But when you win, you might realize that this it's a dreadful hoax and you feel no different than you were before. The happiness quickly wares off and you would want something else. So there has to be loses in order to feel the winnings but the balance has to incline slightly towards winning to keep the player interested.
The evil has to have one third of the time and the good side two thirds. You will see that the good games are designed like this.
If you have the good and evil equally balanced, the game is boring, nothing happens, it's stalemate. The irresistible force meets the immovable object.
On the other hand if it's all good and it's hardly any evil, it's also get boring. Just in the same way for example: suppose that you knew the future and can control it perfectly. What would you do ? You would say: "Let's shuffle the deck and have another deal". Because, for another example when great chess players sit down for a match and suddenly it becomes apparent for both of them that white is going to mate in 16 moves and nothing can be done about it, they abandon the game and begin another. They don't want to know, it wouldn't be any hide in the game, any element of surprise if they did know the outcome.
So a game with the good and evil isn't a good game, a game with positive or good forces clearly triumphant isn't an interesting game. What we want is a game when it seems that the good side is about to loose and really serious danger loosing but manages always to sneak out.
So then what's necessary is a system in which the good side is always winning but never is the winner and the evil side always loosing but never is the looser. That's a very practical arrangement for a successful game that will keep everyone interested. - Alan Watts
Of course Alan Watts was referring to reality and not to video games. But video games are like the tip of the spear of the reproduction myth that it all started with paintings, photography, television and eventually computers. What are we really trying to simulate (and we find this extremely hard to do) is what we call real life. But the reality is much worse just because we know it's for real so we just want to fantasize.
From Revolver (2005) the movie, we get some interesting insights on the game of life where our perceptions are very much controlled by our ego.
In every game and con, there is always an opponent and there is always a victim. The more control the victim thinks he has... the less control he actually has. Gradually, he will hang himself. I as the opponent, just help him along.
Rule one of any game or con... You can only get smarter by playing a smarter opponent. (Fundamentals of Chess 1883)
Rule number two... the more sophisticated the game, the more sophisticated the opponent. If the opponent is very good, he will place his victim inside an environment he can control. The bigger the environment, the easier the control.
So the opponent simply distracts their victim by getting them consumed with their own consumption.
Eventually, when the opponent is challenged or questioned... it means the victim's investment, and thus his intelligence, is questioned. No one can accept that... not even to themselves.
The art is for me is to feed pieces for you and make you believe that you took those pieces cause you're smarter and I'm dumber.
There is an eternal struggle that is happening within ourselves. At the end of the movie, Mr. Green succeeds getting rid of his ego and he is enlightened.
Wake up, Mr. Green !
I will end with some quotes from the movie.
Dr. Yoav Datillo,
"The ego is the worst confidence trickster we could ever figure, we could ever imagine. 'Cause you don't see it."
Dr. Steven C. Hayes
"And the single biggest con is... "I am you."
Dr. Peter Fonagy
The problem is that the ego hides in the last place that you'd ever look... within itself. In creating this imaginary external enemy, it usually made a real enemy for ourselves, and that becomes a real danger to the ego, but that's also the ego's creation. In that sense, you could say that 100 percent of our external enemies are of our own creation.
Leonard Jacobson
It disguises its thoughts as your thoughts, its feelings as your feelings, You think it's you. People have no clue that they're imprisoned. They don't know that there is an ego. They don't know the distinction.
Andrew Samuels
Peoples' need to protect their own egos knows no bounds. They will lie, cheat, steal, kill, do whatever it takes, to maintain what we call ego boundaries.
David Hawkings
At first it's difficult for the mind to accept that there's some... something beyond itself, that there's something of greater value and greater capacity for discerning truth than itself.
Deepak Chopra
In religion, the ego manifests as the devil. And of course, no one realizes how smart the ego is because it created the devil so you could blame someone else.
There is no such thing as an external enemy, no matter what that voice in your head is telling you. All perception of an enemy is a projection of the ego as the enemy.
The greatest enemy will hide in the last place you would ever look. Julius Caesar 75 B.C.
Your friends are close but your enemy is closer.
Dr. Obadiah Harris
Your greatest enemy... is your own inner perception, is your own ignorance, is your own ego.
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