We’re drawn to games that give ego satisfaction, praise of others

By David McElroy · November 13, 2018

What’s your favorite game or sport? Not one that you enjoy watching or following. I mean one that you enjoy playing? Why exactly do you love the game?

It sounds like a silly question.

“Well, I love [game or sport] because it’s fun,” you respond. “Why else would I love it?”

That’s what you probably think, but you’re mistaken. You love some game — assuming you love any game — because of the way playing it makes you feel. It’s all about your inner emotions, not about the physical or mental activity of the game itself.

I used to assume that I liked certain games because there was something inherently fun about them. But I eventually realized that my enjoyment was about having played the game — and winning — not about the playing of the game itself. It satisfied an emotional need.

This puzzled me, so I’ve spent years thinking about it and talking to others about their love of games. I’ve concluded that we love certain games because we’re good at them — and being good at them makes us feel great about ourselves.

For those who play sports that have spectators, there’s a bonus. If you’re good at your game — and especially if you win for your group or school or city — other people praise you, giving your ego another boost.

But I can be good at a lot of games — some of them ridiculously easy — so why do I choose the ones that I choose to love?

I’ve finally realized that there’s a sweet spot between difficulty and capability. I want a game to be difficult enough that it would be tough for others to do it. For the sort of games that appeal to me, I like the games that let me feel smart.

I had this realization from playing an iPhone game called Flow. (I assume there’s an Android version, too.) It’s the first phone game I’ve really enjoyed since the heyday of Angry Birds. You can start playing Flow for free. The opening levels are deceptively simple, but as the board gets bigger, the solutions become more and more complicated.

In the picture I’ve included, the left side shows what an 11×11 board looks like when you start. You have to connect the two dots of the same color, but you can’t allow any two paths to cross and no square can be left unfilled. When you’re doing the simple 5×5 boards, you feel as though you quickly get the hang of it, but it soon gets difficult.

If the game were any more difficult than it is, I would become annoyed and quit. If the game were any easier than it is, I would think that anybody could do it and I wouldn’t see it as worth the effort.

The magic comes in that sweet spot in which it feels difficult — but not too difficult for me to master — because it lets me feel great about myself. It lets me feel smart.

A spectator sport can deliver the same ego satisfaction, but with the added benefit of giving you praise from other people.

If you’re good enough at tennis or baseball or basketball, you can become a star — and a star is treated as someone special by the people who care about this game. Being treated as a star makes you feel good about yourself. It’s the closest thing you can get to substitute love from crowds.

If you play a game for long enough — and if you feel those positive feelings for long enough, for being a star or for being smart or however your game feeds you — you won’t realize that you’re getting a hit of positive brain chemicals from that. After awhile, you’ll just assume there’s something special about the game.

The reality is that there’s something special about you — in your eyes and in the eyes of others. You’re a winner — and that gives you a high that’s hard to get elsewhere. It leaves you craving that high. And if you can no longer play the game or sport, it leaves you looking for another way to get that feeling again, because you unconsciously crave the high.

When it comes to spectator sports, let me give you another piece of evidence. Have you ever noticed that the best athletes in any given region tend to play whatever the popular sport is? In the South, that sport is football. All the best athletes tend to funnel themselves into football as a primary focus. They don’t think about it, but they unconsciously know that the popular sport is the one that will get them the most praise for doing well.

In other areas of the country, basketball is a bigger deal than football, so more star athletes concentrate there. They don’t think about it, but the reward structure is such that they get the most rewards from that sport. In other parts of the world, it’s soccer (the original football) or even baseball.

We fool ourselves about the things we love. If we think about it at all, we praise the game. We think we love every specific thing about that game or sport. But it’s all an illusion.

It’s not about the game. It’s about how winning that game makes us feel about ourselves. We love being smart. We love being winners. We love feeling special.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

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The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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