Dynamics
The dynamics are what drive the player to actually play the game. Although they do not directly enter the game in a literal sense, they shape the way in which we play it. The dynamics encompass the “why” element of our life, giving us purpose and attributing meaning for what we do.
Constraints
The first dynamic might seem counterintuitive. Constraints are restrictions, like a time limit or limited options in a game. The more constraints, the harder the game. Yet, without constraints, a game would be boring—too easy, almost meaningless. Constraints give meaning to choice and challenge. In life, it’s the same. Everyone is constrained in their own ways—by skill, ability, money, identity in relation to society, and more. These limitations make the idea of "perfection" an illusion. It’s working within, despite, and sometimes with these constraints that shapes who we are and our lives. Life isn’t just about skills and rewards; it’s about facing challenges and finding ways to push past them. Our day-to-day quests and levels present varying obstacles that build character and test how we handle situations that don’t go as planned. Overcoming hardship strengthens us. Constraints also appear as choices—whether as simple as selecting lunch from a menu or as significant as deciding between job offers. Each decision involves a trade-off, and it’s up to us to determine which opportunity cost is worth it. We live within numerous constraints, making a series of choices that ultimately shape our futures.
Progression
We are constantly growing as people. As we take in new information and undergo more experiences, we develop in various ways. We all begin our journeys in a given starting position composed of numerous factors, including both limitations and areas of potential, many of which are beyond our control. This starting position serves as a baseline: the combination of our choices and the events that follow lead us to continuously reach new states, each composed of different factors and qualities—some of which we do have control over. Over time, these newer states show development across a combination of qualities, such as certain skills, physical health, types of intelligence, and self-awareness. Everyone’s trajectory of states and the composition of their qualities is unique, but for most, there is an advancement of many over time. This progression gives us reason to work hard and strive toward our “win state”; once we experience the satisfaction of improvement, we crave more. A common misconception is that progression is a linear function. Although there may be an overall upward trend, the journey is rarely straightforward. In any quality, discipline, or skill, there are ups and downs, twists and turns, improvements and setbacks. To ultimately reach success, we must experience failure. Every course of improvement in any area is dynamic, and once we understand and accept this, it becomes easier to overcome failure—and quicker to achieve progression.
Emotion
Our emotions are a core part of what makes us human. We experience a wide range of emotions, each with three components: how we experience them, how they manifest in our bodies, and how we respond to them. Understanding these aspects helps us learn more about ourselves, allowing us to navigate life more effectively. Every emotion plays a crucial role in our well-being. While emotions like sadness or anger are often labeled as “negative,” and happiness as “positive,” this labeling is misleading. Even if an emotion feels uncomfortable, each one is essential for our overall health. Emotions help us survive, grow, connect with others, and drive motivation. For example, fear can protect us from danger, and anger can prompt necessary changes in our lives. We can’t selectively feel only “positive” emotions; to fully experience happiness, we must also know sadness. Avoiding emotions can lead to increased aggression and health issues, as our bodies react to suppression. Feeling and processing all emotions is vital for our growth. Although some emotions may be unpleasant in the short term, they have long-term benefits and help us make sense of our lives.
Relationship
We are communal beings. Humans need other humans; it has been in our instinctive nature to find “mates” and reproduce. Most of us belong to families and seek community where we can. Even today, studies show that social relationships increase mortality. Beyond this, relationships facilitate love, nurture development, and give us strength and support. They fulfill a need for affiliation, identity, and recreation. We might be the center of our worlds, driven by our personal goals and desires. It is true that our connection with ourselves should be most powerful. Yet the relationships we make with others can increase the quantity of motives we have in life. First, we have an aim to build and strengthen our bonds with specific people. Second, it is not only us we now care for, but it’s also others. When we connect with people, we also connect with the lives they live: the deeper the connection, the more concern we carry. Therefore, we also have an aim to invest in the lives of others. We engage with others both because of the connection they have with us, but also because we want their individual lives to be successful too.
