I enjoy playing video games. It might be my favourite hobby alongside reading, writing or talking about films and TV shows. Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time enjoying this form of entertainment has been told the usual diatribe about how much of a waste of time it is, and how it could be better spent finding a job or reading a book or going outside et cetera. Now of course over consumption is bad for you, just like anything else (especially doing nothing but work all day), but there is value to be found in Video Games. There are many lessons that I have learnt from this pastime, more than I could say in a single blog post, so I am going to focus on one event that occurred when I was younger. The game, as you could have guessed from the title, is Rome Total War.

For those of you not acquainted with the series, it’s a mixture of turn based empire building and real time strategy warfare. These two terms would appear to be diametrically opposed, but it in fact suits the game very well. Half of the game is deciding where to expand your empire, what the composition of your army is going to be, the building you build etc. the other half is leading your troops in battle, using their combat strengths and enemy weaknesses to defeat the opponent at hand. There are other factors that are used in these battles to your advantage, such as terrain, forests and even the weather. This is a game from 2004 however, so that last part is more of an aesthetic difference than anything else, but it is the thought that counts.

Now, the obvious lesson to learn here is history. This game would certainly help anyone understand why the Roman republic was able to (at least in the militaristic sense) expand over the Mediterranean world and dominate older and more developed cultures. It is also useful in teaching the importance of good governance, whether it be putting taxation at reasonable levels to prevent a violent uprising, or remembering to maintain a full garrison along your border cities. This is all knowledge worth learning (yes, history is necessary), but it is not what I wanted to talk about. The main lesson I learnt from this game is accepting inevitable loss.

Set the scene. I was playing as the Julii roman faction, and I had just taken a city in northern Hispania (Spain) from the Carthaginians. It was such an unopposed battle they might as well have left the gates open for me to waltz in. naturally, this filled me with a great deal of confidence, so I left it lightly garrisoned and sent my army off to pastures new, thinking that the city was mine. I reconsidered this when a massive army appeared from the opposite direction of my forces and laid siege to the town. My army was too far away to help, so I had to use the small garrison to fend them off for as long as I could. I could not win, that much was certain, so instead I made sure to kill off as much of the enemy as possible. The battle was not some marvel of strategic genius, just me sticking as many bodies as I could in the entrance to soak up the enemy. For a while it look like I might win, as the body count was very far in my favour, but there were simply far too many for me to win. As the battle timer counted down, I looked on helplessly as my last cohort of legionaries faced off against the endless hordes of hoplites and swordsmen. The final result was three enemy dead for each of my soldiers, but I still lost the city and I had to backtrack in my conquest to regain my foothold.

This is for me the most important lesson anyone can learn. There will be moments in life that no matter how hard you try, or how desperate your attempts are, you will lose something that has meaning to you. Of course this is a silly example with little to no consequences in real life, but the lesson is not lost. Sometimes, the best anyone can do in a situation is to make the best of it. What I am thankful for is that I was able to learn this lesson as a teenager from a video game. Others have to learn this lesson the hard way. I could have learnt this just a couple of years later, when my father told me after leaving my grandfathers house that that would probably be the last time I saw him alive. It was hard to hear, and affected me more than can be meaningfully expressed, but because I knew that no matter what I did, this was inevitable, I focused instead on remembering the pleasant memories I had with my grandfather. Not everyone is fortunate enough to learn a valuable lesson in a trivial situation.

What is the point of this blog post? I’m not all to certain, only that I wanted to say write something about what I learnt from a hobby that in some way has formed who I am. Maybe it is to say that they are valuable in the lessons they teach us, and not just the usual things touted when defending their worth, such as decision-making and reflex training. Sometimes it is a moment of poor planning and lack of foresight that teaches you that there will be battles that you cannot win, and rather than save scum (reload just before to erase your mistakes), you do your best to make it more painful for your opponent than it is for you. Or maybe I am just equating a valuable life lesson with a cock up in a game I played when I was fourteen. Either way I will probably write another one of these with maybe a less heavy lesson to learn/force. So until then!