In this blog post, we will reflect on choices made in games in relation to real life and honestly discuss whether we should choose present pleasure or future success.
“Wow, it’s a blessed weapon (a very valuable item)!” I look at my friend shouting with a look of satisfaction on his face with envy. Not long ago, I gave in to my friend’s persuasion and started playing the online game Lineage. Like most games, the goal of Lineage is to create a character that represents you and raise its level. When I first started playing, I just mindlessly followed what everyone else was doing, beating up weak enemies to gain experience, and then repeating the process by hunting monsters of the same level as me to level up. However, as I became more familiar with the game, I began to think about different strategies and methods.
Then one day, through conversations with my friends, I learned the importance of choosing a hunting ground. In some hunting grounds, you can gain experience and level up quickly, but you can’t earn as many items and money. In other hunting grounds, you can earn a lot of items and money, but the rate at which you gain experience and level up is relatively slow. After much deliberation, I chose a hunting ground where I could gain experience and level up quickly. I thought that once I had gained experience and leveled up, I would be able to go to hunting grounds that gave more money and better items, so it would be more beneficial in the future than going to hunting grounds that gave good items right away.
However, I quickly lost interest in hunting for experience alone. On the other hand, my friend who was playing with me chose a hunting ground that gave more money and items than experience points, and as a result, although his level was lower than mine, he seemed to be enjoying the game by getting expensive items. That day, we were playing games together at a PC cafe, and my friend envied my high level, but I just envied him for earning money quickly and enjoying the game more with expensive items.
Then, it suddenly occurred to me that I was just like my character in the game. Giving up the money and items I needed to enjoy the game right now in order to gain experience and level up for the future seemed similar to my life as a college student, giving up my current enjoyment under the guise of investing in my future. I think this applies not only to me but also to most of the students at my school. This is because most students are giving up the happiness that is “right in front of them” in order to achieve a stable job, high salary, and comfortable retirement that “exist in the future.” From a young age, we hear adults talk about “future happiness” rather than “present pleasure.” They say things like, “If you study hard now, you’ll be able to have fun without worrying later,” and “If you get good grades now, you’ll be able to get a better job and be happy later.”
However, when I think about it, my dream was not to get a good job, earn a lot of money, or gain social status and honor. When I was very young, what I wanted was to build a family with someone I loved, have children, watch them grow up properly, and grow old together. When I was a little older, my dream was to become a professional Go player and win the world championship at the youngest age. My childhood dreams did not include high social status or a high salary. That was until then. My dreams themselves gave me energy and happiness, and just thinking about them was enough to lift my weary body.
As time passed and I grew older, what I wanted changed to high test scores that would get me into Seoul National University, comfortable and lucrative tutoring jobs, and good grades for employment. All of these are just tools for an uncertain future happiness, and none of them can make me happy in and of themselves. Then, how long must I sell my present happiness to purchase tools for the future? How much happiness must I sell to be happy now and in the future? How do I determine the standard for a day when I can enjoy carefree happiness using the tools I have accumulated?
Tired of just accumulating experience points in the game, I ended up not checking my character’s health properly, and my character died. Since I was already there, I decided to visit my friend’s hunting ground and started hunting there. The monsters there gave me quite valuable items when they died, and I became so absorbed in the game that I thought, “I should have hunted here earlier.”
I am still a beginner. I am still a beginner in life and in Lineage. There are countless hunting grounds I can go to, and each of them will give me different levels of satisfaction. If my level and experience points are my specs, then money and items are the entertainment that brings me happiness right now. I haven’t decided yet whether level or items are more important to me. But one thing I know for sure is that it’s more fun and efficient to hunt in two hunting grounds to some extent than to hunt in just one. The same is true in real life. If we consider “experience points in a game” as “studying for real-life exams” and “obtaining items in a game” as “the joy of playing billiards in real life,” then we should learn how to play billiards from time to time instead of just studying. That way, we will not get tired of studying easily and will be able to continue studying steadily.
As I was playing the game while thinking about this, I looked at the time and realized that it was already 1 a.m. Unlike my character in Lineage, who was working hard to level up, I felt like I was too obsessed with money and items in the real world. We decided to go home and prepare for the next day. For the sake of my level up, which will continue tomorrow.
I added this content to make the writing flow more naturally. The added parts describe the process of realizing the importance of choosing a hunting ground, the reasons why it made me worry, and how it relates to the situation in real life. This makes the writing flow richer and the theme clearer.
