Angry Gaming 04.23.07: Life Lessons In Video Gaming
Posted by Damian Sarcuni on 04.23.2007
Confucius says: Man who go through turnstile sideways is going to Bang-kok.
Welcome to Angry Gaming, the cold, crisp water that douses the gaming industry's flames of annoyance. I am your hate master, Damian Sarcuni, and I know all the lyrics to "Raspberry Beret" by Prince. She walked in through the out door, out door.
Life Lessons In Video Gaming
This week I made a rare appearance at my family's dinner table and we began discussing other family members we hadn't been in contact with for a long time. One of these was my cousin Steve. Being a geek through all of high school (big surprise) I was generally on the lower end of the popularity/physical altercation food chain. Steve, who attended the same school as me and was far more streetwise, became somewhat of a protector for me then.
One time, while Steve and I were…eh, "excusing ourselves" from classes for the day, we stopped in a local grocery store to pick up something to drink. I bought my drink and exited the store first, when I was approached by a kid much larger than me with two of his boys behind him. The kid immediately asked me to give him my drink, which I laughed off. He shoved me in the shoulder and repeated the demand, letting me know he meant business.
Before I could react, Steve came out of the store and talked to the kid. It turned out they were friends and Steve quelled the situation pretty quickly. The kids went into the store and Steve and I went around the corner. As soon as we were out of sight, Steve got right into my face. "The next time that kid or any other kid asks for your drink, you dump it over his fuckin' head." He told me, "I don't care who they are or what they can do to you after that, just do it."
It didn't take me long to realize what Steve was talking about. Sure, if I pulled a stunt like that, the kid might try to beat me up, but he would think twice before coming up to me again and that was the important thing. In my school, it didn't matter if a person could fight as long as they stood up for themselves. Reputation and public persona were the keys to survival.
I learned a lot from my cousin, and over the years video games have taught me a few life lessons as well. Somewhere out there is an old black light poster that talks about lessons learned from video games, talking about how enemies move in predictable patterns and other nonsense. That's all well and good as a joke, but games really do have the ability to teach us important moral lessons that we can apply to our every day lives. Of course, if you take EVERY lesson games teach literally (i.e. cheaters always win) the world becomes a very depressing place. Hence it is recommended, like so many other things in this column, that you take these lessons with the ever so necessary grain of salt. Never the less, here are 3 life lessons I have learned from playing video games. Feel free to send me yours as well.
Final Fantasy II: You Don't Always Get What You Want
I started playing Final Fantasy II right around the time I hit puberty, and it was ironic because I wound up in a love triangle with a friend of mine almost right off the bat. The same problem is a big part of FFII's plot and the events of the game cast an interesting light on a situation like that.
In the game, Cecil, Rosa, and Kain are all good friends. Rosa is Cecil's girlfriend, and Kain is captain of the elite dragoon fighters. During a fight against an evil force trying to take over the world, Cecil and Kain are separated. When Kain appears later, he seems to be under a mind control spell and he kidnaps Rosa. While Kain manages to break free from this control later on, rejoining his friend, he suddenly changes and appears to fall under the spell of evil again.
This is wear it gets tricky. Later on in the game, Kain is beaten and admits to his two friends that he was not quite as deep under the evil mind control spell as his friends thought. In actuality, Kain did have an agenda to eliminate Cecil…because he was secretly in love with Rosa. While Kain is forgiven and rejoins the group once more, the game never really goes into all the horrible things he did while Rosa was kidnapped, and its interesting how the three friends sort of just clam up and try not to focus on that dark time and everything it represents.
At the end of the game, Cecil and Rosa are married, yet Kain doesn't make an appearance at their wedding. Instead, he travels deep into the mountains to train, looking for a way to redeem himself for the things he has done. Even though he was instrumental in defeating evil and saving the world, Kain still cannot face his friends. Cecil and Rosa, in turn, express worry for their friend and his self his imposed banishment, saying that they hope for him to return home safe as soon as possible.
It's clear throughout the game that Rosa and Cecil are deeply in love, and nothing is ever going to change that. The character of Kain is basically doomed to have an unhappy ending from the very beginning, and this is the cost of Cecil and Rosa's happiness. In order for them to be together, their friend must suffer, and that is something they too must deal with, even during the happiest day of their life. This is a truly valuable lesson, especially when dealing with love: everything has a price and desiring something alone is not nearly enough to actually possess it. All three friends learned that in this game, and they cannot escape the burden, only carry it to the best of their ability.
