While playing the online game Renegade, I was torn between experience and items, and realized that sacrificing the present for the future is just as important in real life. I realized the importance of finding the right balance between gaming and life, and how to combine studying and having fun.
“Wow, it’s a Chukdei (Blessed Weapon Scroll, a pretty valuable item)!” I look on with envy as my friend next to me exclaims with all the world in the world. I recently gave in to my friend’s persuasion and started playing Lineage, an online game. Like any other game, Lineage is about creating a character that is your alter ego and leveling him up. At the beginning of the game, I didn’t think much about it, just doing what everyone else was doing: beating up minions, training, leveling up, catching the right monsters, and leveling up again. But as I got more and more familiar with the game, I started to think about different strategies and methods.
One day, through a conversation with my friends, I realized the importance of choosing your hunting grounds. I realized that some hunting grounds gave me a lot of experience and leveling up quickly, but not a lot of items and money, while others gave me a lot of items and money, but a slower rate of experience and leveling up. I chose the hunting grounds that gave me the fastest XP and leveling. The idea was that once I had gained experience and leveled up, I could go to hunting grounds that gave more money and better items in the future, which would be more beneficial than going to hunting grounds that gave good items now.
However, I quickly lost interest in hunting for experience. My friend, on the other hand, chose a different hunting ground that gave more money and items rather than experience, and as a result, he seemed to be enjoying the game with expensive items even though his level was lower than mine. That day, we were playing in the PvP room together, and I envied him for his high level, but I only envied him for making good money right away and enjoying the game more with expensive items.
Suddenly, I realized, ‘Isn’t my real life the same as my game? I saw myself as a college student giving up the money and items I needed to enjoy the game right now in order to gain the experience and levels I needed for the future, and I saw myself as a college student giving up the pleasure of the present in order to invest in the future. I think this is not only true for me, but for most students at my school. This is because most students are giving up the happiness that is “right in front of us” in favor of a stable job, a high salary, and a comfortable retirement. From a young age, we hear adults talking about “future happiness” instead of “present pleasure”. “If you study now, you’ll be able to have fun later without worrying about anything,” or ”If you get good grades now, you’ll be able to get a better job later and be happy.”
But when I think about it, my dreams weren’t about getting a good job, making a lot of money, or gaining social status and honor. When I was very young, all I wanted was to start a family with someone I loved, have children, watch them grow up right, and grow old beautifully together. Even when I was older, my dream was to become a professional Go player and become the youngest person to win a world championship. My childhood dreams did not include things like high social status or a large salary. Until now. My dreams became energizing and happy in themselves, and I could wake up tired just thinking about them.
As time passed and I grew older, the things I wanted changed to include high test scores that would get me into Seoul National University, comfortable and well-paid tutors, and good grades to get a job. All of these are tools for an uncertain future happiness, but they can’t make me happy in themselves. So how long should I sell my present happiness to buy tools for the future? How much of my happiness should I sell to be happy now and in the future? How do I define the day when I can use the tools I’ve accumulated and enjoy worry-free happiness?
I grew tired of playing games that were all about gaining experience points, and eventually I failed to properly check my character’s health, and my character died. I decided to try a hunting ground with a friend’s character and started a new hunt there. The monsters died and gave me some pretty valuable items, and I got back into the game to the point where I thought, ‘I should have hunted here before.
I’m still a beginner. I’m still a beginner in life and in Lineage. There are an infinite number of hunting grounds I could go to, and each will give me different levels of satisfaction. If levels and experience are my specs, then money and items are my current happiness. I haven’t yet decided which comes first, levels or items. But what I do know is that it’s more enjoyable and efficient to move back and forth between both hunting grounds in some moderation than to hunt exclusively in either one. The same is true in real life. If you think of “in-game experience” as “studying for a real-life exam” and “getting items in a game” as “having fun playing billiards in real life”, then you shouldn’t just study, but also play billiards once in a while. Only then will you be able to stick with it and not get tired of studying.
While I was thinking about this, I realized that it was already 1:00 am. Unlike my Lineage self, who is leveling up diligently, my real-life self seems to be too obsessed with money and items. We decide to go back to bed and get ready for tomorrow. My leveling will continue tomorrow.
This is a natural extension of the post, as I’ve added more information about how I came to realize the importance of choosing a hunting ground, the story of how I came to think about it, and how it relates to real-life situations. It makes the post flow better, and the topic is clearer.
