Life's a Game, Isn't It?: SKILLS/FEATS

WORD SMITHING
Weird title? Not particularly, I want to write about life and what I'm thinking on, but I have a gaming blog. What's the trick to that? I call life a game, and then find ways to associate what I'm thinking about with video games. Particularly I associate things in games that resemble real life, then I relate things in real life that are affected by games.

For instance? Role-playing games, the characters tend to have a natural curve to them as they progress, the more you level up, the harder it is to level up, the more skilled you become, the easier it is to perform tasks with those skills, but the harder it is to reach the next level of skill. It's a simple concept that almost translates flawlessly into real life. Except that the brain is weird. Of particular note is the idea that, the less experience you have, the more quickly you advance. The young mind is easily shaped and adapted, and in turn young minds gain basic skills more quickly. The older you are, the more difficult it is for your brain to adapt to a new task, or so they say anyway.

On the other hand, RPGs also offer a certain degree of customization you don't have access to in the real world, but this allows you to make your character more human. For instance, yes, it's true, the more advanced you are in age and skill, the harder it is to improve, for MOST people. But, then you have late bloomers, those with savant syndrome, and just uniquely talented people. These folks aren't necessarily limited to the standard, and for these people, RPGs offer "Feats" or "Advantages" or...whatever your particular franchise calls it. For instance, an artist might hit a "soft-cap" where it becomes much harder to advance his artistic skill, but then that artist might have a bonus to learning artistic skills, an affinity of the mind and a certain steadiness of the hand that just helps him be better than others. It's unfair in some aspects, but then again, life is unfair, and in that respect RPGs are a little more fair than usual. At least, to the players, who all play a "hero" or...y'know, a villain...who possesses these unique talents just because destiny and the handbook say so.

Another similarity between video games and real life is when you're wandering through old sections of a game, or old content on a website, and you find something you'd forgotten existed, and you finally have access to it. Well, I didn't have limited access to this post, but I did forget it existed, so I updated it after it sat around for probably two months, and I feel good about it! Let's post this sucker as the first of possibly many, possibly very very few, "Life's a Game" posts!