Silent Hill: Use Every Resource Available
Although I am a man of many talents, unfortunately being a musical prodigy was never one of them. It's a shame too, because that particular skill would have come in handy when I started playing the original Silent Hill for the PSX. During that time, I was going through a phase where I did not want to even touch a walkthrough for any of my video games, especially during the survival horror boom that was happening in the game industry at the time.
So you can imagine I had a pretty hard time dealing with some of the puzzles in the game, namely one involving a piano and a haunted elementary school. Now, admittedly, you don't need to know how to read music in order to solve the puzzle. However, I didn't know that at the time, and I got incredibly frustrated over the game. I was just about to give up altogether when my mother walked into my darkened room (spooking the hell out of me) and asked me why I appeared so frustrated. When I explained the problem I was facing with the puzzle, she asked me why I didn't just look up the answer online, as I had done in the past. I told her that doing something like that would be taking the easy way out, and it would be more of real accomplishment if I handled it with my own brain power.
My mother sat down and gave me a good talking to. She said that she didn't want me to look at life that way, making things harder for myself when others had a much easier road. It makes sense…parents want their kids to have as easy lives as possible (while still being capable of handling themselves). My mother told me to use all the resources I had available to me, and that there was a difference between facing a true challenge and simply wasting time over it.
So I used a walkthrough to pass the piano puzzle, which as you may know occurs pretty early in the game. The solution from that puzzle gave me a good clue as to the developer's thought process, and I began to use the clues supplied within the game for future puzzles much more literally. As it turns out, I did not need to use the walkthrough again for the rest of the game (except to get the weird ass alien kidnapping ending). Sometimes a little boost is all it takes, and there was no real reason for me to deny myself that solution. The internet is a powerful tool, and I improved myself far more by using it than I ever could have figuring out the riddle on my own. Birds without voices my ass.
Gears of War: The Rules Apply to Everyone
Hey fells! NNNNNNNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYERRRNT!!! NNNNNNNNNNNNYYYYYEEERNT!! That's the sound of my chainsaw chopping through your brain despite your best efforts to clip me with your host advantage powered shotgun. Don't like it? Tough!
For the longest time now, I've been listening the same constant bitching and moaning over my Xbox Live headset, which is why I don't even bother using it anymore. For those of you who haven't played Gears of War multiplayer, the game has quite the number of flaws. For starters, in ranked matches you cannot really choose your teammates and may wind up losing simply because you get stuck with low skilled players. There are also many glitches and issues in the game, and opponents are constantly trying to gather up all the weapons and gain every advantage they can to decimate you as quickly as possible.
It is for this reason that the complaining is so annoying. I've heard it a thousand times. "It's 3 on 4, why do you have to chainsaw me?" "Why do you have to grenade tag?" "Why do you have to pistol whip me?" "Be a man, use a shotgun!" This is a life lesson I learned pretty early and covered in previous articles. One of the beautiful things about video games is that there is simply no double standard for people to hide behind. In Gears of War, I can chainsaw you and you can chainsaw me. There is no way to adjust it, it's in the game and it works. The same thing goes for grenade tagging and every other weapon in the game.
When I jump on Xbox live, I'm not playing the game because I want to earn anyone's respect and admiration. I'm playing to win, and I am ready to do whatever it takes besides cheating to do that. If you don't like getting tagged with grenades, don't complain to me, complain to the developers. The same goes for every other weapon in the game. I've played in games where I had to take on entire 4 man teams by myself, and nobody had any problem using their chainsaws and grenades on me in those games. Why should I make an exception for anyone else? If you take away the chainsaw, the grenades, and several other weapons in the game, eventually you are left with nothing and your opponents have every advantage, all in the name of catering to some stupid rule set they just made up.
The moral here, is that the rules apply to everyone. As a gamer, your only responsibilities are to follow the given rules and win. If other players can't handle that, then too bad for them. The same goes for real life. In business or your social life, you are not responsible for the success of others. All is fair in love and war, and as long as you aren't cheating, there is no reason to limit yourself in the name of "fair play". NNNNNYYYYYYYERRRRNT!!!
The Anger
As you can see, we can learn quite a bit from video games as they apply to our real lives. I haven't spoken to my cousin Steve in some time, but I wonder what he would think of all these life lessons I have gained just from playing games? I'm proud of what I've learned, and armed with these lessons I feel confident in taking on new challenges. With this strong moral foundation, gamers become valuable people in the real world, and that's just one more way games improve life overall. Until next time, embrace the hatred.
