How to to level up like a video game character

Why do people play video games for so long?

A lot can be learned by observing the obscene amount of hours some people invest in playing video games. As a kid, I would also clock 12-hour days playing them, and for the last 10 years, I haven’t owned a console because I don’t trust myself to get anything done if I did own one.

Personally, I was a big fan of what they call RPGs (Role-Playing Games) like ‘The Sims’ or ‘Runescape,’ where you invest time in leveling up your character and have the creative freedom to do it in a way that you like, as opposed to following a fixed storyline.

Now we have come a long way since Pong, and games appear to be getting even more addicting; with teams of behavioral researchers employed by big gaming companies who have the sole objective of keeping you coming back to play and wanting more.

So how do they do this?

Well, at a very high level, almost all games have one thing in common. They make the user feel like they’re progressing. And they do this or the user will get bored.

So lets break down the stages of how they make it achievable for how you can level up.

1.0 You get clear instructions on HOW TO LEVEL UP and trust the process.

Within a game, they clearly map out the instructions of what needs to be done to lead you to the desired outcome. The second element to this is the fact that you trust the process is half the battle because it means you keep trying until you succeed - we don’t doubt that they would lie to us.

A good example that demonstrates the power of belief is when babies are learning to walk. They aren’t told to give up if they can’t walk yet. They are constantly observing humans walking and therefore continue until they can too.

Unfortunately this isn’t the case with a lot of other scenarios in life. There are a lot of direct and indirect external voices around us telling us what is and isn’t possible, which makes trying to level up more off-putting in real life.

Personally, one of the hardest things I have found with entrepreneurship (I really do hate that term) is that you constantly doubt whether the work you’re putting in is going to be worth it; i.e., is it going to lead to an outcome, and are you going to be successful.

There isn’t really a direct blueprint you can follow when starting a business, especially if you’re trying to break new ground, as there are so many ever-evolving factors. Whereas, if the goal is to ‘get fit’ or ‘lose weight,’ there is more of a framework that has been proven to work - e.g, eat less and be more active.

So yes, some things require a little more faith and resilience, but ultimately the first step to leveling up is you’ve got to trust yourself that the goal you are going for can be achieved. At times, you might feel a little delusional, but once you know it’s possible, the time you give yourself to figure it out and get to that outcome will increase considerably.

Bonus thought: what video games do very well is they standardize every character which isn’t the same as the real world where humans learn in different ways and have varying strengths and weaknesses. It’s easy to create a blueprint when everyone has the same starting point and everyone requires the exact same amount of effort to level up certain skills.

2.0 Indecision is removed

If a video game character dies or fails in real life, you can respawn.

Admittedly, you’ve got to be a little more careful in real life as you don’t want to go killing yourself or causing irreversible damage to your body or mind, but statistically, you need to look at all decisions rationally.

All decisions have consequences or, in business terms, opportunity cost where the time spent doing one thing might be better spent doing another, but 90% of all these decisions you need to make throughout the day will not be critical - especially when you’re younger.

So what do you do? Well if you don’t know what option is better, A or B, and new information or findings isn’t helping you make the decision, then just pick one.

The result? 

Even if you run up the wrong hill and have to deviate to get back on the right path, you’re still going to get there quicker than the person who never runs to either hill. From what I’ve learned in the 30 years I’ve been on this earth, most people stay stagnant and never make any decision.

3.0 Accelerated timelines - Rome WAS built in a day.

Age Of Empires (one of my favorite games of all time) is fun because it can simulate timelines from the Stone Age all the way into the year 3000 in a matter of hours.

This stimulates (or shall we say tricks) our brains far more than studying the same number of hours on a subject because you can see a clear outcome of your work. In real life, it’s almost impossible to dominate the world of music by shredding guitar or become the number one Chess Champion in the world with only 24 hours of practice. In the video game world, you can.

Think about it, if a video game was played over 80 years (the average human life span), do you think the same number of people would play it until the end?

Ohh hell no. People, understandably, would give up earlier.

Fortunately, or unfortunately if you were 6 year old Sam who wasn’t taller enough to reach the biscuit tin when he was younger, you can’t speed up the timeline of your life. If given the option, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to have a shorter life either. Yet it is for this exact reason that people give up on their goals earlier than they should.

