Life worth playing
Photo: Dino Ðula
The dawn is breaking. The city is asleep. The darkness blanket is slowly lifting. There are not that many sounds I can hear bouncing off the walls but my own: my steady breathing, my steps rhythmically hitting the pavement, my running clothes rubbing against each other. I'm almost home, when the song I'm listening to suddenly stops and I hear an ominous voice in my ears saying: „The zombies are approaching.” With my face covered in fear, my heartbeat increases as I slowly turn back only to be met with an empty street. Of course, I think to myself, it's just an app.
Game set. Run!
If someone had told me, a month prior to this event, that I'll be excitedly waking up every day at 6am for an early morning run, I would have shook my head and laughed at the idea. But somehow an app that told the story of a post-apocalyptic world, ridden with zombies, managed to push me out of my comfort zone. It did so quite effortlessly by simulating a story that I knew was not real but my brain was eager to accept as plausible to the extent of making me work for it.
In essence, this is how most of the modern apps, meant to gamify your life, work.
We often think everyday life is boring and mundane, what with repetitive chores, tedious jobs and bills to pay. Why wouldn't we want to seek escape in a fictional world where we can be someone else with a glorious purpose in life? That is what drew me to games in the first place. Playing any role-playing game (RPG) meant I could pretend, even if for just a while, that I wasn't a student with a dull school life; I could be the hero that was promised or a brave adventurer willing to explore new cultures. Instead of Maths and Literature, I could study Magic and Spells, and rather than helping my mum change the curtains, I could go on a quest for a mythical beast. But most importantly, it was easy to identify my purpose in this (pretend) life.
But then I grew up and realised life is not a game and, as a responsible and diligent adult, I had to make choices a younger me would not approve of. That is until I grew up some more and learned that there exist games whose purpose was to make me a responsible and diligent adult. And I was quick to jump on that train.
Photo: Dino Ðula
Level up
Zombie's run was the first-ever game I tried that incorporated game mechanics into my real life. It is the one mentioned in the beginning of this article, but it was not the last one.
Gamifying life isn’t just about making yourselves fitter or healthier but also learning new skills or improving the existing ones. My next encounter with an app that, I believe, made me better was during my brief life in the south of Spain. Knowing the local language in a country as big as Spain is an imperative as the main part of everyday communication is done in Spanish, which is why I had to work hard to become fluent. What helped me immensely was Duolingo – (probably) the world’s best-known app for language-learning. Duolingo incorporated community engagement, experience tracking and streaks to keep you on the site as long as possible, as often as possible. And everyone was ok with it because we understood that the ones benefiting from this the most were the users themselves. Over the years Duolingo has improved by offering stories to read and listen to, as well as discussion boards where you can voice your opinions or seek answers to questions you might have. But it has never become useless.
Another app that aptly changed my life by helping me get a better grip on my daily tasks and habits was Habitica. The most “game-y” of them all, Habitica allows you to create an avatar that tackles your chores and fights frightening in-game monsters in your name. You can support your avatar by completing your tasks, meeting your deadlines, and sticking to your habits. When a few of my friends joined, we would regularly form parties and take on harder quests that simply put more importance on us being diligent and conscientious or else our avatars would meet their untimely deaths.
One tree a day, keeps the phone away
But, with this many apps, an already scattered mind, and the stress of modern life, I eventually sought something that would help me be more mindful and present. Ironically, I found it in another app simply called Forest. The premise was straightforward – you would set up a timer for how long you would like to remain offline (without checking your phone) and during that time you would grow a tree in the app. If, for any reason, you would pick up your phone before the time was up – your tree would die. Forest walks a fine line between keeping you interested, while at the same time pushing you away. Much like with Zombie’s run, Forest allows our brains to make the conscious decision to participate in this play-pretend world for the simple reward of a digital tree. And it was well worth it.
I won’t say that a life without a phone is a worse life – it depends on what works for you. Given my past, my experience and interests, gamifying apps were the perfect thing for me to improve my life and they might be for you, too. As long as you use it in moderation and, more importantly, as long as it makes you happy.
We only get one life in this “game” that we play – better make it enjoyable.