Play the Game

When I was a kid, play time was a fairly restricted thing both in time and money. Growing up I wanted to have all the Hot Wheels and Legos but my parents rarely let in. Of course in the end, I joined my generation’s fascination with television and watching as much as I can to fill void between homework and dinner until I knew about the Internet. One of the challenges now as an adult is to find balance between free time, personal development and my profession. Many see their life as work and play, two things people seem to latch on to either sooner or later in life. To me it doesn’t seem quite the simple case.

Like many adulthood-like things, we tend to define definitions; be the definite definition that defines definitely, well you get my point. As a kid you never really had to do that, as you grew everything dials itself into a definition. Fun time becomes play, play then is for enjoyment which can then be experienced when certain tasks are accomplished and time is allotted. We become affixed to sets of rules and conditions which has been placed there to wither hinder having fun or promote efficient work over inefficient play. The difficulty behind this either letting go of play or holding onto play. Many people I’ve seen have either displayed an ordered attitude while some seen off the cuff and free to play.

When it comes enjoyment alone or with groups, we most of the time think about games. Videos games, tabletop games, sports; these are the games we play with no monetary value attached to play. These games each of their set of rules and conditions, how to achieve victory through a means. Sound familiar? Work is a set of rules and conditions to achieve an income through a means. Whether you like it not, both work and play are fairly similar however the difference come back to childhood. It feels like work because you are coerced to be there, much like how your friends take you somewhere you don’t like and the hours seem to last forever.

From the day we are born until we die believe it or not, we are playing a game. Condition being you will have to stay alive and the rules change as you grow up. “If life itself a game, how do I win the game?” To be frank, there is no definitive answer which makes life a hard game to play. With no real victory, people say when you die the game ends. On death, you lose and no one is necessarily a winner. What if death isn’t the end all to this game? What if death is just a a rule? A natural rule where death is the end of your time much like time based games. If so much like timed games, the victory conditions are not when the game ends but how well did you do within the confines of the game. Perhaps life is more like Boggle than it is Monopoly. Perhaps life isn’t how slow or fast you die, but what moves you make and the actions you take.

Without a known victory state within this construct of a game, we tend to see out those who seem to be “good” at playing the game. The successful bunch, the rich bunch, the happy bunch of people who seem to be getting along well in life. Like the games we play, we have to lose some and win some. The experience in losses and gains regardless of the outcome. Much like life, we make choices we regret and actions mistaken but this how we learn. This is how we make our moves accordingly to achieve the means. Maybe life can be the most humbling game for us all to play. We receive one chance to do all the things we can until we die. The only thing stopping us to knowing the victory goal is complexity.

For me, I don’t see myself as money maker, a philanthropist nor a thrill seeker and risk taker. In my heart, I’m a gamer, player of games. In the complex defined rules, I know the end will happen to me as well one day. I have now until that day to find the victory. It’s surely not immortality I seek where indefinite game time is allotted so I can play forever. Though money is a concern, having reserved stacks of funds would do very little for me in the end since death takes away all the personal memories and cash you accumulated. So the winning condition must be what I can do with the time I have. All the accomplishments and actions I take matter regardless of risk. To me, the game of life is just this, to do what we can humanly can; to live our lives. This is our victory condition where we experience the world around us rather than being concerned about the empirical summation of our lives. Our existence makes the difference of what we have achieve and what has yet to be accomplished. Which means life isn’t about a set number of actions or a set goal, but perhaps our own legacy to the world to let the generations of gamers ahead know we have played the game.

We might not “win” the game, but we should surely try and play as well as we can.

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Finding balance

It has always been a problem with me. The world isn’t a linear place; when you have everything set in, some new is willing to test you. I realized this when I was a teen when I tried to balance work and school. It never really panned out since the schedules always conflict and it was my grades or job performance would drop because of it. Sure I could ask for extension and different test days or a different work schedule, but it would never work out.

As pessimistic as it seems, it is the reality. When you finally settle into something you want to do or want, you will realize the other half of it. When you finally settle down, you feel like you have nothing really left to explore or be curious about. You would feel a plateau much like exercising when your body begins to easily accept its regime. At the end, it doesn’t benefit you as much as it did before. Later like I have learned after so long, you will find you just want something more – something different. You want to stretch out there and find something worth pursuing. Like being steady, I found it’s somewhat difficult to do something entirely new and abandon what you already know. Just from what you feel comfortable to what you don’t really feel comfortable, it’s a quick adjustment you can’t really transition towards even if you really wanted.

Change, I find is incremental. It is never sudden, never immediate, never always helpful. Change is merely a transition from a method or idea to another. While in change, we find and discover new things and even question where we will go and where we have come from. In my lifetime, I have witnessed much change. The internet going from phone lines to fibre optics, from personal websites to social media, from homophobia to homophilia to name a few. Even with all this, we are still on the bring of new and different things; some scarier than others. Net neutrality for instance, where companies are slowly pushing to allow speed throttling to certain websites and services at a cost. Civil wars clashing between the people, their oppressors and armed fundamentalists who go against everyone else but themselves. Change is tumultuous, either in the self of in the society. Whether you want to or not, change is always there to test you.