4.0 The shiny short-term blinds us of a fulfilling long-term. 

Real-life opportunity cost can’t be seen and the best way for me to describe this is by using the example of watching a Netflix series. 

You wouldn’t want to watch a 10-hour film. As much as I love Lord Of The Rings, even the extended film edition is too long for me. Yet at the same time, people can binge-watch full seasons of their favorite shows if it’s broken up into 10x 1-hour episodes.

Video games work the exact same way, breaking up gameplay into missions, and just like that you’ve “wasted” days of time. The outcome? Well we’re all different, but if you’re anything like me, you think, "That was good, but man, I’ve wasted a full day," which then makes me end up feeling rubbish about myself.

If you play short-term games, you need to expect short-term gratification, and my bet is if that was fulfilling enough, you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog. To find deeper fulfillment, you need to work on something that requires a longer-term commitment.

Now to do that is the reason we need to zoom out.

80k View’s goal is to help you level up like a video game character but in real life.

Here are the three main ways 80K View helps you upskill like a video game IRL.

80K View shifts people’s perspective of time and helps them leverage it

As mentioned above, the first step is to shift 80k’ers’ perspective on time - 80k’ers is that what we are going to call our community? - anyway, we need people to zoom out and realize that if they don’t put in the work now, it’s going to be too late to achieve their goals further down the line.

For the marathon runners reading this, you’ll understand that it's far more possible to shave off 1 second off of your mile time for every mile you run but almost impossible to try to shave off 26 seconds in your final mile. 

There’s a well-known saying, “do easy things for a hard life or do the hard things for an easy life,” so part of our mission at 80K View is to help people reconsider their relationship with time. Help them see it as an ally working with them, not an enemy working against them.

80K View removes indecision and gets people going

You can have anything you want but you can’t have it all. To do this, we first need to help them prioritize the things that they want to achieve the most. Then from there, we need to get them to set future dates of when they want to achieve their future targets and help them reverse engineer the steps involved to get them there.

By helping people prioritize the things that are most important to them, they will be encouraged to get going quicker and as a result will actually give them more time to execute on their goals in the first place.

80K View holds people accountable

While the 80K View tool itself is designed to help you map out what needs to be done, our goal is to leverage its community to help propel you toward completing those goals. People who, like you, want to change and who want a more fulfilling life.

Not everyone in the world is going to use 80K View, nor should they. Most people say they want to change but don’t have the bravery to do so. But not you, you’re different.

By being connected with other ambitious people like you, you’ll not only fuel each other to achieve your goals through excitement and, dare I say, perhaps some friendly competition, but most importantly, you’ll form bonds with these people which will mean you won’t want to let each other down.

80K View shows you how far you’ve come

The final element to help people level up like a video game character, which I think gets overlooked, is the retrospective aspect. Sometimes you’re so focused on the future that you don’t realize you’re in the middle of what you used to pray for. And just like before, it will happen again with your future self.

One of the core benefits of 80K View is that over time, you build up an awesome life journal that you can look back on. Having used it for the last seven years, I can jump back to any month and know what awesome milestone I achieved that month, where I traveled to, who I spent my time with, and even get nostalgic, reflecting back on how far I’ve grown since then.

I’ve learned so much about myself and about life itself and you will too.

Maybe futuristic, and we only have a rough idea of how it would look, but we’re planning on including some gamified feedback that generates you as a simulated character.

Maybe it’s a 2D animation that generates a 30-second highlight reel.

Maybe if the technology gets crazy enough, we can turn this into a 3D animated video game movie for you to watch… maybe a video game that your kids can play… maybe not just your kids… maybe all the people that love you.

The truth is we don’t know, and I’ve done this enough times to know that whatever idea you start with, it almost never ends up being the final idea but it ends up being better than you could have ever imagined.

That said, the underlying message will not change. we want to make you feel proud of your life; documenting your favourite moments so that when you’re 93 years old, you can look back and smile.

Conclusion:

Overall, the goal is to make leveling up in the real world feel just as fun and attainable as you are able to in a video game.  While at the same time, just like with any video game character, help people archive their life story so they look back on it in the end as a [real life] game that was worth playing.

It’s going to take us years of consistent tweaking and iterating from your feedback to get it right, but there is no doubt in our mind that it’s possible. We are excited to have you on this journey with us.

Forwards ever, backwards never. 

Sam