What the hell is the fun in the game? | life

When I pick up a book and read it, I am not only reading, but also climbing the mountain of human civilization. And after each book, I not only expanded my knowledge base or enriched my emotional experience, but also climbed to a higher position in the mountain, or occupied a new territory in the spiritual world of all mankind, just like when playing the Red Alert game, I sent troops to unveil a black covered area on the minimap. That's how I read around September last year – it was like climbing a mountain, like fighting. The thoughts and emotions conveyed to me in each book are my booty, and every time I write a related sentiment, I use these booty to construct my personal spiritual world, thereby directly or indirectly obtaining pleasure. ("Direct" refers mostly to the immediate resonance or emotional fluctuations that arise from reading certain books, and "indirect" refers to the changes in life brought about by the progress of thinking caused by reading books.) ）

Until now, I still haven't been able to fully recover this state. Because since the launch of the League of Legends mobile game in late October last year, I have been playing this game in my spare time, and I basically haven't read much. During that time, I thought the game was so much fun!!! In the process, I also began to understand the essence of my reading: in fact, it was just to get a sense of pleasure, no different from playing games. Come to think of it, isn't the essential purpose of our human doing anything for personal pleasure? In the middle of October and December, I played games for 3-5 hours a day, and I also developed a "plan to score points" and eventually reached my goal (Platinum I-dan). During this period, I also thought about being a professional player, but after thinking about it, I rejected this idea. One day in late December, I suddenly felt that playing games was boring, tired of the process of winning and losing, and losing my sense of purpose on the other. So I thought about stopping playing and restarting the reading plan that was interrupted in October. However, when I went back to reading, I suddenly felt that reading was really boring! Why read? Isn't it good to play games?

After spending a lot of time playing games every day for a long time, I felt the pleasure of reading, and its intensity and slowness almost made me completely lose the desire to read. Because none of this is as fast as the pleasure of playing a game.

But it doesn't make sense to play the game aimlessly. In hindsight, it was a pattern that could be called a "life vacuum": although playing games can get the pleasure of the moment, it has little meaning in the long run; reading may bring long-term meaning, but there is really no momentum to read at the moment. Hesitation, entanglement, wandering... In this feeling, I read a few books hard, fortunately, the books I read had a strong correlation with what to do, and there was also the accumulation of previous reading, and I quickly found a little state.

In September, the amateur reading habits are gradually lost, the amateur time in mid-October is mainly to play games, november to December is the same, in late December to achieve small goals, after feeling tired, do not want to do anything, around January try to read to find the feeling. After about five months of tossing and turning—up, turning, and volting—I have become more and more aware of this natural law: if a person can continue to do something for a long time (the so-called "persistence"), it must be that this thing continues to bring him a sense of pleasure (positive feedback). Take the "play league of legends mobile game" for example, objectively speaking, it is easier for people to continue to do:

First, it has short-term feedback. Specific to a game, a player can receive feedback every minute and second in the game: small aspects, his gold coins, his experience points and levels, his skill cooldown, his equipment, etc., and players with slightly higher levels will habitually pay attention to each other's gold coins, equipment, etc., which are giving him feedback, so as to firmly grasp the player's attention, because he needs to make immediate decisions and actions based on these. In the big picture, the process of pushing the tower between the enemy and the enemy, and the resulting field of vision placement and the battle for the big and small dragons, are also feedback, telling the player all the time: The progress of what I am doing - to what stage? Pre-, mid-, post-? Is it about to win or lose? As a result, it comprehensively affects the player's heart, brain and hand. It's a fascinating state.

Second, it has long-term feedback. Set your sights on a season, and every time you complete a game game, players will also receive feedback: small aspects, each round has statistics. And our human nature itself is sensitive to data, because it allows us to understand our own situation more intuitively, love to look at data can be said and love to look in the mirror a truth; in the big aspect, the personal homepage also includes the data statistics of all the matches, the number of MVPs, the number of super gods, the average number of kills, etc. and so on. These also tell the player all the time: How good am I personally? Is it stronger or weaker?

