Archetypes, Life, and Games

There are eight archetypes that most of the time appear through a story. More than show human personalities, they also depict how life and game work. There are the Hero, the Herald, the Mentor, the Shadow, the shape shifter, the Threshold Guardian, the Trickster, and the Ally (more on Only a Story).

We as a human in life, or the player in the game are what the hero represents. We are the one who start the journey, do the journey, and end the journey. In our journey, we are the actor, not just a mere audience.

The herald in life works as a gate to our life journey. A journey we have already started since we born to this world. Similar to the life, in the game herald appears when we start the game, or even before that, when we take an interest to the game.

Mentor and shadow appear as the right and wrong, the value that we uphold. Their interaction creates what in the theory of flow known as challenges. To apprehend this value, we need the ability to evaluate it, a skill. A pre-nihilism state we encounter if the challenge to achieve the right is greater than our skill to apprehend it. This pre-nihilism state will create an anxiety to us. However, when the challenge is too low compared to our skill, a situation where we cannot even feel the dread from the wrong, it make we lost the wrong (which is not long after that the right will also followed). Not sure what is right and what is wrong, we ended up in nihilism state. Feeling everything is the same, we easily get boredom. After circling around in nihilism, people will consider using value again. However, different than pre-nihilism, people will use the value that suitable for their life, their skill, and become a master rather than a slave. This state is known as post-nihilism, which gives an advantage to people, being immersed in the flow channel through their lifetime (more on Post-Nihilism and Goals in Video Games).

In life, the shape shifter works as expectation, the threshold guardian as doubt, the trickster as reality, and the ally as relief. Together they fill our journey in our lifetime. Expectation will help us to focus only to our current solution, and drive us to specific curiosity until we meet doubt. Doubt opens our eyes that our solution is not good enough and makes us see the reality. The reality encourages us to do novelty seeking, looking from many available solutions. After a certain time, we will get the best solution, the relief, and start to build expectation toward it (more on Curiouser, Curiouser).

Whether archetypes in people define life, or life defines archetype is still unknown. One thing for sure is, game, as a product crafted by human, is influenced heavily by people’s archetype. So, it is not an exaggerated if game is the best representation of our life, and our answer how to make it better.