Adapting to Failure With Gaming

Tetris. A game so simple anyone could pick it up and play. A series of different shaped blocks that need to be used to create a solid rectangle, without any spaces. Although this is a very simple game to understand, perfecting it is extremely hard and nearly impossible. Similar to any sport or skill, walls arise and we have to teach ourselves how to climb the walls and succeed.

Gamers are constantly faced with walls, fall short, and find ways to overcome the obstacle. There are a few conditions we must take into consideration to fully understand how gamers can overcome these walls:

1. The person playing the game must understand the "system". The system can be defined as the rules or mechanics of the environment: what can be accomplished, what is impossible, the different interactions between two variables. 
2. The player must know the goal of the "system". A reward. "What is the end goal and what do I have to do to reach it?"
3. The player had to have failed once. This will help guide their ideas to finding a better solution / how to adapt to the failure.

After establishing these conditions, players will go through a series of trial and error to overcome their failures.

How do you use this knowledge? If you play video games, this should be pretty easy for you. Just use the previous 3 criterium and try to apply it to your situation.

Here's an example to help put into perspective what I mean:

1. You have a Calculus test tomorrow (cheating is not an option)
2. You will get a good grade if you do well on studying
3. You failed in the past in fully understanding

If you put yourself into this person's shoes, you will notice that you've failed and there's a good reward in place if you do well. For gamers, failure is nothing new, but the way we address these situations are different. The biggest difference is that games are fun! Failing in games is really enjoyable and rewarding, because eventually you will succeed. 

If you apply that same mindset into any other situation (outside of the game) you will find that you will succeed easily as well. If you view your calculus assignment as a chore, it will not be fun if you fail. But if you change your perspective, view it as an incremental gain in "Experience points" or "Increasing your Stats", you will start to see you can overcome failure and adapt to situations easier.

This isn't just a principle that can be applied to homework. Change your perspective in any situation that may involve failure. Instead of being anxious or viewing a task as a chore, view it as increasing your "Stats". You've been learning from your failures every time you play games, so keep an open mindset and do great things.

For more information on some of these tests: check out Mark Rober's video about this topic.