As for me, change is a bit different. It is not a bloodbath or a peaceful demonstration. It is a test of growing and becoming someone I feel comfortable with knowing. It is a change in identity, to question who I was and who I will and want to become. How far am I willing to push myself? Is this my purpose? These are the questions I ask myself sometimes to affirm myself of what I want to do and become. I want to be athletic, so I exercise. I want play video games but not too much, so I starting recording gameplay. I want to get going on a career I find I can be challenged but enjoy; well, I’m working on it and I will let you know how that turns out.

For me, I have been having trouble with balancing my life with change. I have been a bit unfaithful to myself towards tasks and I just want a steady pace while doing new things. It hasn’t come out clean, but I managed to find a balance. Finding that intersect where you feel comfortable but also comfortable enough to try something different. As ambitious as it is, I want to do more and do different things. I want to volunteer but so far no one has accept my applications. I want to exercise more, but it’s getting colder. These are my changes I want happen and I am willing. The questions is about commitment and motivation. Which I have been thinking about a lot in my mind.

Change is something you cannot avoid, but you can control the flow. However over time, there will be change regardless of how slow you want to take it. You never know all the outcomes but you know the best and worse of them. You will never get what you want at the end but change will teach and open you to new things if you let it. Even at it’s worst, change can help you understand a bit around you where you failed to see it before. It might not help you in the future, but it would humble you to know. You never always control how much change, but you can control how much you can accept over time. You may disagree now, but sooner or later you will come around and change your opinions. No matter how rigid you stay, you will crumble; you can either break apart or slowly build upon it. You don’t get a beach body in a matter of weeks in May, you start working towards it at the beginning of year or maybe take you a few years. You don’t get millions of dollars within a month (unless you win it all), you save a little away to get to that amount whether it’s a dollar a month or a dollar a day. You have to be dedicated to change to accept it or change will do it for you. It is your choice to be who you want and do what you want to do in life.

Until next time, let’s all spare a little change.

The Video Game

You thought the debate between console superiority was crazy, there is one which still debatable and attempts to define the gaming industry outside or within the entertainment genre. What constitutes a video game? This in many forms has sparked many opinions about what qualifies as a video game. Many are in depth, setting parameters which define most but not all video games to date. While the others grasp on the notion of a video game on principles of entertainment to define them as mere entertainment, which skirts the very purpose of the question.

Lets break it down simply, the noun itself; “video game”. Video being an electronic medium; TV, computers, anything with a visual display which can generate images. With an emerging tech industry, video is going beyond flat images and even innovating on it’s own medium. Holographic and 3D technology is slowly coming to fruition but will be awhile before it is accepted as common medium for all our commercial uses. “Game”; a form of play or sport. If it is competitive then it’s played with a rule set which luck, strength or skill is  a determining factor for a victory state. Now we are going somewhere; we can now say games are a sport and a form of play. Take that mainstream media for calling it child’s play! Suck it hard and savour it! Regardless of either play or sport, if there is a competitive element it must have winning condition based on those 3 attributes. So poker is a game since it’s a bit of luck and skill. Soccer is a sport since it’s all skill. FIFA 2014 is a sport because it requires skill to win. Starcraft? Definitely sport since the win condition requires skill; same with most strategy and shooters, though shooters are sometimes more of all the three than just the one. What if the “game” does not possess a competitive or sport component? Is it still a game?

Now we have to understand what exactly is “play” to understand what is defined as a “game”. Like sport, play is set in two camps, structured and unstructured. Structured being a clear set of rules enforced while unstructured where none are existent or clearly enforced. Under this all video games are games; games with no clear goal and those with one are all defined as play, in turn maintain their game status. Even sports can be play if rules or victory conditions aren’t observed. The National Institute of Play (apparently it is a thing), goes beyond the two camps to describe types of play. Attunement play is to make interactions with other beings or persons to socially connect to them. Body play involves human movement; jumping, reaching, rolling and anything you can do with your body. Object play is the manipulation the environment; skipping stones to moving your dear companion cube, this would constitute as object play. In it’s complexity, social play gets into involving a group into an activity; whether the group is one more person or a crowd. Imaginative play or pretend play would sit nicely under this type; this form is more creative where you make up your own little world or place in your mind. Narrative play; in short, storytelling can be considered play since it allows us to convey our experiences and stories onto others. Creative play, somewhat like the jazz music of play; where we build upon our own or other ideas which can help us understand complex thought in simple terms. All video games would fall under at least one of these categories regardless if there is a victory condition or not. Some can even go to say they may be two or more of these types. A game is both competitive and non-competitive with or without a end or victory condition.

As humans, we tend define the world as we see it. We qualify and quantify to the exact measurements for our satisfaction but in the end exactitude can lead to exclusion; what we can exclude, we could learn more about. Perhaps the question is more than to define what a video game is, perhaps it’s an exercise in humility. Regardless of the genres of games out in the world, video games is just another bit of our existence; a subset within a subset within another subset in the totality of human experience.