The Introduction
I was wondering to myself the other day: What is it about strategy games that people love or hate so much? I personally love playing any kind of strategy game. From board games like Risk or Settlers of Catan, to video games like Final Fantasy Tactics; people go crazy over them.
From here, my question broadened; it comes down to more than just strategy games, it has to do with our love of movies, television and books as well. You see, from what I can tell about myself and most of the people around me, we like to solve problems. The only problem is: we don't like to have problems. So, we create problems which are easily solved, and then set them up like dominoes to play out as they will and practically solve themselves. We do this through movies and games.
The Body
We don't want a game that's too hard to figure out, or a movie where the ending was so completely unrelated that it would have been impossible to figure out on our own. For example: in a movie, what if the main character was trying to find some artifact during the entire movie, and then at the end he discovered that some other villain (that we had never before been introduced to) beat him to it? What would we do? We'd feel cheated. We'd feel like we had worked so hard, emotionally, along side this hero for two hours, now only to be robbed of this thing by someone that we didn't even know! However, had the two been competing for the artifact during the entire movie, and then he beat the main character to it-- but maybe the main character gained some spiritual lesson or something from the whole thing-- then we'd feel okay.
It's all got to make sense! When we spend an hour looking for our keys, trying to retrace steps, only to find that someone else accidentally picked them up, or moved them... it makes us angry. "How was I supposed to find them in the refrigerator? I didn't even open the refrigerator today!"
What if we could magically introduce problems into our lives? Well, the truth is; I don't think we'd want to. What if you got the call, "Hello Neo, do you know who this is?" ...No thank you. Without the luck and the movie world's sense of justice and logic, we wouldn't last two seconds!
However, through watching these movies and playing these games, we gain a keen ability to solve problems like these! I predict that if most of us were placed in situations where quick thinking or puzzle solving were called for, we'd be surprised to find out how able we are to do so. I think it would be fantastic if we could somehow have "multiple lives" and try to put ourselves in these situations where we could see if we could survive. I predict that we'd surprise ourselves.
The Conclusion
In the end, it all comes down to a struggle between our deep desire to feel the excitement of teetering over the edge, and our even deeper fear of falling over that edge. Different people are comfortable at different distances to the ledge, but very few people actually want to toe-up to it and peer over it.
A little life-and-death situation seems tempting sometimes, but right now, I like my dire problems the way they are: predictable, logical, and with an "off" switch.
I was wondering to myself the other day: What is it about strategy games that people love or hate so much? I personally love playing any kind of strategy game. From board games like Risk or Settlers of Catan, to video games like Final Fantasy Tactics; people go crazy over them.
From here, my question broadened; it comes down to more than just strategy games, it has to do with our love of movies, television and books as well. You see, from what I can tell about myself and most of the people around me, we like to solve problems. The only problem is: we don't like to have problems. So, we create problems which are easily solved, and then set them up like dominoes to play out as they will and practically solve themselves. We do this through movies and games.
The Body
We don't want a game that's too hard to figure out, or a movie where the ending was so completely unrelated that it would have been impossible to figure out on our own. For example: in a movie, what if the main character was trying to find some artifact during the entire movie, and then at the end he discovered that some other villain (that we had never before been introduced to) beat him to it? What would we do? We'd feel cheated. We'd feel like we had worked so hard, emotionally, along side this hero for two hours, now only to be robbed of this thing by someone that we didn't even know! However, had the two been competing for the artifact during the entire movie, and then he beat the main character to it-- but maybe the main character gained some spiritual lesson or something from the whole thing-- then we'd feel okay.
It's all got to make sense! When we spend an hour looking for our keys, trying to retrace steps, only to find that someone else accidentally picked them up, or moved them... it makes us angry. "How was I supposed to find them in the refrigerator? I didn't even open the refrigerator today!"
What if we could magically introduce problems into our lives? Well, the truth is; I don't think we'd want to. What if you got the call, "Hello Neo, do you know who this is?" ...No thank you. Without the luck and the movie world's sense of justice and logic, we wouldn't last two seconds!
However, through watching these movies and playing these games, we gain a keen ability to solve problems like these! I predict that if most of us were placed in situations where quick thinking or puzzle solving were called for, we'd be surprised to find out how able we are to do so. I think it would be fantastic if we could somehow have "multiple lives" and try to put ourselves in these situations where we could see if we could survive. I predict that we'd surprise ourselves.
The Conclusion
In the end, it all comes down to a struggle between our deep desire to feel the excitement of teetering over the edge, and our even deeper fear of falling over that edge. Different people are comfortable at different distances to the ledge, but very few people actually want to toe-up to it and peer over it.
A little life-and-death situation seems tempting sometimes, but right now, I like my dire problems the way they are: predictable, logical, and with an "off" switch.
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