Gaming Life

The more and more I think of game design the more I realize how closely it relates to life itself.

Objectives --> Rules --> Obstacles --> Resources --> Actions --> Feedbacks/Results

Objective: Gurus talk about how to live better lives, how to set good targets so that you can achieve them. In Professional life they talk about setting smaller objectives and achieving them instead of the bigger ones where there are higher chances of getting lost. Each smaller objective takes you closer to your bigger one and eventually takes you to your aim.

How about no objective in life? That’s impossible; you will have some objective or the other. Maybe to become a lead programmer for valve or maybe to find the route to the next Rave party, but in either case there will be some objective. Let’s consider the positive case, you know your objectives and you know how all these objective lead to your monster objective. This gives you clarity of thought and focus. You will still need to figure out means to achieve them but you feel confident as you know exactly what you are aiming for.

On the other end, if you have no objective (that’s never true IMHO), or you don’t clearly know what it is - you feel drifting, with nothing to look forward for. (Lazing around in a Goa shack with a beer in hand, also has an objective: Having fun – Its in back of yeah head)

Therefore knowing your objective is very important and Clear Objective is good.

Rules: Everyone’s lives are governed by rules, rules of nature, social rules, rules laid down by self etc. Some rules can be broken and some can’t. When you break a rule to achieve your motive, it gives you instant delight but with a long term insecurity.

How people feel lost in new places, have you ever seen a tourist, holding a notepad and looking hopelessly at a railway station in India, as what to do next? Rules!!! , he has no clue how the rules work. Rules of where to inquire from; rules of where to look for train schedules; rules of how to catch a cab, rules of where to get their tickets from all these make him feel alienated. In this example since the railway system in India is quite different from most of the westerns counterparts, the tourist’s brain is not able to readily match patterns in his head.

Now have you seen a tourist, with a smiling face eating a chicken tikka roll at an Indian Airport? Rules!!!
His mind recognizes the patterns better, he understands the symbols, he understands the rules and he feels in control of the environment. Our mind is continuously recognizing patterns; we try to find order in any chaos. If we are unable to find this order, that thing is useless and the brain rejects it. (Off no interest)

Let’s take a bizarre example.

Imagine yourself meeting a 4 headed alien and being invited to play “HUU-HUU-HUU-BAM-BAM”, you go with him and he puts you in open pink field with purple gates all around you and goes “HUU…aek….HUU duo…HUU…teen”, you are now praying to god of what’s going to happen next.

God is kind! The gate opens and you see 19 aliens coming out with a ball wearing 2 sets of colored clothes. Are you feeling better now? (Does you mind recognize a pattern and gives you a small sub-set to think about)

Not quite; may-be the word BAM-BAM is still making you pray god.

If you build up the story the way you like it, you will notice the more you understand the rules the more comfortable you get.

What if the game was called “MUUAH-MUUAH-HEE-HEE”?? Probably less scary but still alienated.

So knowing rules does not make you feel safe but it does give you a lesser sub-set to worry about, it makes you feel knowledgeable, which is a good feeling. Assuming in our game “HUU-HUU-HUU-BAM-BAM”, the alien friends tells you that the purple gates a permanently locked. This definitely gives you one less thing to worry about.

Being aware of rules is good, learning the rules fast makes you feel knowledgeable and more in control.


Obstacles: Anything that impedes progress; progress in achieving objectives. What kind of obstacles do we get in our lives’?

Dilemmas: Whether to do this or do that?
Human Competition (People): Work front, personal front.
Enforce Rules: You cannot buy booze today as it’s a dry day. (Breaking some rules and achieving objective is always fun, but has its own challenge)
Physical: Damn the Highway No. 6 is jammed; you will need to take the longer route. Or you can’t make it to the final 10 for the finals as you have a sore knee.

The realization that a thing is an obstacle holds true only if you have an objective and the current thing impedes your progress. Otherwise the thing is not an obstacle for you. (Brain is very good in distinguishing things as obstacles or not an obstacle.

