As an adult, I do a lot of “doing.”
I say “doing” because a lot of these tasks fall short of “accomplishments.” They’re often just routine maintenance or chores. Y’know: Everyday tasks that keep you alive and functional.
But none of it — from the banality of tooth-brushing to talking with lawyers on obligatory occasion — is particularly enjoyable. Nor does it “feel good.” It’s just… work.
Video games aren’t like this (the good ones, anyway). In this splendorous digital dimension, “doing” is designed to feel good. And if a particular game “clicks” with me, I’ll spend pretty much every second in a state of blissful enjoyment.
Take Fallout New Vegas, for example, which I’ve been playing lately. I could be walking through the game’s bleak post-apocalyptic wasteland without an objective or combat encounter in sight and enjoy myself. In the real world? Not so much. Fallout is hand-crafted to be interesting and engaging; The real world lacks context and inherent meaning.
Another example: In-game inventory management. In a Fallout or MMORPG, I get some strange pleasure from sorting my player character’s inventory. And there’s a tangible benefit — streamlining my inventory also streamlines future combat encounters. But in the real world, managing my stuff offers no incentive whatsoever beyond maintaining basic standards of cleanliness. I guess a real-world aquaintence might judge me less harshly if my dwelling is well-kept? But there’s little to-no dopamine hit or quantifiable reward. So, beyond basic maintenance, why bother? Nobody ever changed the world by cleaning their room.
This might all sound silly, but sometimes I’m staggered by how much time and energy people invest into “The Game of Life” without much return-on-investment.
Byte-Sized Worlds 