The myopic gamer

Life can be reduced to a video game. Everything and anything we do can be described as some aspect of a game. Many parallels can be drawn between things you do in a game as well as things you do in life.

I will list each example with the real life activity first, followed by the gaming example.


Real Life: Earning money
We all need money. To eat, to travel, to buy frivolous things for ourselves. Unless you were born with a silver spoon or you grow a money tree, most of us would have to actually work to earn money. We slave for hours to end and when we get home everyday, deadbeat and exhausted, we ask ourselves, 'Why am I doing this? Oh right, I need the money."

In a Game: Farming Gold
We have all done it. From breeding Air Dragons to sell in Dragonvale and spamming collect on the Plant Habitats, memorizing mining routes like these to level our Mining profession in World of Warcraft to trade more lucrative ores,

Typical Mining Route in World of Warcraft

to killing more mobs in Skyrim to collect more material for sale. We often do things that are boring and monotonous and grind-like to get more gold. When you are extremely bored and tired and ask yourself "Why am I doing this? Oh right, I need more gold."


Real Life: Multi-tasking
If you have a dog, a girlfriend, a clique, and a family, that is already 4 different groups that you have to divide your attention between them. You fail to do so in any aspect and that could mean soured ties, and the effects could snowball and just come back and bite you in the butt later on. You could even lose your girlfriend.

In a Game: Multi-tasking (Macro)
In Starcraft 2, players have to multitask constantly to keep their economy going. If you are unable to multitask to keep up your larva injects, Chronoboosts and MULEs, it could snowball and come back and bite you in the butt later on when you cannot produce enough units to defend a push. You could even lose the game.

Don't lose your MULES!

Real Life: Building friendships
Psychologists list many types of relationships, and a famous related principle is the social exchange theory, in which individuals focus on the costs/benefits of a relationship to determine whether it's a worthwhile relationship.
Whether we like it or not, relationships involve investment, effort and time to maintain, and you have to put in some amount of these, otherwise you will never have good, healthy, friendly relations.

In A Game: Farming Reputation
Anyone who has played some kind of RPG that requires reputation with a faction will know what this point is about before even reading on.
In many games, you have certain ties with groups of people (factions) in the game. You will need to do quests for them, kill monsters for them, etc, to improve your honor/reputation with them. There are various thresholds such as Neutral -> Friendly -> Honored -> Exalted, etcetc, to indicate your level of relationship with the particular factoin.
Whether you like it or not, forming these reputations involve investment, effort and time to do so, and without these, you will never have a good, solid reputation with any faction.

Someone with leet In-Game reputation but probably terrifail Real Life relations.

Real Life: Work in a Team
School project groups, work project groups, teammates in a sport... I could go on and on listing the different types of teams we work in. You can't escape it, you have to learn how to work with other people and coordinate efforts to contribute to a joint result. You may have problems such as people not turning up, people being late, conflicts within your group, etc. But if you are the leader, you're going to have to mediate and iron these out, in order to have any level of success in your group's tasks.

In A Game: Work in a Team
Whether you are in a 25-man raid in World of Warcraft or playing a 5v5 DoTA game with your buddies, teamwork and coordination is usually crucial in winning/killing a boss. You can't escape it- you can be the best Rogue, the best Lina Maiden, the best Holy Paladin in your group, but if the rest of your team f**ks up, you're going to fail.
You may have problems with people being late or not turning up for raid, and maybe even conflicts over whose fault it was that you failed the last wipe. But if you are the leader, you're going to have to get everyone focused on the task at hand and stop pointing fingers, in order to have any level of success in your group's tasks.

Mid-fight in a game of Dota 2

These are just 4 of the more common examples, there are probably others more trivial cases which you can easily draw a gaming parallel as well. I think this will suffice to prove my theory though.

Life is a video game.