To be honest, I'm not sure whether this blog is a great idea, social commentary, or a personal realisation.
Was talking to a friend the other day, and we came to the realisation that we were both around 20 years old. Given the average lifespan of 80 years, that means 1/4th of our lives is gone. Forever.
So that got me thinking once again, what have I done with my life? What major Achievements of sort have I completed? I wasn't able to list much to be honest - aside from learning how to walk, write and use the potty... I could only think of "Having found a permanent mate", "University Degree (In Progress)", "P&P Game (In Progress)". Not very much.
Also reminded me of those games which have achievements in them (some clear - "Killed 500 dodos medal", some integrated into gameplay (like collecting this nifty armour to show off)). And how people spend hours slaving away to get some rare item which will prove how awesome they are.
And that made me reach a particular conclusion:
We are creatures of Achievement. We are ready to waste hours or days of our lives just to have something that others will respect us for. In fact, going through all the trouble to do that - makes us feel happier - as long as we get somethign to show for it - as long as someone gets to look upon our acheivement with respect.
Therefore I came to these conclusions:
1. If we wrote a RL achievement system, people would actually use it.
2. We shouldn't laugh at people who play games for 18 hours a day, because they are driven by the same mindset we have
3. That if we all list and appreciate each other's achievements, we'd all be happier
4. That I should be studying instead.
The Llama
I do partially agree with you, however I think that all living things are creatures of Achievement. As animals, we have 2 achievements, Survive and Reproduce, which you mention both of them. You can split your achievements in smaller achievements which would compose quite a long list( to produce a game, you must first learn a language, understand the game structure, play games to gather more knowledge, .... ). Some animals fight just to became the alpha male just to reproduce.
ReplyDelete@SunSatION : While you're right, if you notice, we humans don't have to worry too much about surviving anymore.
ReplyDeleteI can still survive with a simple underpaid job, I don't need the university degree to put food on the table.
I think when we lost the need to worry about survival - and when we regularly survive to 80 years or so - I think we replaced it with this need to achieve in everything else. Of course it may all be underlying. It might be showing you're an alpha-male by having 5 houses and getting a bunch of gold - which helps you reproduce. But I don't think clocking 100 hours on a game helps either of those two ends.