By the time I got to try playing Super Mario, the other kids were much more skilled than me. My brother played at their house more often than I did, and the other kids lived with the NES, so of course my skills were subpar.
All we knew, however, was that when I took the controller, I died a lot. And fast. I wanted to keep trying, but it wasn't any fun to watch Mario fall over cliffs and run into Koopas only to flash out and in and out of his super world.
So I was demoted to watching and solving puzzles. It wasn't the worst, but it wasn't the most satisfying, either.
My video game experience, however, didn't stop there. My brother and I eventually found games to play on our PC (the sometimes baffling puzzle game Myst made a particularly strong impression), and once I started dating, I played my boyfriends' consoles. Despite my spotty access, I became a gamer.
While I believe that games need only be fun to be worthwhile, I've also found that games not only distract and entertain me, but that they provide safe places for learning.
This newsletter? It owes its existence in part to Stardew Valley, a game where you, a disillusioned tech worker, move to your grandfather's dilapidated farm to start a new life. Each game day lasts 30 minutes in the real world, and during each one, you clear stone and fallen wood from the land, plant parsnips and melons and pumpkins, and make friends with your fellow villagers by talking with them and figuring out their favorite things. Soon you realize you need other resources, too, and so you learn to fish and to fight monsters so you can mine copper and iron and gold from the local mine.
For a tiny microcosm of a world, it bears striking resemblance to real life.
Just like in real life, after pleasantly bopping around for a while without too many cares, I started to crave more. There were upgrades and improvements I wanted, and to get them, I needed more money, called "gold" in this world. And to get more gold, I needed higher profits.
But I had a problem. There are seven or more crops available to grow each season of the game, and there are two ways early on that let you turn them into products that increase their value. And the seeds for each of the different crops costs a different amount of gold, and take different amounts of time to grow, and are worth different amounts once they are grown and turned into pickles or jelly or juice or wine. It was too much for me to hold in my head, and I was done messing around.
There's advice on the internet, just like for any game with enough players, but the wikis' tables of information felt confining, and I didn't just want to follow some random person's opinion. I wanted to figure it out, as part of the game.
Enter the spreadsheet. Of course I made a spreadsheet!
I made rows for each crop, and entered all the data I needed about them, and set up equations to calculate which final products were worth the most given the time it took to make them.
And it worked! Soon, the gold was rolling in, and I could afford the house upgrade (so I could have a kitchen to cook my produce to fuel my adventures) and the sprinklers (so I could spend more time meeting neighbors and fishing and mining) and, later, the wallpapers (because just like real life, it's nice to feel at home in your home).
As I played the game, I realized, "Hey. I could do this. Like, in real life."
And it's happened before. Remember last week's story of the motivation for my running hobby? Well, all that happened at the same time I was playing Breath of the Wild, the latest and an honestly breathtaking entry in the Zelda video game series. The world is ginormous (ginormous = technical term), and you run and glide and horseback ride your character over rolling hills and through scorching desserts and up frozen mountains. Some of my favorite moments playing it weren't the puzzle solving or the monster fighting, but the easy, beautiful movement through the natural world. And I realized, "Hey, I could run like this through the real world." So—to greatly oversimplify—I did.
And just like Breath of the Wild, Stardew Valley inspired me. If I could be practical and calculate how to make money to support myself there, I could be practical and calculate how to make money to support myself out here. I knew there would be more challenges, and I knew that I'd have to learn on regular, 24 hour days instead of the advanced learning pace of starting over every 30 minutes. But I also had hope and confidence that I hadn't previously had, and I knew that I had people out here who would help me.
Video games have inspired me to run and to start a new career and even—stories for another time—to garden and to embrace my learning style. Without video games, I wouldn't be who I am today, and I wouldn't be having nearly as much fun.
Mentioned in this issue: Super Mario Bros., now available for nearly any video game platform; Myst, also available widely; Stardew Valley, available for iOS, Android, Mac, PC, Nintendo Switch, and others; The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, available for Nintendo Switch and Wii U. No, I am not sponsored by any of these folks!