In this blog post, we will look at choices made in games in relation to real life and honestly discuss what we should choose between present pleasure and future success.
“Wow, it’s a 축데이 (a blessed weapon scroll, a very valuable item)!” I look enviously at my friend next to me, who is shouting with a look of triumph on his face. Not long ago, I gave in to my friend’s persuasion and started playing the online game Lineage. Like most games, Lineage is a game where you create a character that is your alter ego and aim to raise their level. When I first started playing, I just mindlessly followed what everyone else was doing, beating up weak enemies to gain experience, and when I leveled up, I would hunt monsters of a similar level and repeat the process. However, as I became more familiar with the game, I began to think about various strategies and methods.
Then one day, through conversations with my friends, I learned the importance of choosing a hunting ground. This is because in some hunting grounds, you can gain experience and level up quickly, but you can’t earn as many items and money, while in other hunting grounds, you can earn a lot of items and money, but the rate at which you gain experience and level up is relatively slow.
After much deliberation, I chose a hunting ground where I could gain experience points and levels quickly. I thought that once I had gained experience points and levels, I would be able to go to hunting grounds that gave more money and better items, so it would be more beneficial in the future than going to hunting grounds that gave good items right away. However, I quickly lost interest in hunting for experience points alone.
On the other hand, my friend who was playing with me chose a different hunting ground that gave more money and items than experience points, and as a result, although his level was lower than mine, he seemed to be enjoying the game by getting expensive items. That day, we were playing games together at a PC cafe, and my friend envied my high level, but I just envied him for earning money quickly and enjoying the game more with expensive items.
Then, I suddenly thought, “Isn’t the real me the same as my character in the game?” This is because my desire to give up the money and items I needed to enjoy the game right now in order to gain experience and level up for the future overlapped with my life as a college student who was giving up my current enjoyment under the guise of investing in my future. I think this applies not only to me but also to most of the students at my school. This is because most students are giving up the happiness that is “right in front of them” in order to achieve a stable job, high salary, and comfortable retirement that “exist in the future.” From a young age, we hear adults talk about “future happiness” rather than “present pleasure.” They tell us things like, “If you study hard now, you’ll be able to have fun without worrying about anything later,” and “If you get good grades now, you’ll be able to get a better job and be happy later.”
But when I really thought about it, my dream wasn’t to get a good job, make a lot of money, or gain social status and honor. When I was very young, all I wanted was to build a family with someone I loved, have children, watch them grow up properly, and grow old together. When I was a little older, my dream was to become a professional Go player and win the world championship at the youngest age. My childhood dreams did not include high social status or a high salary. That was until now. My dreams themselves gave me energy and happiness, and just thinking about them was enough to lift my weary body.
As time passed and I grew older, the things I wanted changed to high test scores that would get me into Seoul National University, easy and well-paid tutoring jobs, and good grades for employment. All of these things are just tools for an uncertain future happiness, and none of them can make me happy in and of themselves. Then, how long must I sell my present happiness to purchase tools for the future? How much happiness must I sell to be happy now and in the future? How do I determine the standard for a day when I can enjoy carefree happiness using the tools I have accumulated?
Tired of games that only accumulate experience points, I ended up not checking my character’s health properly, and my character died. Since I was already there, I decided to visit my friend’s hunting ground and started hunting there. The monsters there gave me quite valuable items when they died, and I became so absorbed in the game that I thought, “I should have hunted here earlier.”
I am still a beginner. I am still a beginner in life and in Lineage. There are countless hunting grounds I can go to, and each one will give me a different level of satisfaction. If my level and experience points are my stats, then money and items are the entertainment that brings me happiness right now. I haven’t decided yet whether level or items are more important to me. But one thing I know for sure is that it’s more fun and efficient to go back and forth between two hunting grounds than to hunt in just one. The same is true in real life. If you think of “experience points in a game” as “studying for real-life exams” and “getting items in a game” as “the joy of playing pool in real life,” then you should learn how to play pool from time to time instead of just studying. That way, you won’t get tired of studying and will be able to keep at it.
I was thinking about this while playing the game, and before I knew it, it was 1 a.m. Unlike my character in Lineage, who was working hard to level up, I felt like I was too obsessed with money and items in the real world. We decided to go home and prepare for the next day. For the sake of continuing to level up tomorrow.
I added this content to make the writing flow more naturally. The added parts are about the process of realizing the importance of choosing a hunting ground, the story that made me think about it, and how it relates to the situation in reality. This made the flow of the writing richer and the theme clearer.
