Caught in a Game

The past couple months my best friend and I have been playing League of Legends together.  Classified as an esport, teams of five people square off against each other to destroy the other team’s base.  It’s a game of both wit and skill, and it’s addicting.  I was reluctant to start playing in the beginning, because I know that when I start something I become very focused on it, and can easily lose sight of nearly everything else.  I’ve avoided playing computer games for years because of that tendency in me.  But now, I sometimes wake up thinking about strategies, or what champion I want to save up game points to get, and my friend is likely to call within moments of waking whenever he has a day free to ask if I want to play with him.  He’s even more obsessed than I am, and has probably played twice as many games as I have over the same time period.

When I lived within driving distance of a fencing school (now the closest is an hour’s drive away, and on a schedule that makes it difficult for me to participate) I used to really enjoy learning the sport of fencing.  I didn’t do it long enough to get really good, but it was so much fun, and I’d stay until the gym closed and the instructors were ready to call it quits practicing and learning.  Fencing is often called “physical chess” and I think the mental aspect of it appealed to me almost as much as the physical.  Many sports do have a mental aspect to them, where outsmarting your opponent can be a factor second only to outplaying them with your physical skill.

I enjoy putting both my body and my mind to the test, challenging myself and competing with myself or others.  I’m always trying something.  Yesterday for example, I remembered watching a karate class  years ago learning a roll, where the students tumbled forward rolling across their shoulders and backs to land on their feet.  It was different from your standard forward roll in gymnastics, and remembering watching them I tried both in my living room.  Sometimes I’ll stand on my hands, or attempt to jump on or over something, just to see if I can.  And puzzles. . . if someone tells me that there’s a problem or logic test that is particularly difficult to solve, you can bet I immediately start working on it.

So, seeing League of Legends as a challenge similar to these other pursuits may be an elaborate justification on my part for why I’ve spent so much time on it.  After all, classified as a legitimate sport or not, it is still a computer game.  It’s hard to ignore the prevailing bias that any kind of computer or video game is a mind-rotting, life-destroying waste of time.  They’re just games.  But aren’t physical sports games too?  Isn’t chess just a game?

All animals play.  Humans play.  It’s even been found that play helps develop the brains of both animals and people.  Sometimes that’s reported with the implied idea that it develops their brains for better, more worthwhile pursuits – that serious business of living.  Games are separated from “real world” tasks.  Whether written about video games, or physical sports, it’s often connected to how it improves their “real lives.”  Everything gets compartmentalized.  Beyond the scope of this single post and something I want to write about later is this compartmentalization in all aspects of our lives where everything is turned into preparation for something called life, rather than being seen as part of our lives.

But for now, I want to close with the still unfinished thought that maybe meeting challenges in any form (even in games) isn’t so much a distraction from life but an integral necessity of it.

To be continued. . .