Levels in Games, Levels in Life

This is a thought I had a while ago, but I never got around to posting on it, so I will do so now.

After reading about flow, I came to an interesting conclusion: one of the most important components of flow is "clear goals," and such clear goals make video games interesting. Woah! you're thinking. I know, I know, genius.

But it doesn't stop there. My next thought was, "Wouldn't it be interesting to create such a system, something resembling a video game, for ones life?"

Now I've got your attention.

Think about it. What makes games interesting? There's some sort of inherent scoring going on, and the main goal is to increase that score. Now, the "score" may be defined in several ways (getting further in the game, literally increasing the score, etc.), but there is always that score. And it is that score that makes the game interesting. What would a game be without the score to push you to move further and further into the game? Very, very boring.

Same thing with life. Now, I realize that life isn't a video game, but why not apply the same concepts? Create levels, a point system, rewards, etc, and see how it affects life. The first real life video game!

Then again, life is constantly a video game. The question is whether or not it's award winning.

Hm, this is something to think about. I imagine it would be a bitch to actually implement, but the application seems intriguing.

And of course, there's the fact that no amount of "winning" the video game will make you happy. That requires realizing that there is no video game and that you've created the entire illusion to amuse yourself.

Namaste.