Life as a Video Game
The game called “Life†is a massive multiplayer online game with seven billion active users worldwide. It boasts an open world experience and numerous servers (two hundred and counting) where you could play, compete and cooperate with other players in different servers depending on the speed of the internet connection and the mode of gameplay you like to see like player vs player (PvP) modes, player vs environment (PvE) modes and sandbox modes. This game offers a dizzying array of mini – games like hobbies, skill upgrades and relationships in order to boost your stats and win the game. And oh…you don’t have to actually win the game because no one knows how to actually beat the game no matter how maxed out your stats are. Before you play the game, you need to choose a map where you will spawn and you need to choose wisely. For starters, I would recommend choosing the map that are colored in green because these are the areas where you can play in easy mode to boost your initial stats and to increase the chances of beating the game even if you didn’t know how to win or the game is actually worth beating.
But the servers in those green areas are pretty overpopulated right now so the admins on those servers are struggling to keep up with the influx of new players in those servers, so I recommend spawning on the areas shaded in yellow. Those areas might be slightly difficult to play because of unreliable server admins and there are many ways that would kill your character easily. Those areas might not be for beginners but when you’ll get used to the gameplay and its environment you can handle it.
I really don’t recommend spawning on the areas shaded in red unless you know what you are doing or just speed running the game because in those areas, the admins there really suck and those players who spawned there who like to get out of those servers have much less chance of doing so and if you try to complain to the admins how glitchy the map is or the player is unsatisfied with how the admins run the servers, the player is easily eliminated by the admins.
Once you had chosen where to spawn, you can now choose your character. In the past, the white American male avatar is the most desired character in this game but times have been changing, so you can choose other characters who had slightly lesser stats than the white American male character but nevertheless, the gameplay isn’t necessarily difficult to play and it will be enjoyable if you are skilled enough. I would recommend choosing the white European male avatar because too many players have chosen the white American male character so the game becomes less diverse and more difficult to play.
Once the player has chosen a character, the game is now loading for nine months and the environment will be loaded after that.
The game has a maximum level of eighty. The outcome of reaching Level 80 depends on how you play the game when you are still low – level and more screwed up your stats in the earlier levels, the higher is the probability that you won’t even reach Level 65. In order to avoid unnecessarily making you game difficult by making grave mistakes along the way, you must unlock certain important skills in order to make your play less difficult and to compete with other players to acquire respect. In Level 0 to 5, the player is basically just exploring the map and interact with the objects around it and with the support of his parent players, this stage of level is pretty easy. The more supportive your parent players are, the better your stats would be. If either your father or mother player is absent, the more difficult the gameplay would be. Worse, since the game is heavily based on probabilistic algorithms, you can’t choose your parents and if you’re unlucky enough to have no father or mother players, or your father or mother player is neglectful, or worse, you don’t have any parent players, your stats will be screwed up, preventing you from levelling easily in the game throughout (and dying early if the player is too unfortunate enough).
When the player reached Level 6, the Kindergarten DLC will be installed in the game to boost the character’s friendship and intelligence in order for the preparation when the player hits Level 18. Here, the Level 6 player will be spending six hours interacting with other Level 6 (or lower) players to learn and cultivate camaraderie because this is going to become useful when dealing with other high – level players at the middle of the game. As usual, if the player missed playing the mini – game Kindergarten DLC map, his overall stats will be bad and would affect the outcome of the gameplay when it becomes a mid – level player.
From Level 6 to 18, the player will be subjected to increased level of difficulties in school map mini game to acquire the intelligence level necessary to fully navigate the open world and to compete with other players around the world, though it might be unrealistic to compete with other too many players (often in millions) having similar stats as you, so you might want to think of other ways of standing out in order to increase your reputation points. At this point, you might be feeling the increased difficulties in playing the game because most likely, when you reached Level 18 and beyond, you might have too similar stats with other players when competing to gain in – game credits and relationship levels. It’s up to you what might be your gaming style in jumping this hurdle because honestly, no one knows how. Other high level players knew the basics, but oftentimes, they experienced reduced HP on their in – game credits and relationship stats in unexpected ways, like a bug wherein the confidence meter suddenly goes down to zero when talking to a female player and then your character does weird things.
