The Game Called Life

"Life is a game. It is meant to be played." This is the slogan of one of America's biggest arcades, Gameworx.

I agree. Life is a game: a game of different pros and cons; a game full of mystery and adventure; a game filled with happiness and sorrow, success and failures. And just like any computer game that we play, we always do our best to get the highest score, reach the finish line, or defeat all those foes and win the game. We should also do the same with our lives.

Now, let me compare life to a game of Diablo 2. For those who don't know what it is or haven't played it yet, I'll give a brief background of the game to understand what I'll be writing henceforth. Diablo 2 is an RPG (role-playing game) where you travel to different places to hunt and kill the three prime evils. Along the way, you complete certain quests and collect gold, items, equipment, and many others. As you traverse further and further, you level-up (as in all RPG's) and earn skill points and attribute points.

You begin by selecting your character. There are seven actually (if you're using the expansion set). And for every character class, there are various pros and cons, having different skills and combat styles. In life, each person is different and unique from each other. No two people are exactly and aboslutely alike: physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally. And that is why one needs to understand others to be able to coexist peacfully.

Of course you start at level one with ample equipment to start you off. You talk to some NPC's (non-player characters) for your quests and leave town to start kicking some demon butt. As we start with our lives, we don't have the wits or skills to face the world. More often than not, we depend on others who will do most of the butt-kicking for us. Leaving town is like going out of our homes facing the different challenges of the outside world.

As you scour through the blood moor, zombies, fallen, and quill rats prowl the area. It's easy to slay them and gain experience since they're the first enemies you encounter. And more often than not, they're a one-hit-kill. Just like ourselves, when we were still younger, the problems we usually face are those that we can tackle and solve at once.

After killing enough demons and undead, your character levels-up. You gain five attribute points and one skill point. You have the choice of where to allocate those points. Here, when you've been through enough already, you gain experience and learn from those small problems, so that next time you'll know what to do. And as time goes by, you get stronger and stronger to the point that some problems are like a speck of dust in your eyesight. Decision-making is also seen here because once you've dropped your points to a certain attribute/skill, there's no turning back. This is the same when you complete certain quests and claim your reward(s).

As you continue to go deeper into the wilderness, you get stronger, and so do the monstrosities you face. The only thing is that the monsters become stronger faster than you do. And sometimes it reaches the point that it'll take a lot of time and skill just to finish them off. It's the same thing in life. As we grow up, we face harder and different problems, and they will not wait for us to reach the best time for them to be easily expelled. Sometimes, we are confronted by difficult tasks and problems which are hard but possible to solve.

For those who have played, have you encountered a situation wherein you do the hit-and-run technique just to fend the monster off? There are some things that we don't want to occur to us but just happens, like the death of a loved one or being teased by class bullies and such. They keep on lurking upon you, and it's hard or almost impossible to avoid. That is why whatever happens whenever, wherever you are, you must always be ready for it.

And here comes the worst part of it all: the death of your character. If the monster is just too strong or you got surrounded by lots of them (or they were just plain lucky to have slain your character), your character dies; however, upon his/her death, he/she is respawned at the nearest town and given another chance (unless if you're in hardcore mode where you can live and die only once). If we have failed, we don't stop. We continue to strive further as long as we are still living. God supports us from above and guides us through our ways.

Now, take my level 88 Amazon for example (which unfortunately got deleted while the PC was reformatted). She's already in hell difficulty with only the Baal quest left to be finished. She has some of the best and strongest equipment, and yet it's still hard to slay all those ruthless and (some) useless fiends out there. She still gets killed (but rarely). It doesn't mean that just because we are already strong and experienced, we can already face all kinds of problems without failure. It may still happen. We must not be complacent. Oftentimes, complacency is the main reason of failure.

In the end, you defeat the different bosses and finish the levels of difficulty of the game. Those bosses are just like the ultimate problems that are crucial in the course of our lives. You fail, you can't get further; you succeed, then you succeed and pass.

In the case of MMORPG's (massively multiplayer online role-playing games), you get to meet different kinds of people: people whom you get together with in a team or people who will just backstab you or make your life hard for you. Yup. We meet different types of people in our lives, and not all of them are good nor bad. And most of them are not the same as you are. Thus we need to learn how to mingle with them and go with their flow and make as many true friends as you can. They are also vital for your success in the future.

Well, in this game called life, let's do our best and get the high score and reach the finish line. Are you ready to kick some serious butt and play to your heart's content?