Narrative
When thinking about our life, we often assign a coherent framework to it. For example, when we explain an event that happened, we establish a clear beginning and end, add the main point somewhere in between, and implement some context and build-up. In other words, we tell a story. Our lives can be described as a combination of many of these smaller events. When considering our life as a whole, we also do something similar: assign it a narrative structure. Reflecting on our pasts, it is common to implement a sense of plot, note distinct characters, some points of conflict, and other elements of a narrative. We do so because, first, the trajectory of any given life resembles that of many “stories” in the sense of there being successes and downfalls, important people, action, etc. Yet we also do this because it assigns a sense of coherence. We don’t simply go through a random combination of experiences. Instead, we often do things for a reason, and certain events and interactions lead to future occurrences. This rationality and connectivity allows for us to generate motivation which serves as our fuel, pushing us through courses of action. When the matters of our life make sense, we have reason to go about our days.
Mechanics
The mechanics stimulate action and create a framework for the dynamics to be implemented. They encompass methods of control and behaviors that are attributed to the player with the purpose of engaging the users.
Chance
Despite how much in life we have control over, some things are just beyond us. Events happen without reason all of the time, and sometimes they end up affecting us. The operations of entities around us, the weather and natural environment, and the actions of others in no relation to us are all out of our control. Although the decision of one person to go somewhere is not random for them, if we have no knowledge of their decision and decide to go to the same place on our own, running into them would be an act of chance. If it snows and school is canceled, this is also an act of chance. The element of chance opens up many opportunities in life. In a game, drawing random cards from the deck is an act of chance who’s outcome can alter an entire course of the game. In life, simply being at a specific place at a specific time is an opening for countless occurrences to take place. As a matter of fact, the existence of any one of us is determined by chance: a combination of millions of random developments is the reason each of us are born. Lacking the ability to control events of chance can be thought of as a constraint. Sometimes, it is– being unable to control some aspects and events in our lives is limiting. Yet it can also be freeing: allowing the course of life to lead you in certain directions can release much tension. Even though we cannot control an act of chance, we can control how we respond to them. In poker, we cannot control what hand we draw, yet we can control how we play it. It is how we handle what we’re given that shapes the course of our lives.
Competition
Competition relates to our performance in relation to others. People have a drive to succeed to the best of their ability, which to them can entail performing “better” than others (this is a loose term, for this quantitative measurement cannot actually be applied to many parts of life). Too much competition is unhealthy. Focusing on our “rank” and comparing ourselves to others removes our focus from merely living our lives. We can tend to implement the element of competition into parts of our lives where it does not belong or give it more weight than it needs. In many cases, the reality is that some person’s progress or achievements have no relation to ours. Our lives are only our own, and so competing with other people is often an irrelevant measure. Obsessing about the performance of others also takes the focus away from what is truly important: ourselves. Everyone is playing their own game. An individual performing better or worse than another at something does not mean or say anything about ourselves. The performance of others in any means, despite how close to our reality it may seem, has no impact on us. Someone who is highly talented in our field might be intimidating or discouraging to us, but it does not have any ability to devalue our talent. These feelings are valid and normal, yet these comparisons do not actually hold any value. With all this being said, some small amount of competition is beneficial, and thus, we use it as a mechanism in life. Working to “beat” others can push us to perform at the best of our ability. Thinking about anything as a competition implements action and engages us within whatever we’re doing. Even though competition might have an objective along the lines of “being the best” or “better than” someone else, it is actually never really about these other people. It can be helpful to think this way but only because it fuels us to work hard and succeed for ourselves and to make our own progress, not to be “better” than any other person.