When you do reached Level 18, the tutorial in how to play the game has been finished but you will be surprised that what you have learned in the last twelve levels has nothing to do in the actual game so you are forced to make your way to earn your own in – game currencies and respect points. You may be starting to acquire credits by playing in the fast – food mini – game to gain mediocre job EXPs and dismal credits. You could encounter some annoying NPCs (non – playable characters) that could decrease your character’s strength and stamina when they have tantrums and you will meet many players that at first glance they look like NPCs but turned out to be active players whose characters are just running scripts to earn credits automatically without player’s attention.
The actual gameplay occurs on Level 18 to 65. Depending how the player might tackle the difficulty of winning this pretty awful game, I would recommend getting the College DLC in order to boost your intelligence stats further but with the drawback that it is expensive and the player is not actually getting what he is paying for. Nevertheless, this is the most common route of many players in order to increase their overall stats and to play other mini – games like the Company map (a player to player mode wherein other players are continuously competing each other in order to win in the map) to gain job EXPs or to practice their chosen custom game like Business map (a player to environment game wherein a player needs to steer his business to success and avoid the unlucky circumstances) to gain more job EXPs at a cost of reduced in – game currencies when the player succeeds in bankrupting in Business mini – game. At this point, the two main focus of players when his character reaches Level 18 to 65 is to acquire in game – currencies and increasing the newly – unlocked relationship meter in order to attract a female.
In the realm of unlocking and acquiring the Wife (or Husband), there are some ways to achieve it. Some players have to play the Arranged Marriage mini game so that Wife could be forcefully unlocked but in most parts of the map, the player gets to decide on whom to choose. The problem is the female must also choose you in order for the relationship to progress, so the player must increase his relationship meter by upgrading the character’s romantic attributes like confidence, in – game currencies, and physical features of your character. You might take the female out on dates in nice places as if you repeatedly take the female out on dates, your relationship meter will increase and if the female said yes to your advances, the player has acquired a Wife.
The most common strategy in order to acquire the in – game currency is to trade playing time with in – game currency. Depending on what game and map you choose to acquire it, most middle – level players will play in the Company mini game where other players compete with each other to unlock this unique PvP zone. When a player succeeds in unlocking the Company mini game, this player will now face with other players who are already playing in the mini – game and they will compete and outwit each other in order to win the mini – game, acquire staggering prizes and increase their job EXPs by orders of magnitude. But as with other PvP zones, most of these players quit and only the emerging victor would take all the prizes. The winner takes all it seems. For low – level players, they would acquire their in – game credits by playing in PvE (player vs environment) mini games where in the players can go AFK (because the mini – game isn’t that difficult but it takes up too much time) while their character is farming small amounts of in – game currencies. Most of these supposed active players are actually just running scripts or worse, bots.
As the player keeps on leveling up, he might realize that this game not about winning. This is all about enjoying the game every minute of it. Some players are maxing out their relationship meters to gain a satisfactory love that would last in the entire duration of the game, some players would try to max out their skills and EXPs to gain a huge advantage from other players or just wanted to have fun, some players are focused on increasing their in – game currencies so they could buy upgrades, skins and rare items for visual flair, and some players are trying to max out on all their stats to have a unique character build. Few players have screwed their stats over the years due to unforeseen circumstances and bad decisions and are now walking anywhere in the map without armor, credits or relationships (or all of those). Despite of that, many would still try to enjoy this game and we need to play this game in such a way that we won’t ruin other player’s gameplay.
By the time the player has reached Level 65, the game will be considered almost over and the players have already maxed out their overall stats, be it relationships, skill points or vast amounts of credits. They can now generally enjoy exploring the whole map and perhaps play some side quests that the player wanted to do but the trouble is, it would be pretty hard to do those things. At Level 65 and beyond, your character becomes buggy and exhibits weird behaviors because of the kind of programming went into your character before it was born and the experiences that the player had faced throughout the whole gameplay and you can’t expect the character to behave as you wanted after playing it for so many hours. The problem magnifies itself when the player reached Level 80 and at this point, the character becomes so buggy that your screen suddenly goes blank and your playtime is over. No one knows what would happen if you go offline from the game. Some believe the player will respawn on other side of the map, some player will go into another mini – game where you could play sand box mode for eternity and some believe you’ll only see black screen for eternity but it really doesn’t matter because there is no difference before you played the game and after you played the game. So just enjoy it, don’t overthink it and just enjoy the game. Who knows, you might be playing on a special map right now.
(shout out to Casually Explained for inspiring me to do this!)