Third, the strength of long-term feedback to prove, and then bring social value. In my opinion, this is the most important part of any popular online game right now, and the most important feedback design: the qualifying mechanism. Human nature inherently loves to compete, but to vary degrees. Players who win successive games will get a higher proof of strength - a higher rank, so that the player will gain a sense of pleasure, but also breed some sense of honor, and most importantly, it will enhance their social value in this circle, and social value will bring praise and recognition from others. There is a sense of pleasure, a sense of honor, a sense of sociality, is bound to increase the player's motivation to play the game, this closed loop is simple and perfect. So, in November and February of last year, I got up almost every morning at 5:30 to play games, because I was very much looking forward to starting a new game, looking forward to improving my strength through a lot of practice, looking forward to qualifying competition, and looking forward to getting a stronger proof of strength.

Through this physical practice, I also have to say that it is much more difficult for a person to "construct" his reading hobby from scratch than to "construct" a hobby of playing games. Because the whole process of playing the game is submissive: the brain directs the hand, the hand directs the game character, the brain and the game character merge into one, due to the design of the creator, the game character is getting positive feedback all the time, that is, our brain is always getting positive feedback (pleasure). For most of us beginner and low-level players, this process hardly requires us to pay mental activity, all we have to do is to "passively" follow the progress of the game. The whole process of reading is somewhat anti-human: first, it requires us to "recognize the concepts composed of words and understand the relationships between concepts" and then come up with a whole string of concepts (sentences), and our human brains are born better at processing information received by the senses than abstract concepts. Secondly, this process requires us to "actively" carry out activities rationally, in addition, the strength and speed of positive feedback we get from reading a book depends on our previous "concept accumulation (reading comprehension)" and "personal life experience", it can be said that if we pick up a book like a game, the amount and strength of the pleasure obtained is completely lucky. Therefore, it is very difficult to find a book that can continue to bring you a sense of pleasure without relying on or relying less on external help.

Although the two things bring different pleasures, in my opinion, the time and energy required to achieve "excellent level" for both things will not be less. But perhaps objectively, it may be easier to improve the ability to "play games" to an excellent level than to read books. Because as mentioned above, the feedback mechanism of the game is very obvious, which brings more pleasure to people, which makes it easy to continue to do. So, here, I also suggest that everyone who feels that they will not "stick" to the game can try to play the game, and it is best to play to the intermediate level, to experience the feedback mechanism embedded in the game, or to put it bluntly: to experience how the game continues to bring you pleasure. Apply this "mechanism" to your own work, or to other hobbies, as well as again.

Writing here, I also want to write a few more words. In fact, there is no chicken soup and chicken blood in this world that can improve people's execution. Even if there is, it only plays a non-essential role, and it is difficult to continue. And the people we feel "can persist" are not entirely more than we have perseverance, can endure hardships, more in that they can find the positive feedback in this matter in time, so they can continue to do, people do not care about the results, more concerned about every step in the process, for them, the sentence in Jobs's biography is their own life portrayal: the process is reward! NBA star Kobe Bryant said that "he can see the Los Angeles sun at 4 o'clock every day, because he is training in the stadium", we ordinary people feel so hard, but in fact, people are happy, people enjoy the fun of each "correct" practice, the fun of improving strength, the fun of competition, the fun of short-term winning, the fun of honor, reputation, and money after long-term victory.

I remember writing about the "game feedback mechanic" once before. This rewrite is also an explanation for the past two months of playing the game. Recently, reading the novel "The Distant Savior", I think it is just right to post a passage here: people fundamentally only face two problems: one is to survive and survive; the other is to answer the question of the value of life and let the heart have a place to settle. I am constantly trying all kinds of things, and I am also looking for a place for the heart to settle down. However, tossing and turning, playing games does not seem to be the rest of my heart, there is still something to read and write.