sense of direction Archives - I'm Not Doctor Who

I have an uncanny sense of direction. I’m quite pleased that I’ve developed this over the years, because it’s an incredibly useful thing to have. It gives me confidence when going to a new place because I know that I can 1) generally find my way around pretty quickly and 2) won’t panic if I do happen to get lost. In fact, when visiting a new place, I tend to find getting lost is actually a good thing because it forces you to find your way around, spot landmarks and, occasionally, yell at your navigator. (I’ve never yelled at my navigator. Largely because my navigator is usually Google Maps, which doesn’t respond well — or indeed at all — to constructive criticism)

I’m not entirely sure where this special ability has come from, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s something to do with video games — particularly, in my formative years, old-school first person shooters and more recently, open-world sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto.

Modern first-person shooters wouldn’t help, of course, being mostly linear in nature. If you want to get a good feeling of being lost and having to learn an environment, go play Doom or Duke Nukem 3D and marvel at how useless their 2D maps for 3D-ish environments. If you really want to get lost, have a go at Wolfenstein 3D or Catacomb Abyss, where all the textures fit on a single 1.44MB floppy disk.

The more I think about this, the more I feel it’s probably where it came from. If I think of Bully, which I played through recently, I’d happily be able to navigate you around the map without having to refer to, well, the map. Want to go to the carnival? Sure. (Leave the school, turn left, go over the bridge, follow the seafront and go through the tunnel.) Looking for the town hall? Got you covered. (Leave the school, turn right, go over the bridge then keep going straight ahead until the end of the street.) Want to find your way to the mental asylum? No problem! (Leave the school, turn right, over the bridge, turn immediately right, go under the underpass, follow the road around as it bends left, then right, then right again, then around the end of the building, over the bridge, through the docks to the end and through the tunnel.)

The best thing about having a good sense of direction is not having to be a slave to satnav. When driving at night these days, pretty much every car cockpit you see seems to be lit up with some kind of satnav device. I actually very rarely use satnav, despite having a good app on my phone for it (CoPilot Live — cheap and has a sexy voice) and tend to use Google Maps if I need to see where I am.

So, then, if you need someone to guide you home after a big night out? I’m your man. You can drop me down in the middle of an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night (possibly drunk) and I’ll get you home. Eventually. And there may be a stop for a kebab on the way. But I’ll get you home.

Gamers spend a considerable proportion of their lives justifying their hobby. This is not the way Things Should Be, of course. No form of media or entertainment or hobby should force its enthusiasts to become apologists. But such is the way of things.

Gaming, to some, still has a reputation of being an adolescent male-dominated thing. And sure, there are plenty of male adolescents out there playing things. But the whole thing is so broad and diverse now that absolutely anyone can get involved on one level or another. And by getting involved with gaming, there are some valuable life lessons that can be learned. And I’m not talking about the old faithful, “hand-eye co-ordination”.

Patience is a virtue

If there is one thing I think that gaming has taught me above all else, it’s the fine art of patience. Specifically, I’m of the opinion that RPGs in particular have taught me this.

RPGs are all about delayed gratification. There’s always that next step to strive for, be it gaining another level, saving enough money to buy the Super Death Blade (only to discover it’s not as good as your current sword) or beating a difficult boss.

It’s not just that though. Games like Phoenix Wright with lengthy conversational sequences are reminders that it doesn’t have to be action, action, action all the time. Granted, this kind of thing doesn’t appeal to everyone, and there are people out there who skip every cutscene (and annoy the hell out of me, because I like cutscenes, unless I’m seeing it for the forty-seventh time) but it’s a Valid Lifestyle Choice for many gamers.

Whatever you may think of crap like FarmVille too, it’s obvious that in most cases, these people are displaying patience, too. Unless they’re the sort of person who actually spends money on playing those games, in which case they deserve to be fleeced out of every cent they pay to the Shinra Corporation… sorry, Zynga.

Perseverance is also a virtue

Commitment to completing a task is often one of the most difficult aspects of motivating oneself. It’s easy to get halfway through a project, feel like you’re not achieving anything and give up. Through the awesome experiences I’ve had through many games, I’ve learned that a difficult journey often leads to an amazing destination. Take Persona. Both Persona 3 and 4 are 90+ hours long. That’s a significant time investment. But the conclusions of both stories were so great that I was happy I’d spent that time playing.

Practice makes perfect

Both the epic Geometry Wars 2 battle the Squadron of Shame had upon this game’s first release, and the drunken Joe Danger night my friend Sam and I had a short while back are great examples of this. If at first you don’t succeed at something, try it again. And again. And again. And again. And… (repeat until you’re top of the leaderboards by a comfortable margin)

RPGs are again symbolic of this. The longer the characters play and do the same things, the better they get at them. Sure, in most cases levelling up doesn’t actually mean the player’s skills have necessarily got any better. But the characters have. Sad old nerds like myself can pretend that they’re levelling up when they get better at doing something.

Where am I?

I have an excellent sense of direction. I attribute this to two things: firstly, getting drunk a lot at university, finding myself at friends’ unfamiliar houses, and somehow always managing to get home without being killed or bumraped. And secondly, playing a lot of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom when I was younger. Wolfenstein didn’t have a map at all, and Doom‘s automap wasn’t particularly clear. As such, players quickly learn to find their way around by following visual cues and working out where their eventual target is.

To this day, whenever I visit a new city, I actually quite like to get lost for a while to get a feel for where everything is. Also, shoot Nazis.

Creative solutions

This sort of thing is particularly apparent amongst gamers of a certain age who grew up with adventure game logic. How else would I have figured out that I could fix a Sega Saturn controller using nothing but a screwdriver, a piece of toilet roll and a bottle of cheap vodka? Or that the appropriate way in which to remove the ludicrously-difficult-to-remove cover on the light in my bathroom was to use a stepladder and a teaspoon?

There’s an argument that watching The A-Team or MacGuyver could produce similar results. But I attribute my particular possession of this quality to adventure gaming.

So there you have it. Gaming is awesome.

I realise that by posting this I’m somewhat guilty of being one of the gaming apologists I mentioned at the beginning. But whaddayagunnado?