I've recently become slightly addicted to Minecraft. Minecraft, for those that don't know, is a game that revolves around acquiring materials and crafting items, then doing as you please with those items. In Survival Mode (there is more than one way to play), you usually start off by chopping down a tree (in actuality you punch down a tree) and pick up the wood it drops, then turn that wood into planks, then turn those planks into sticks, then use a combination of the planks and sticks to make a pick-axe, then mine for cobblestone, and use a combination of cobblestone and sticks to make a stronger pick-axe to mine more. Making items isn't the only purpose of the game though, you also use the materials you mine for and pick up to build architectural structures, and in Survival Mode you build such structures to keep various enemies away from you during the night. In Creative Mode, you simply build structures because you want to.
I've been playing a bit of both. Now my descriptions aren't that in depth because my point isn't to talk about the game so much, but what it expresses. I play Creative Mode so I can make up crazy homes, and most recently to recreate the house I live in. In Survival Mode, I've basically hollowed out a mountain which is my fort during the night to keep out the creepers. All this requires a lot (and I mean a lot) of tedious work, and it requires a bit of creativity. I guess that's why I have so much fun with this game. I don't mind tedious work, and I enjoy creating quite a lot.
I've usually been attracted to game which allow a lot of creativity. I play Fallout and Skyrim because you get to play in various different ways which you make up. Disgaea allows you to build characters and teams the way you want to, making up strategies you like. Little Big Planet let's you make games. The Sims and SimCity allow to both create and manage a person's life or a city. I like MMO's (massively multiplayer online games) because you make a character and do with it as you please. All of these games have an aspect of creativity to them which attracts me, so I guess you could say my choice of games expresses the type of person I am.
Of course this is pretty obvious since everything we buy is an expression of who we are, but I've realized the games you play are a pretty good expression of you as a person. A while back, there was the Halo craze, I believe it was Halo 3 which had my friends and I hooked into Xbox LIVE. I had also been playing Call of Duty 4, but since everyone I knew was playing Halo I didn't play Call of Duty much. After some time, I became slightly bored with Halo. I remember people had figured out the best ways to play, also known as a dominant strategy, and now everyone was simply trying to do exactly as they were told to do to win. It involved a lot of jumping, and knowing where weapon spawns were and such. I pretty much stopped playing Halo all together and shifted full-time to Call of Duty. The reason I enjoyed Call of Duty more was the ability to "Create a Class." This meant I could put together a set of weapons, and abilities to play with which matched my play style. This lasted for quite some time, as I would consistently make changes and tweaks to my classes. This lasted for a while until someone found a dominant strategy, or exploited some glitch. Then I'd wait until the next Call of Duty to release, which began to happen yearly, and I'd get that one until the same thing happened. Then one day I vowed not to buy another Call of Duty game. It was bland and repetitive, and after a month or two of playing, I'd have to look online for the best class so that I wouldn't spend my whole playing time at the respawn screen.
After my departure from Call of Duty I would still hear people talking about the game; usually just raging about things that happened, while another gloated about their good night of gaming. I asked myself, how could they deal with the repetitiveness and the routine of the game? How did they not get tired of playing the game the same way every time, and watching everyone they played with do the same things they were doing? Then I realized, many of their lives were similar to their games. They were raised believing in the dominant strategy their parents taught them to use in the game of life; the strategy which was supposed to lead them to winning at life. Their lives were laid out before them not as a journey of choices, but a journey of well timed actions, which if done correctly gave you a x20 multiplier combo. It's something similar to an action game where you simply go from level to level doing the things the game designer requires you to do so you can finish the game. It's all streamlined.
This doesn't always coincide of course. Sometimes the games people play aren't such a clear representation of themselves, but most of the time I think it gives a pretty good picture of the person. I recently met someone who didn't play any video games, and didn't care for them at all. That probably should've been a red flag to someone like me who really enjoys video games, but I trudged on, keeping in mind that you can't stick to rigidly to assumptions. Thanks to the experience though, I can now safely say that even a lack of games can be an expression about someone, and that sometimes, you should just listen to your gut. Here are some connections I was able to make between personality and lack of gaming: First, they were all about maturity and work, leisure time was offensive to them, and gaming was childish. Non-gamers can be people who believe in a certain standard for maturity. Second, they needed consistent human interaction. Some gamers don't see people for weeks, a non-gamer might not survive alone. Third, they were an emotional maelstrom. Gaming can require a certain level of cool-headedness and critical thinking, really emotional people rage-quit. See, if I would've stuck by my original judgement, I would've saved myself from a strange and frustrating experience, but I didn't (like when I tried playing DC Universe Online on a cheap Dell laptop).
Consumption is an expression of the consumer, and games (or lack of games) can be a pretty good indicator of the type of person you are interacting with. This doesn't mean look at their game collection and walk away because you see Shaq Fu on their shelf, it just means that you can prepare yourself for certain things by looking at it. Maybe they have a thing for terrible vintage items...you can't be sure, just be prepared.
- Dennis
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