Curious untalented gambler

I am pretty bad at many things and probably average to good at a few things I have tried and practiced over a longer period. I collected years without having any special talent, and I confess here, it just happened and it was not as bad as you might think.

With increasing age, learning new things becomes more difficult. This should not serve as an excuse for inactivity or avoiding challenges, quite the contrary. However, I believe many people fear to try something they have never done before. There might be many reasons for it, but wisdom, I assume is one of the most doubtful.

I haven’t played video games for decades. My experience is mostly limited to popular games of the last millennium like Paradroid, Boulder Dash or Decathlon. The new world of video games is not only different because of more powerful computers but also because of connectivity and networks. Those games are more complex, challenging, entertaining and time consuming. Yesterday, I had my first experience with current video games and it was overwhelmingly gripping. The novice might be surprised, but as I learned along the way, there exist more genres for video games than for movies (and probably literature).

I tried my luck in the world of ego shooting, and I felt awkward at the beginning. As a starting player, you don’t know what to expect, and after I while, I was drawn into the game because of the action and tasks I needed to fulfill. My killing experience was low before yesterday, and I am not sure if my newly acquired digital experiences can be taken into account in the future. It felt strange to play a game where killing others is necessary to succeed and rewarded.

The second game I played was from the racing genre. This might sound trivial to most people, but I am not a passionate driver nor a car fetishist. The adaptation of driving a vehicle to the world of video games gives plenty of opportunities to make it more entertaining. I desperately tried to complete a track as fast as possible but became aware that this is not enough. Obstacles, treasures, special capacities and accidents made my life hard and were magically converted to scores. When I finally finished the race, I felt exhausted and stimulated at the same time, encouraged to give it another try and to make it better (which ultimately, as we all know, is the goal of the whole exercise).

The kids I was playing with (or against) did it much smarter than me. This is obviously a question of age and practice you might say, but probably it is another field where talent plays its role. If a group of people plays the same game over a longer period of time, some will do better than others at the end. I suppose that talent can be more easily detected in young people and probably gets hidden or lost in the elderly.

So is there something to learn from starting to play video games ? I could conclude not to waste your time and talent when you are young, but at the same time, I feel this is only half of the story. Talent means nothing if you are not interested in it, and any new exercise is probably worth trying (leave aside “real-life” dangerous endeavors), no matter how naive or untalented you are. There might be even some gifted video gamers who have never played a game yet (albeit, I believe this number is getting smaller).