My
goodness, is it ever hard to come up with something to write about this week.
My brain seems to think that, since I cheated on my blog last week, why not
this week? Of course, the answer is that, if I did that, soon I wouldn't have
any new blogs.
It makes me
think back to video games I used cheats to play when I was younger. The first
one that comes to mind is Age of Empires. For those of you not familiar with it,
Age of Empires is a medieval RTS (Real Time Strategy) game. That means it’s a
game where the player controls an army and moves it around the map, fighting
your opponents armies in real time (as opposed to turn based, like RISK or
Civilization). At the same time, resources are gathered and spent on buildings,
research and troops.
Not long
after I started playing the game, I was introduced to cheats. These were
commands I could type to do things such as give me special units, kill all my
enemies or give me free resources. The only ones I used very often were the
resources ones – it saved a lot of time waiting for them to be gathered and let
me build things much faster. It also made it impossible for the computers I was
fighting to beat me.
I actually
thought I was good at this game.
At some
point in time, I decided I should play the game without cheats and discovered I
couldn't. Without those free resources coming in, I just couldn't keep on top
of my army well enough to beat anything harder than the “easy” computer. In the
end, I always had to return to typing “powpowpow” about twenty times and destroying
my enemies with my army of bazooka wielding, tricycle riding babies.
The same
sort of thing happened with Morrowind (Elder Scrolls III, also known as Skyrim’s
grandpa). That game was hard when you
started playing it. Before you raised your character to a decent level, worms
could kill you. Luckily I once again was given cheats, which made it so I could
actually play the game. Unfortunately, once again, without those cheats I can’t
play it at all.
Cheating
makes everything so easy and our brains are wired to do everything the easiest
way possible. Once we know there’s an easier way, it’s hard to go back to the
harder way. But there’s something we don’t realise about cheating until it’s
too late – and that is that enjoyment doesn't come simply from winning; it
comes from overcoming a challenge. Those games I mentioned? I don’t play them
any more because they aren't fun if I cheat and my brain gets mad at me if I don’t
take the easy route and cheat.
Just so it’s
clear that this doesn't just apply to video games, in elementary school I was
the biggest cheater ever in the game 7 Up – and I was never caught even once.
In this game, all the kids hid their heads in their arms on their desk while
seven kids that were “it” went around and each secretly tagged someone. Then
the seven kids went stood at the front of the class while the seven tagged kids
guessed who had tagged them. If they guessed correctly, they switched with the
person who was “it”.
Cheaters in
this game were easy to spot and call out because they had to lift their heads
to see who tagged them. Then there was me. I figured out that if I positioned
myself just right, I could see the floor and, consequently, could flawlessly
pinpoint my tagger by the shoes they were wearing.
After
cheating made this game boring, too, I was able to use this skill to always
choose the wrong person so I didn't have to leave my desk and participate more.
Games are
meant to be challenging and so is life. There’s only one thing that cheating
and taking short cuts achieves and that is getting something done. But just
getting something done isn't enough, because if it isn't done properly it
becomes empty. Cheating in games makes them boring. Cramming for a test so you
can pass leaves your head as empty as when you started. Stealing things makes
them worthless. Taking the challenge out of life makes it feel dull and meaningless.
So, get out
there and challenge yourself. Do things and do them right, because in the end
it’ll feel more rewarding and you’ll find you've accomplished far more. I know
I did and I ended up with a pretty good blog post.
Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.
If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.
