I had a major realization yesterday (that ties into my recent identity epiphany) that seems so obvious now that I’ve become aware of it. If I’m trying to create a Player’s Handbook that shows how Life is metaphorically like a MMORPG (built by integrating the Hero’s Journey and vertical development), it needs to have a language and voice that mirrors what a Player’s Handbook should be like and it needs to feel like I’m actually communicating Life as a MMORPG.
Duh! Like obviously! But here’s the thing, I haven’t been doing this. I’ve been using the Heart, Head, and Hands approach which is mainly just using a gaming keyword as a visionary metaphor and then describing the rational logic of what it means in terms of vertical development (i.e. Levels > Levels of Consciousness > What does this mean?). In effect, I’m creating something that sound nothing like a Player’s Handbook (other than a few heading keywords) but something much more academic instead (because the rational logic is standing in my way).
In effect, if I think gamers (as my primary audience) could grasp vertical development by seeing it metaphorically as a MMORPG (a mechanic narrative and language that they’re familiar with) then I need to do just that. I need to fully embody the MMORPG elements and explain them in such a way that they seem familiar to gamers. So it’s not just the keyword elements of the MMORPG that need to be used but the narrative of what they mean needs to be embodied in some way as well (not too mention their relationship to other elements as well).
A quick example of this would be Levels and how they represent accumulated experience. Thus the more experience you accumulate within the game, the more you level up within The MMORPG of Life. But the key difference here, or perhaps clarification, is that the experiences need to be newer and diverse ones. So you can’t just repeatedly grind older, routine experiences because they’ll won’t give you any experience points to level up.
So all said and done, I need to fully embody and embrace the MMORPG terminology as much as possible in a metaphorical way to actually create something that sounds like an actual Player’s Handbook (in the same way that I realized I needed to fully embrace my gaming identity in my previous post). So that’s what I’m working on right now with the help of ChatGPT, as it’s helping me to describe the meaning of these metaphors in my own simpler game-like words, rather than trying to use vertical development terminology which just kills the whole feeling of what I’m trying to create.