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10 reasons real life is like a terrible kusoge video game

Richard Simmonds Jun 20, 2018
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It might have been made into a board game, but here are 10 reasons why the game of life shouldn’t get a PC or console port.

While life may be like a box of chocolates, for some people it’s that box where someone has taken all the good ones and left you with the sickly strawberry, probably half-melted ones. There’s a reason that computer games, an interactive form of escapism from hardship or the humdrum, are so popular and a superior choice to real life, as Japanese Twitter user @monayoooo explains with a full ten reasons why life would not be a game worth making.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1006875802460348417

1. You can’t just keep resetting.

How many times have you made a mistake or embarrassed yourself and thought how good it would be if you could just start all over again? Unfortunately, unlike with gaming you can’t just press a button in order to try again.

2. You can’t choose your character’s appearance.

While in many RPGs you can spend hours customising your avatar to resemble the person you think, or hope, you are, in life you have far fewer choices. See that meat sack you’re wearing? You might be able to tone it up a bit, or inject nerve-deadening poisons into assorted bits, but as the saying goes, you can’t polish a turd. Although if online MMORPGs are anything to go by, that might be for the best, otherwise the world would be beset by unfeasibly large-bosomed, thin-waisted young girls and muscle-bound barbarians, and that would just be the guys.

▼ In life, there are some people who are winners, always rolling sixes, and then there are some people who…

3. You can’t save.

With rare exceptions, there are no real-life save points. Resetting may have been the first item on this list but there can’t be many of us who really want to go through the first few months, or even our teenage years, all over again. Having a save point would let us safeguard ourselves before taking the plunge and doing something risky, whether brave or just stupid. Yet again though, real life disappoints.

4. Your abilities are less important than your face.

The person who compiled this may have a bit of a chip on their shoulder, or their forehead, but they’re not wrong that the real world pays far more attention to looks than games do. Would a real-life Princess Peach have been quite so happy to have been rescued by a vertically challenged, overweight, working-class plumber with a fondness for magic mushrooms?

5. You have zero remaining lives.

Unlike computer games and cats, and possibly Buddhists, you only have the one life left. Games can have you jumping from cliff to cliff, or climbing up the outside of buildings, or challenging a ten-foot carnivorous monster to fisticuffs. Real life has rolling on the floor when you stub your toe or step on a piece of Lego.

6. If you choose the wrong path, you can’t turn back, only go forwards.

As video games have become more complex, there’s the illusion of freedom, massive free-to-explore game areas that will slowly draw you back into the main story arc in their own sweet time. There’s no such thing as going the wrong way, you can always head back and in many cases a compass will help point you in the right direction. Back in the real world, job-hunting is just one example of where that would be handy.

7. Defeat your enemy and you end up defeating yourself (socially).

In games, your enemies fall before you and your mighty gun/axe/slippery banana/fireballs, but in the real world knock your enemy over and things can get very tricky, probably with some legal unpleasantness.

8. The difficulty level for job-changing is just wrong.

Unfortunately there are very few job seminars for warrior monk, paladin, or space ship pilot. Particularly in Japan it can be hard to change careers once you’ve started. Like appearances, @monayoooo is a bit salty about the ease with which people can get stuck in a work rut, but then again very few jobs as a treasure hunter or wandering street fighter come with a pension and paid holidays so you can’t fault real life too much.

9. Even if you put tens of thousands of hours into your work, it’s hard to be promoted.

While practice makes perfect you don’t get nice easy XP for turning up to work. Your rivals also have the ability to level up as fast as you, meaning beating them for the lofty rank of Level 2 Data Processor isn’t as simple as it is in virtual land, especially if you don’t drink.

10. Completing the game is also game over.

There are no credits scrolling or a bonus movie to watch when you finally get to the end, or moving on to the next title in the franchise. That’s it.

Other Twitter users seemed to support the idea that life would make for a rubbish game:

‘Not being able to save, not even once every ten years or so, is the harshest.’
‘In real life your avatar is always randomly generated.’
‘I just think how lucky I am that my spawn point was Japan.’
‘You can level up, until you get to about 20 and then it’s just leveling down.’
‘There isn’t a reset button but there is a power off button.’
‘At least it has loads of fun mini-games though!’

Like games though, real life does come with a list of achievements you can try to complete. Like most people, I’ve managed some I’m pretty proud of, and some I’m less proud ofm but despite the cynicism in this Twitter user’s list I’m looking forward to racking up plenty more before the screen fades to black.

Stay tuned until the next article which will detail the 11 reasons why real life is so much better than gaming, an article we’ll get around to writing as soon as we get to the next save point, just a little bit longer…

Source: Twitter/@monayoooo via Jin
Top image: Palutaso
Insert image: Pixabay