What Gamers Unconsciously Know About Decision-Making That Most People Don’t

I hope you look at gamers differently after this

I chose the first 8.

Not players, but subjects.

In high school, we chose which subjects to take for the final two years. You do around 11 or 12 in the first two years, depending on the school, then narrow down towards your senior years.

I chose the first 8.

Mathematics, two languages, three sciences, geography, and history. Most people who went through the same education system as me find my selection to be weird.

Well, it was easy to choose because not most people thought about it in this way.

Passing was the goal. Most students wanted a ‘booster’ — either a humanity such as history or religious education, or an applied subject such as business studies.

I preferred to do the hard options because most people didn’t like it. It wasn’t a flexing act. The central reason was that I was genuinely interested in those subjects. I love science. So I wanted to do all the science subjects.

I love science so much, I remember reading the science textbook three times when I was in class three. But because I had to do 8 subjects, I needed to add two extra ones besides the 6 I had already chosen.

Business studies was not fun. Plus I discovered so much of what was expected of us was deducible from everyday life. I wanted to crack a safe. The sciences were safes. I wanted to crack those kinds of safes.

What enticed me about history was world history — not Kenyan history. How generations moved from the Agrarian to the Scientific Revolution. Also, I got an amazing teacher by the time I was getting into my third year of high school.

Geography was not difficult, but it wasn’t that easy to crack. Some concepts were commonplace, but it wasn’t that easy to break apart like business. At least, from my perspective. Don’t throw stones at me. It’s just how I viewed it.

I would have jumped at the chance to do Computer Studies. The subject has been an easy one for me since primary school. However, the class I joined was not one that taught its students computers. I was in the agriculture and business group. I wasn’t interested in either of them.

And that’s how I did the first 8 subjects. I was lucky to have gone to a school that didn’t force me to do an applied subject or a mandatory humanities subject.

This selection process is, in a way, a game. It’s also related to gamers. This article underscores the similarities between life and games. It will also show you how gamers have uncovered a secret of how to approach life through their daily gaming ventures.

So let’s break down the reasons why I took you back to high school.

The harder it is, the fewer the competitors

That’s the core lesson I can make from that small trip down memory lane.

At the time, I didn’t know I was doing it. I mean, who likes doing hard things?

Not me. Not you. Maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger. But difficult fields reduce the degree of competition you would otherwise find in easier fields.

Paul Graham gives the example of PhDs. A physics PhD graduate can do a French PhD, but the reverse becomes difficult. Both are respectable positions, but one offers a different fibre of difficulty. Not to go against other PhDs. Plus, comparison is irrelevant particularly when one has different ambitions.

Even among those who have done French PhDs, they decide on the tougher option of getting a doctorate, compared to the many who stop at the diploma level. The upshot is — the tougher the field, the fewer the competitors.

When I look back, it made it easier for me to succeed because I reduced the number of competitors. Physics had a countable number of students. Most people did chemistry and biology. An aggregate shows I had fewer people to compete with.

Passion for the subjects I chose helped significantly during this period. I could read them without feeling like they were a bore. Obliviously, the upshot was I could work on understanding the topics, with little concern about the competition.

On campus

I could pretty much say the same thing about campus.

I did an intercalated course while pursuing my MBChB. Four of us were selected after an application and interview process. It lasted ten months, after which we were awarded bachelor’s degrees.

Four students would mean regardless of your grade, you’d be top five.

*Cheers to that 🥂🍾.

In contrast, the MBChB class I was in had close to 500 students. They were the top students in the country. Imagine a class with the top ten students from the top fifty schools in the country. Each one of them competes to be at the top.

Tough!

If you’re into statistics, as I was when I was in my fourth year, I could see why the results always fluctuated. Top students were not always at the top. But, that’s beside the point.

Neither of these students, for statistical and other reasons, could very easily be top 5.

In my intercalated class of four, I could. Whether I read or didn’t.

But getting selected to do the course was not an easy feat. You must have demonstrated qualities the panel sought, key among them being good performance in human anatomy.

Most people found anatomy to be hard. For me, it wasn’t. It’s a blessing and a curse. You don’t study as hard as you should to perform exceptionally, so you don’t perform exceptionally. The marks are good, but they can be better. You just don’t give the extra effort.

