rpg-irl

What is up with the survival mode of Skyrim?

On top of all the tropes that the game uses to provide the players with the perfect role-playing experience in the original version, this mode was added for the hardcore enthusiasts who want to have an even more immersive experience. Now, we need to sleep, eat and be weary of the weather. Not just sleep, we need to sleep indoors to get the adequate benefits. Not just eat, but eat cooked  food as eating raw food will contract food poisoning. Now, we need to take care not to get too cold or we'll literally die from this. So, we need to either carry hot food with us, or wear adequate clothing with enough warmth rating, or simply plan our travels so that we are not exposed to the elements for too long. It doesn't end there as the players can't even fast travel like they used to. All for the sake of a more immersive experience.

And it works like a charm!

As a noob to this game I was under the impression that this was what the game is supposed to be like when it came out around a decade ago. All these extra features really augments the immersiveness of this game and certainly makes it more addictive.

But why though? There is no doubt that this mode is much harder to play. But why do we like this so much?  Let's imagine we are the people who first came up with the idea to add such a mod to the game. Sleep eat and wear adequate clothing. Hmm... sound familiar? Food, clothing and shelter... गास बास कपास anyone?

Clearly, these people tried to resemble "real-life" as closely as possible. This is a sure fire way of enhancing the immersiveness right?

Well, if that is the case, this leads to somewhat of a contradiction. One might declare: But real-life sucks! That's why we are playing video games in the first place, to induldge in escapism so that we can take a break from the boring and difficult aspects of real life! While this is certainly true, the crucial difference between video games and real life is that the former has the illusion of control. Even with the survival mode, the players are given ample opportunities to overcome these said difficulties. This is the reason why people have difficulty levels in every game. To make it too difficult would not be fun!

So, there is fine line between immersiveness and difficulty. Also, video games have a crucial feature in them that separates it from real-world: you can respawn! Quick-save and reload, you will be good. Unlike in real life where dying means you stay dead.

So here is a proposal: instead of looking at video games and using real life as a lens to understand or evaluate them, perhaps there is a lot to learn from looking at real-life from the lens of a video game. Aren't we all role-playing to a certain degree? We are playing the roles of sons, daughters, husbands or wives, lovers and friends. Sometimes even enemies. Like a game character, we are endowed with "base" stats. There are lots of ways to enhance these stats. Going to school is probably one of the standard things to do for most people. This might be considered to be the "first mission" that players have to play in. After that, its all about making choices.

Writing this down fills me with optimism. We can just tackle life as a game. Take whatever choices that seems right to us--the world is your oyster kind of deal. The largest open-world game that you have ever played.  However, I feel sad that for some people, they are just born with below average base stats, or some other things that are beyond their control. Some people just play on a harder difficulty than everybody else. As mentioned above, there is fine line between having fun and the game being too difficult. What aboout those people who can't lower the difficulty? What do we do when a game is too hard?