Now, which of the following way gives more delight or more feel-good emotion?
Is it?
Achieving your goal with no obstacle at all
Achieving your goal by over coming all the obstacles within the rule set.
Achieving your goal by over coming all the obstacles within and outside the rule set.

Can it be generalized?

My answers are all 3 holds true in different scenarios and it cannot be generalized, but most of the feel-good emotion comes out from point number 2.

(There is another way which results in maximum feel-good emotion – and that is when you create something - will write more on this later)

Why do people give up on something?

The challenge provided by the obstacle is too difficult and the objective you are trying to achieve is not worth it. So you just forget about it and move on to some other objective.

Is it correct to say that the challenge bar can be raised by having the objective more needed? I would say yes, but within a critical limit. After that both the objective and the challenge seems stupid and absurd.

So obstacles are good, in most circumstances, good challenges make achievements feel better.

Resources: Anything that assists or acts as catalyst in achieving objectives or takes you closer to it.

It will be hard to include all kinds of resources available to humans. Various types

Things improving your physical ability.
Things imparting knowledge on subject. (Learning rules). Increases mental ability.
Things improving your social status/standing.

So if on one hand we have obstacles impeding the progress, Resources on the other tries to balance out your ability against the challenges.

Resources are always limited; one can never have an infinite supply of any kind of resource. (No there is no alternative of “give all” in real life)

The existence of resource in itself leads to certain level of challenge or dilemma. Ask yourself when to use the resource. (If money is a resource, should you spend the money now and buy yourself a commodity A or wait for sometime and buy a better commodity B available in time T. If time is a resource, should you spend this time reading this crap or go on and do some real work.)

Resources are useful; it helps you keep up your confidence level and chances for success. If you efficiently utilize the resources it also increases the feel-good emotion.

Actions: Things you do or perform in order to achieve your objective or move closer to your objectives.

Each action comes with a procedure, which explains how to perform that action.
Each action comes with a set of rules, which explains if the action is limited to space, time and/or resource.

Actions are must to achieve your objectives; having a bunch of actions to choose from, choices for actions (Dilemma) always makes you feel safe, even if the action does not lead to your objective.

Feedbacks/Results: For every action performed, their will be a resultant reaction. When you will achieve an objective, it will result in satisfaction-emotion.

Feedbacks are important for us to fathom that we took an action, if there are no feedbacks you will probably try to perform that action again in order to get one. If you don’t get any result or feedback you would probably feel that it was a wasteful action.

Have you ever sent job mails to some pathetic organizations, who don’t respond to your mail? (Not even saying “you pr**k, we don’t want you!”

Action: You start punching in the keys.
Result: you see letters appearing on the screen.

Action: You click browse button to attach you resume.
Result: A window opens for you to locate your document.

Action: you click send button.
Result: Web page shows acknowledgement of message being sent.
Conditional Result 2: A delayed mailed demon mail of failure to deliver message.

At this point you are waiting for a feedback, a result, a reaction.

If you don’t get any response, then the dangerous thing starts to happen. Assumptions (any body a fan of steven segal movie Under siege and the train dialogue “Assumption is the mother of all f*****)

Quick responses, feedbacks are good; it makes you aware of your actions.

Let’s sum it up

1. Clear Objective is good.
2. Being aware of rules is good, learning the rules fast makes you feel knowledgeable and more in control.
3. Obstacles are good, in most circumstances; good challenges make achievements feel better.
4. Resources are useful; it helps you keep up your confidence level and chances for success. If you efficiently utilize the resources it also increases the feel-good emotion.
5. Actions are must to achieve your objectives; varied set of allowed actions makes you feel good.
6. Quick responses, feedbacks are good; it makes you aware of your actions.

Good game are those that uses these points well, so that they fit together in maximizing feel-good emotion.

Games mimic life, they form metaphors.

There is lot one can learn from one and use it in the other.