Others loved the subject and found it just as easy. Their passion for it made them perform extremely well. These were the other students with whom we shared the same classroom for 10 months. I honestly don’t know how I landed in the same room with them.

Anyway, the point is clear — hard options make it easier to focus on other problems rather than competition.

Enter gamers.

Game modes and life

Games are designed to have various levels of difficulty.

I remember the first time my uncle bought me a Play Station. It was a gamble which he fell for. I passed my exams, so he had to honour his promise.

FIFA 2007 was the first game. I quickly learnt the ropes by starting with the easy mode. With time, I moved to semi-pro, pro then eventually, world-class.

Once you start playing at a world-class level, you never go back.

You want to succeed at the highest level possible. You want to crack that safe. Breakthroughs are liberating. Exciting. Winning a tournament at a world-class level of difficulty was proof of your mastery.

I lived for those moments.

Hardcore gamers do just that.

They prefer the hard options because it’s the most interesting. Consistently trying to find solutions at the highest level of difficulty prepares them for life.

Life is an infinite game.

You never know the curveballs it will throw at you. The best way to arm yourself is to practice it in hard mode. Gamers get to do this every time they play.

It doesn’t matter if the game is as simple as Flappy Bird or as tough as … well…that difficult game you can think of. My classmates tried to crack Flappy Bird for days until it became easy for most of us.

Hard modes prepare players for life.

Three things to note

Three good things come from playing games in the hard mode which can be substituted for life lessons.

1. You have a rest button

Games have reset buttons.

They help you restrategize. It’s better than life, which doesn’t give you that option.

Resetting the game makes you iterate your solutions with every trial. You fail fast and fail often. Eventually, you find the best solution.

I remember when I learnt about Subway Surfers. I would play it in and off class, whenever sleep crept up on me. Over time, I became so good, that I never crashed. Several iterations made this possible. I then discovered the best solution to the game.

At this point, the game became boring. So I deleted it from my tab.

Life, however, does not have a reset button.

Nevertheless, hard-mode games prepare you mentally. You know there must be soluble problems you can handle. What’s more, most people will not be able to crack the hardest problems. These are the ones you can work on with little competition.

2. You have little competition

The more the numbers in a category, the higher the competition.

It’s simple math.

Focusing on hard mode reduces the competition. You can then dive into the problem, which you have control over, rather than the competition, which you don’t have control over.

Stoicism stresses this point. Better work on what you can control than what you can’t. Gamers know the tools they can use at any given point at different game levels.

What they may not know is how they reduce the competition they have by working with hard modes over easy modes of any game.

It takes me to the last point.

3. You take a deep dive into problems

A deep dive into hard problems with minimal competition prepares you for specific knowledge.

General knowledge is the kind that can be easily packed into a curriculum and taught in school. I got the job I have because of my general knowledge of the subject.

I know how to manage a patient with urinary tract infections. Same as any other qualified medical doctor in the world. This is what I mean by general knowledge.

Specific knowledge, however, is what you acquire through iterations. Trial and error. Evolution is a game of specific knowledge. It’s why organisms are as diverse as they are with unique traits.

Hard-mode players acquire specific knowledge. This knowledge cannot be replicated that easily. It cannot be packed into a curriculum. It is only learnt the hard way.

Your life is part of evolution. Specific knowledge is inescapable. Gamers prepare themselves. Most don’t. Even better is they do it with little competition and with a deep sense of curiosity and drive to crack the different levels of difficulty.

Games, it turns out, are not as bad as we’re made to believe.

As I close…

Games can be addictive. No doubt about it.

But they can equip the players with key qualities that previously were absent in our daily lives.

Marcus Aurelius strengthened his resolve by preparing himself for the tough decisions he had to make. Playing the hard mode is a way of embracing stoicism.

Contrary to popular belief, choosing hard modes makes it easy, not hard. The best way to choose your struggle is to pick something you’re deeply interested in. Curiousity should then drive you.

It becomes easy for you to follow it when it's hard for others. That’s how you find your safe, waiting for you to crack it.

Now you can play the game.

PS: I chose the hard mode and started a school with the most unique form of delivering lessons — email. I have developed the only known platform in the world which offers courses via email. Other platforms do it via videos. So far, 15 students have already enrolled. How’s that? You can check it out here.