The most I've ever been changed by a "game", I think, is acting training. The semester in college where we did Meisner acting games was somewhat destabilizing for a lot of us, because they prime you to spit out the truth, to not hide your emotional reaction to anything, and to pay attention to others' authenticity. Meisner training is something that serves that subworld of acting really well, but can cause social upset because our culture abets white lies, bullshit, and emotional restraint.
Unwashed mendicant writes (lightly edited):
]]>I think the best example of a fictional world that has the potential to inform the physical isn't exactly a fictional world, but a set of practices intended to run that world. I'm thinking of the Old School Renaissance of D&D.
Modern D&D has grown more bloated and waddling as each edition goes on. It takes hours to make a character. There's a big incentive to keep player characters alive, since so much effort goes into making them. Dungeon Masters are expected to carefully craft scenarios that match the abilities of the party. Player abilities are there to support combat. The Adventures are scripted. The Dungeons are linear. The experience feels like walking through a hallway knocking things down.
As a reaction to this we have Old School Renaissance. Rulebooks are generally free or cheap. Play is fast. You roll up a character in seconds. You don't have to read many rules -- you just say what you want to do and if it's reasonable it happens.
Player abilities and magic items are there to support exploration and problem solving. Combat is very deadly, and experience points come from finding treasure, so it's smarter to avoid combat. DMs are encouraged to think on their feet and improvise. The rules encourage emergent play with many random elements that can surprise the DM as much as the player.
I often walk away from an old school D&D session with fresh ideas to bring to my actual life; ideas on how to simplify, to make meaningful choices, to encourage agency and choice in myself and those around me, to be open to opportunity, to think on my feet, and move in a creative flow.
Axes won't chop trees with a series of unfocused blows but must instead be carefully aimed and leveraged, slicing into the same point time and again. Lighting a fire, meanwhile, requires you to knock two bits of flint together over dry grass.
In many cases, you need to consider the angle and speed of your approach. Swing a hammer at the wrong angle when crafting and you can hit nails in the wrong direction or even break materials. Chiseling away at wood needs just the right touch or you might end up making a soup ladle by accident.
Of course, you're not learning from the real world, only from some programmer's guess about the real world. In the worst case, VR will lead your body astray like Facebook leads your mind astray. But in the best case, with increasingly good real world modeling, you could get halfway to a difficult physical skill with a lot less investment.
New subject. My favorite sport is women's soccer, and the NCAA tournament starts today. I like top-tier college soccer better than pro or international, maybe because the substitution rules allow the players to play harder more of the time.
Here's a highlight video of a really fun player, USF's Sydny Nasello.
Penn State's Kerry Abello can do really long flip throws.
And last week my home team's most dangerous player, Alyssa Gray, hit a 35 yard golazo.