I was playing Dirt 4 as this idea entered my deeply focused mind. As you might know, as a gamer and reader of this blog, Dirt 4 is a rally game that has said to be somewhere in between a simulation and a totally arcade type of driving game. Of course I am once again playing with a game pad instead of a driving wheel. So, that makes it more of an arcade style of play. But what I actually wanted to represent and deal with this blog post is that how can playing something, be it simulation or not, to actually give you a perspective on how to approach a skill or some activity in real life and in reality?
Games can give you an idea of something, for example driving a car. This activity is not real driving. It is something a bit similar. Of course there are no risks. If you would really actually drive a car over 160 kilometers an hour on a road somewhere in the shore of lake Saimaa, Finland, you would have to really have some skills and know-how to even operate the car. There is this thought of driving and kind of a fantasy that are combined when you play a rally game.
Can playing games give you some skills that you can actually use in real life? Yes. Definitely. Sometimes these matters are technical details of the computer and what it does when you play one of your favorite games. I am many times thinking about technical and programming related matters when I am playing a game. I might think about how this particular game works, how it collects your input and keeps, sort of, count of the total progression of the player.
Sometimes, like when I play a basketball game, I start to think some matters that are related to real life basketball. There are lots of facts that you can connect to a video game. A game is always some sort of a representation of what it is trying to model. These models come from real life. Of course games can represent an idea of a game, also. There are types of games that you like to play and there are these genres that tell us about what kind of a game it is.
Playing games is an activity for mind but also for the body. This is why we have eSport events and it is completely understandable, today, that you can compete in playing games. Some games, like chess, are purely for mind and some games even test our nerves and reaction times. That is why some games you can compete in as a professional only if you are a young person.
There might be a way to think through your physical performance in some activity with playing a game about it first. If you think about basketball or driving you have to be able to explain to others what you are doing and how. For example, if you are a coach, you have this vision that no one in the team doesn’t have. You know how players in your team are feeling, what are their skills and you have also an approximation of how they will perform in the game that you are about to participate in soon.
It might be easier to make a game out of some sport than it would be to create a sport out of a game that doesn’t have anything to do with reality. Are we actually always modelling real life when we create a game? We definitely talk about games a lot. There is lots of going on in a game and in a real life. These all things kind of keep mixing up in our minds. Definitely games brings us a way to express things. Sometimes we mix reality with fantasy.
I am really into Java programming. This programming language has a lot to do with models that are made out of real life objects. It is called object oriented programming. If you are interested in this type of thinking I encourage you to seek more information. I don’t have a degree or a deep knowledge in psychology or philosophy. I still wanted to write about this matter. Maybe you got something out of this blog post. I will write a post again, soon.