Lessons I've Learned from Video Games
Low Effort, but it's content!
I’ve been playing video games since I was maybe five or six years old. My parents purchased the Nintendo Entertainment System with the Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt combo game cartridge and the light gun for Duck Hunt.
That’s right kids, games used to come on cartridges the size of an i-Pad Mini. There were light gray, had the cover art on them, and everyone knew to blow into the open port to get the dust out and your spit on the game.
I played so much Super Mario Bros I got towards the end game, though that might have been thanks to a Game Genie (purchasable cheat code activator; it came with a booklet!) and I needed my mom’s adult short term memory to notice the repeating pattern and get to the end boss. Then I subsequently died. Well, Mario did; I just died inside.
But I was hooked. Fridays were trips to Blockbuster (yep, I’m THAT old) where my parents picked out moviesd and I spent at least a half an hour pouring over the available games for the NES. This continued into when I get a Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and PlayStation 2. I kept getting systems, including. a brief stint with X-Box, then a PS3, A Nintendo Switch, and now a PS5.
Our family wasn’t rich, I was just an only child who was socially awkward to the point that playing video games was my key source of joy for a long time. I also traded in each system to get the next one. Who has space for all those bulky, dust collecting systems?
Surely I learned some lesson from decades of gaming, right? I better have, because that’s the whole premise of this half hearted article.
Sometimes what you want is a little further away.
“I’m sorry Mario, but your princess is in another castle.”
It’s the same as “you don’t always get what you want” but for an athletic plumber. We’ve all had unexpected dissapointments to grapple with. The girl you’re seeing wants to break up, your favorite restaurant is now closing, the world is shut down by a pandemic but you still have to go to your crappy job and get yelled at by some jerk.
But we persevere. Mario did. Shoot, he kept going on these adventures for I think 50 years? 40 Years? I refuse to look it up. But Mario kept going, and so can I. Yeah, I’ve hit a bunch of road blocks that should have made me give up, but I kept going with my own support system of talking mushroom people (family), adorable dinosaurs (friends) and a raccoon suit (just a raccoon suit).
Think Outside the Box
I’ve been playing Legend of Zelda games almost as long as Mario games, now breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are two of my top ten games of all time. And the LoZ games are packed with puzzles that force you to think outside the box.
I’ve sat stuck on a dungeon for days, trying to hash out what to do to solve the puzzle. Then I shoot a random block, it shifts, and I realize the solution was right in front of me all along.
That’s alot like how I started my Substack in earnest. I wanted a portfolio, but most website options had too many features I’d be ignoring and paying for just to focus on my writing. Then I realized Substack was free, and it gets my writing out there, and it’s evolving (like the Zelda games) to share my portfolio of work. The puzzle of writing and advertising myself was solved, and now I have the Laptop of Minor Distractions.
Don’t Forget to Have Fun
This a little more general, but plenty of video games teach this message. Mario Party games literally reward people for not having the most points, Marvel Rivals awards MVP status seemingly at random, and alot of my favorite memories are of not playing the main game and jus having fun.
I was visiting a friend in Charlotte, NC shortly after college, when I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. I brought my PS3 and Burnout Paradise, we sat and traded the controller while drinking and catching up. Then we activated a mode where once you crash you can try to continue crashing your destroyed car as far as possible.
We played that way for an hour.
I also just enjoy the world in Zelda and Spider-Man games. I’ll either ride my horse just around the paths, enjoying the scenery, stopping occasinal monsters in Hyrule. When I’m Spider-Man, I just swing through the city, doing fun swing stunts, stop the occasional mugger, and explore the world on my own time.
Do the same. The world is really bad right now, phones and televisions and computer screens seem to only give us bad news. Go have fun once in a while. Check out a book from the library, have a coffee, phone a friend and just sit and laugh. Life is so much shorter than it feels, and you need to have fun.
Not to get too personal or mushy, but that’s also a reminder to me, the writer, Blake. You know, the guy writing this article right now?
Lessons over.
I meant to keep this brief but inspiration struck! Haha you suckers, enjoy the additional content!
I’ll aim to get back on schedule next week, but I’ll be moving the post dates to Thursdays. Thanks for reading, make sure to tell friends about this Substack, I want more people to see it!
Now that I’ve done my “work” I’m going to boot up my PS5 and play Ratchet & Clank. Sci-Fi action and big cartoonish guns!