Challenge
Life is full of challenges. Although one’s hardships may differ from another’s, everyone faces them. As unpleasant as they may be, it is impossible to escape hardships. So instead, we must embrace them. While it may seem counterintuitive, challenges are what characterize our life. How we face obstacles is the ultimate testimonial of character– it helps define the type of people we become. Overcoming obstacles also increases our level of maturity and advances us as people. We learn from handling difficulty and arguably much more than handling success. It is what evokes progression. “Challenge” can be manifested in several forms. Some are problems or inconveniences we can eliminate or work around such as if a flight is canceled and we need to sleep at the airport and take a bus instead. Others are types of experiences that require significant more effort in order to be completed; for example, we spend many more hours than the average student in order to succeed in math class if it is an area of weakness for us. Finally, there are some challenges that cannot be eliminated or solved, and instead, we must live our lives accepting them and working with them. These types of challenges are often types of constraints: limiting features that make our lives significantly more difficult. For instance, if we are disabled, this is both a challenge and constraint, for this is something we cannot “fix” and it places a considerable burden on our lives, forcing us to learn how to most effectively live with it.
Cooperation
Cooperation is when people work together to achieve a common goal. In life, we collaborate with others in numerous ways. In the workforce, we work with others on projects and tasks. Even hanging out with friends is an instance of cooperation: two people spending quality time (“working together”) to build their friendship (“achieve a shared goal.”) As skilled and intelligent we might be alone, other people can always offer us something new; we can always benefit from working with others. Even in a more individual task, some small amount of input from someone else can add some level of improvement. Through the relationships we build, we can use the people around us as assets in our life.
Feedback
Feedback is a great tool that we can use to better ourselves and our work. Throughout our life, we are lucky to be surrounded by many other people– friends, family, teachers, etc.– who possess information, tools, and experiences of their own. Although everyone is living their own life independent from anyone else, we are all living in the same world, and thus, there are many parallels between each life. If others in a similar position or situation to us communicate information from their lives, we can adjust our actions per their advice with the hopes of creating the most success. While feedback is a helpful tool, it can be easy to place an excessive amount of reliance on it. Although there are patterns in every life and while others have insight that can be advantageous to us, it still stems from a subjective place. The information communicated to us from another person is formed from their own perception of the world. Therefore, even if there can be truth in others’ insight, it is not always an accurate reflection of our truth. Feedback is also given to us through other forms. In a game, this is often portrayed through something like a points system or scoreboard. In life, feedback can be provided in evident ways such as a grade on a test or the number of calories burnt from your fitbit. Yet it is also given to us in less obvious ways– ones we have to actively find and interpret. As we live our lives, we are constantly making decisions, changes, and trying new things. We find out what works and what doesn’t through these actions’ outcomes. Unlike other types of feedback, this often doesn’t give us clear, direct results. Thus, it is our job to observe carefully by paying close attention to resulting patterns, signs, actions, and emotions and make sense of them ourselves.
Win State
In a game, there is typically a way to win. Whether it is who arrives first at the finish line, who gets rid of their cards the quickest, or when every challenge is solved, we play to reach some target ending goal. In life, this is manifested through our definition of “success.” Everyone has their own definition of success, and thus every player’s game has a different way to win. What one person wants out of life may be different from the next person’s. “Succeeding” means different things for different people: for one it can be to have a loving family, for another it can be to be a master in their profession, and for another it can be to find inner peace. It can be a combination of a few goals, and it can change once or many times throughout a player’s course of their game. A "win state" should be taken with a grain of salt. Even though we're defining this element with a concrete label, it is solely to give it a name and consider it within this broader framework. This label reflects something that can made up of many parts and that is susceptible to change; as we grow and progress, our values and perceptions of success are also likely to shift. With that being said, it is helpful to have this concept of our collection of long-term goals to help drive us to work towards them within our life.
Components
The components of the game are its basic elements: the “building blocks” of the system. These can be thought of as means to achieve the goals created by the dynamics and mechanics.
Starting Position: Initial State
We all begin our game in an initial state with features that are predetermined. In many board games, dice are rolled to decide the order in which players will play. In other games like poker, random cards are drawn and distributed to each player. In both these types of cases and in ours, chance affects how we begin our game. We are born into some body and are assigned traits like race, height, and likelihood of getting certain diseases by our genetic makeup. We’re also born in a place in a circumstantial state; most of us are born into a family and are influenced by the types of people our parents are, where we are raised, and how much money is accessible to us. Before we, the player of our game, can even begin playing, we are assigned some characteristics and circumstances that shape how we begin our journey.
