception.  Sure, they can be a bit hard to see when sitting on your couch chugging root beer and mowing down terrorists, but they are there nonetheless, just waiting to be learned.  Which is why I now present to you a list of the seven best life lessons I’ve learned from my many years playing video games, which I may or may not wave in my Mom’s face later while yelling “SEE? SEE?” at the top of my lungs.

Style matters.

Now, when I say style, it may be easy to assume I just mean visual appearance, but there’s much more to it than that.  Sure, when you go to a job interview you want to dress nice, just like how when you slice through ninjas you want to do it in the coolest-looking armor possible, but it’s also important to slice through ninjas (or go to a job interview, for that matter) with panache.

Video games taught me that it wasn’t enough to beat the bad guys.  I wanted to do it in a way that I was proud of, that felt like the right way to beat that particular sort of boss, or to pass a certain obstacle, because damn it, while it may not have been the quickest or the easiest, it looked f*cking cool.

The same holds true in real life.  I don’t just want to go teach science to children (my day job).  I want to go blow those kids' minds with the possibilities, to send them away from the classroom talking about how cool their teacher is because he knows about SCIENCE.  Is this unrealistic?  Quite possibly.  But it’s a lot more fun.