My Reality Game Collection

And how I design, develop, and play my life.

For over a decade now, I’ve been approaching parts or the whole of my life as if they were games I design (or co-design), develop, and play.

I’ve played many self-motivational games over the years. Self-motivational games are projects, activities, and practices that I approach as if they were games, which, in my opinion, they are since anything in life has the same core components games do.

I discovered that in anything you approach gamefully, motivation becomes a readily available by-product, including its most coveted by game and gamification designers type, intrinsic motivation.

Alone, the inability of many life gamers and myself to give up living gamefully and instead be creative and resourceful with everything we are up to attract curiosity from those who hear about this opportunity.

I am often asked about different self-motivational games I play, both those I play now and those I played in the past, which I either don’t play anymore or play once in a while.

At some point, I realized I had a whole collection of self-motivational games.

Well, my life is such a collection of self-motivational games since these games are nothing other than what I take on in my life’s journey.

That’s how I started thinking of my current self-motivational game collection, especially the scores I record in my little book, Vica’s Points and Badges Game Book. Vica is short for Victoria. This little book reflects a big part of my reality game collection.

If I use my first name for this real-life game collection, it would be Victoria’s Reality Game Collection, abbreviated VRGC. When I shared this abbreviation with gamers in my family, my son said that VRGC should stand for Virtual Reality Game Console. Upon an online search, I found this acronym to mean “Voucher Register & General Control,” and used rarely. It is attributed to the use in the following category: “Military and Government.” But I must say, I like the acronym VRGC to stand for “Victoria’s Reality Game Collection.” However, I must admit that MRGC for My Reality Game Collection sounds great, too. And YRGC, Your Reality Game Collection, must be fantastic, too, since it is yours alone, and you have the power to design, develop, and play it.

Game designers and players learn from other game designers and players. They look over their shoulders and get inspired. I get inspired by gamers in my life and by books and articles on game design, psychology, and other intriguing topics. As a life gamer, I enjoy sharing my games and their designs and frameworks.

Here is a summary of my game collection.

I play:

• Awareness games
• Ambition games
• Health and well-being games
• Habits games
• Learning and growth games
• Perseverance games
• Relaxation games
• and many others.

Many of these games can be attributed to more than one type.

I also play games based on the game elements or mechanics that drive them:

• Booster games
• Gemstone games
• Streak games
• Counter games
• and others.

I also play briefly some of my self-motivational games without recording any points.

The way I reward myself in these games differs, too.

For example, in the Awareness Booster Game (ABG) and Exploring Emotions Game (EEG), I observe the world around and inside me and get inspired and awed by the epiphanies I make on the way. I also observe and explore emotions, especially those I get confused by, and acknowledge my participation in these games daily. So, I never lose in these two games; their score reflects all the days since starting to acknowledge my participation in them daily and recall what observations and epiphanies I made.

In others, like Super Sleeper Game, I have multiple scores to record my progress, reward myself when I get enough sleep or punish myself in small ways for sleeping less or precisely seven hours. This epic game is one of those I continually develop to keep myself motivated to get enough sleep. This game helped me to go from over forty hours of deficit reached within half a year to almost 380 hours in plus gathered in almost four years (over forty-five hours on average per each half a year) since playing this game. And all these numbers reflect the improved health I experience due to getting enough sleep and taking better care of myself.

There are also many other designs in between the above two.

You can see the earlier design of the Super Sleeper Game in my book Gameful Habits (see below its description and where you can purchase it).

In the photograph below, you can see the recent recordings of my games, including the Super Sleeper Game with its points, coins, and gemstones abbreviated as T for tourmaline, R for ruby, D for diamond, N for nephrite jade, and O for obsidian or opal, Awareness Booster Game (ABG), Exploring Emotions Game (EEG), and other games and game elements.

Why do I do all that and approach my life gamefully as if it were a collection of games I design, develop, and play? There are many, many reasons. Here are two main ones:

1. The activities I enjoy and want to succeed with become even more fun and fantastic to experience. And I reward myself for any progress I make in them.
2. Those I commit to but sometimes think I don’t enjoy become those I discover I can enjoy, either by adding fun game elements, watching my progress with them, and getting closer to their goals, or by discovering something new and fun that I was unaware of before that.

Thank you!

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I enjoyed the writing game for it, which is part of my Ambition Project Games (APG), visible in my little score book shown above.

I will be off to another game from My Reality Game Collection (MRGC) in a minute. How does YRGC — Your Reality Game Collection — look like? Feel free to share this with me through the channel where you discovered this post.

You can check out my articles on Medium by following this link.