5 Things I Hate Doing in Real Life but Love Doing in Video Games

Hey there! This post is part of an indie game project I made in August 2022. There’s a lot more ground to cover other than what’s covered in this post. So when you’re done reading, check out the full project here.

As a content creator once said, “Video games allow you to do things you couldn’t or wouldn’t do in real life.” But what about the things you don’t want to do? If you take the time to think about it, you may discover a few things you frequently do in video games that don’t hold the same appeal in reality.

Cooking

Hate may be too strong a word here. I don’t hate cooking, but I certainly don’t enjoy it either. Even if the resulting meal is delicious. Yet when placed in a video game format, what would normally be a boring task suddenly becomes a favorite pastime.

The irony of it all is that unlike with actual cooking, I don’t get to eat the meal I’ve created afterwards. Some virtual offscreen being gets to. But regardless of this sad truth I just can’t help myself. There’s something so satisfying about speedily creating tasty dishes with the press of a button or click of the mouse.

I have particularly fond memories of the Pizzatron 3000 minigame back before Club Penguin got Thanos snapped out of existence. It was a simple game where you clicked and dragged ingredients onto the dough before it reached the end of a conveyor belt. There was even a secret Candytron 3000 game mode you could play if you pulled a lever on the game’s title screen.

Fishing

So picture this: you’re a man in a strange green garb who’s been tasked with saving the world from an evil sorcerer who has an army of monsters at his beck and call. No pressure right? A little unfair to lay that all on one person, so who can blame you for taking a well-deserved break to go fishing? I’m talking about the multiple fishing minigames in The Legend of Zelda of course.

Unlike regular fishing, you can actually see what’s going on below the water’s surface. This allows you to see whether you’re attracting fish or standing on the shore like an idiot.

Catching the fish usually isn’t too strenuous, making it a great way to destress when the weight of an entire world begins to make your shoulders ache. And it certainly doesn’t hurt that you’re actually rewarded for your efforts. Money and sometimes even items are often given out for catching the larger fish.

Cleaning

In Nintendo’s Super Mario Sunshine poor Mario gets arrested for supposedly polluting the island of Isle Del’fino with toxic goop and sentenced to cleaning it up. A false and outrageous accusation that I would hold against the island’s inhabitants were it not for how fun the clean-up process is.

There’s something so satisfying about watching the goop disappear so quickly. It also helps that this substance is particularly dangerous. Standing in it for too long results in Mario taking damage (and getting messy). Some forms of it even have electric or fire properties to them.

In hindsight, it’s the same concept you would get from blowing up a boulder in your path in The Legend of Zelda. There’s an obstacle in your way, and you’re using your abilities to remove it. This provides both a sense of accomplishment as well as a reward for the player.

Board Games

With the exceptions of Dungeons and Dragons and Jenga, I’m not really a big fan of tabletop games. So how do you attract my interest to one? Mix in some minigames, violence, and betrayal. That’s right. We’re talking about Mario Party!

It’s one of those game’s that’s so charming and random that winning is really more like icing on the cake. The real fun comes from playing the wacky minigames and hiring ghosts to rob your friends and family of their hard-earned coins (or ill-gotten depending on how they were obtained).

Plenty of regular board games involve actively messing with the other players, but Mario Party offers so much variety that they just can’t compete. The only downside is the risk to your relationships. Mario Party has earned a reputation as a destroyer of friendships, and rightly so. Best think twice before inviting your buddies over to play it.

Yard Work

I find something strangely satisfying about mowing the lawn. That doesn’t mean I’ll do it just for the fun of it though. The same goes for any other type of yard work. But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying games like Stardew Valley where clearing away rubble and watering plants makes up the bulk of the gameplay.

Look, I’ve grown a garden before (or helped my parents at least). It’s not fun. It’s a big dirty and exhausting mess. But in Stardew Valley I can let my character get dirty and tired for me while I feel the satisfaction of a hard day’s work.

Games like this draw on that feeling of accomplishment you get when you build something or receive a paycheck. And because the stakes are relatively low, it makes for a very relaxing experience!

Conclusion

I’m a firm believer in the idea that most tasks can be made into a game as long as it gives the players a deep sense of accomplishment for doing so. The most popular video games draw off tasks that most people wouldn’t want to do in real life.

For example, I’d be too terrified to fight an army of ghosts using nothing but a vacuum cleaner and a flashlight. But that’s not going to stop me from playing through Luigi’s Mansion over and over again.

From this perspective, just about anything can be turned into a game. All it takes is a creative mind and some elbow grease. Who knows? Maybe your bathroom cleaning simulator will become the next Undertale. Now that is a game I’d like to see.