Achievements: Accomplishments
Achievements are moments of victory. These can look as straightforward as graduating from school, getting a job, or getting married. These are examples of achievements that also likely correlate to the completion or establishment of a new level of the game. While these big wins are more obvious examples of accomplishments we might have, there are also several accomplishments that might not be obvious at first, but they occur frequently and are not of any less significance to our overall game. These can be as small as completing a task, showing up to an activity consistently, or learning something new. These moments all represent advancements in our lives, helping us progress and get closer to our "win state."
Avatar: Our Identity
We are the player playing our game and are represented in some form to the outside world through our “avatar.” This is a representation of us, the player, whom we can customize to look like and be whoever we want. On a physical level, we can present ourselves to others in any way we choose. We can decide how to “design” ourselves stylistically by the clothes we wear, make-up we apply, etc. Based on how we the players feel, we choose what gender and pronouns we want to be referred to by. We have full control over our avatar. We are the ones holding the controller– moving the game pieces or manipulating the screen– no one else has access to it. We have complete control over our actions, decisions, and personalities. Thus, we decide the types of people we want to be. Being kind, caring, and open-hearted are all choices that people make and that we can too. Although our starting position influences us and our games– it offers opportunity, inserts limitations, and presents direction– most of who we are is in our hands. The labels that truly define ourselves on a humane level are in our control.
Teams: Family
Teams of a game are a group of players who work together towards a common goal. Although every player is playing an individual game, we are able to cooperate with other players to help each other win. In our lives, our teams are the people closest to us. These are the people who want what’s best for us and who we have the strongest relationships with. These are our families. For many, these include the people genetically related to them, yet it is not limited to this. “Families” is a loose term and can include whoever we feel closest to. For some, families can consist of no one genetically related to them and only friendships developed later in life. For several, it can be a combination of both. In our game, as strong of a player we might be, it’s incredibly challenging to play alone. Having a solid team throughout our journey provides a basis of love and support that can allow us to thrive.
Levels: Stages of Life
Many games are composed of a number of levels. In order to reach any given level, the prior must be successfully completed. Levels insert structure within a game and allow the player to see where they are in relation to its full outline. In our game, “levels” symbolize the phases in our lives. They are the steps in a player’s progression and can also be thought of as the “chapters” in our narrative. We can divide the events that happened in our lives as occurring in different stages. As a player must finish or win a level to unlock the next, the stages in our life can also be defined by smaller groups of goals that are achieved. After unlocking the final level, we win our game– the short-term goals that characterize each level lead to the eventual achievement of the broader long-term goal: winning.
Quests: Experiences
Within each level of the game, there are quests we undergo. These are our experiences in life; they can be adventures, hardships, or any type of situation. As in a video game where one quest leads to the next or a series of puzzles or challenges that needs to be solved one after another, the events in our life have an order too: the natural progression of life allows for one experience to change us and then leave us in a position to begin another. More evidently, we categorize quests in sequential order because of the element of time– describing the events in our life in the order they happened helps us keep track of them all. Yet this can also be explained by the narrative structure we give life: sequencing our experiences helps us understand and analyze our life as a whole. We explain who we are today because of one experience, which led to this phase, which led to a big decision, which led to another experience, etc. While we define quests separately, they are all interconnected and impact us and the rest of our future.
Transactions: Exchanges
In a game, players can trade with each other directly, such as deciding to swap cards, or through a medium like a marketplace, just as in our real economy. In life, we make exchanges every day. Many of these are literal, involving the trade of goods, services, and money. For example, we buy and sell products, exchange labor for money through our jobs, and pay back loans with interest. Our economy has made it so that our survival relies on these transactions—we acquire shelter, food, and other necessities through trading goods, services, and money. However, transactions can also be non-literal, and we often don’t realize we are engaging in one at the moment. When we say “thank you” to someone, we are exchanging gratitude for their kindness. When we spend quality time with a friend or significant other, we trade our time for a deeper connection. When we exercise, we exchange discipline and effort for better physical and mental health. These examples demonstrate how transactions come into play in many forms, adding value and meaning to our lives.