Does persistence pay off in gaming?

While driving to our Monday activities my son was attempting to convince me we needed to stop at every toy store in a 10 mile radius to search for the elusive Bakugan booster paks. This is not a new endeavor for him, but today's execution involved a new technique that consisted of him droning the 'e' sound in 'please' for as long as he could. His attempt went on for several miles, despite my assuring him it would not soften my resolve and would in fact most likely trigger my alter-ego 'Grumpy Mom - Funsucker Extraordinaire.'

Finally he gave up, either in response to his ear-covering sister yelling 'stop it' or my 'I'm more interested in what's on the radio' fakeout. More likely because he got bored.

In the blissful silence that followed, I wondered to myself how he thought annoying me would ever end with a positive result. How could anyone? But I realized the saying "persistence pays off" is a common saying for a reason. It must work sometime. If it didn't, the telemarketing industry would have died off long ago. So that brought me to thinking about when persistence had worked for/on me.

Learning something new requires persistence certainly. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" and all that. If you want to game, then you need a certain amount of persistence. It's rare to come into a game and be able to play it well without failing a few times first. Persistence and desire to play - if you really don't WANT to play, you're not going to keep trying until you get better at it, you'll just move on to something that does hold your attention. This is one of the reasons why I think playing age-appropriate games of all types (board, video and PC) is actually good for children. It helps them learn that they have to keep trying, gives them a sense of accomplishment when they do, and helps them learn to deal with the feelings that happen when they fail. Playing games against the computer is great for that last point - they don't blame you if they fail at a game, and they won't suspect you of 'going easy' on them if they win at a game (unlike in Sorry or checkers.)

Playing games certainly requires persistence. I know it took me a while to learn to coordinate using the controllers on our Nintendo Wii system, and my daughter still kicks my ass in the Wall-E mini games because she has a better mastery of moving around in "space." But my persistence paid off in Guitar Hero, where I'll regularly play songs over and over in practice mode until I can at least get a 90% or greater (but I've settled for 83% for that darned Stevie Ray Vaughan song - daaaaam that man could PLAY!)

My latest bout with persistence is playing my new MMORPG, Warhammer Online (WAR). And that persistence is paying off. The game has progressively become more enjoyable the more I've played. Partly because Mythic has been patching like crazy (Thank You Mythic) and partly because I've become more familiar with how to play my characters. Last night, my pet only got stuck a couple of times, and the RvR Battlegrounds worked as they should, making it a fun way to work off the stress of the day (Ha! Die Honeybunches, Die!)

Persistence has also worked for my son, just not his latest attempt. His birthday is coming up, and he keeps asking me to get him a couple special things. Every time we go to a toy store, he checks the shelves for his current "must have." He's stopped asking me outright to buy "right now", but just casually tells me "Look at that, they still have 3 left." Clever boy. Not enough to annoy me, just enough to keep that information at the ready for gift-buying time. But the joke's on him, I bought the toy 3 weeks ago and it's hiding in my closet.