On Life Finding a Way of Teaching you
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Have you ever played one of the Soulsborne games? I love playing video games and getting immersed into the realms created by Hidetaka Miyazaki, which teach you, that if at first you don’t succeed, picking up the pieces and failing better is the way to reach your goal in the end.
Yes. I am a shaman and I play video games. The reason why I love them so much is, that they are hard as hell in the beginning. “Bloodborne” for example was deemed so difficult, that Sony sent an electronic gift to everyone who succeeded in platting it. 
My goalie masks and parts of my then collection. When I moved from Vienna to another city, I gave away parts of it as gifts to friends and I sold another part to pay for the expenses.
The games also have a lot of humor, dark one that is. In “Dark Souls II”, one of the very first trophies you are going to unlock on your way to the Platinum trophy is “This is Dark Souls”. All that is required to achieve it, is to die for the first time.
Yes, for the first time. The challenge to me was, not to get it as the first trophy. I succeeded. Naturally, I had to fail better that time around, too, eventually. Soulsborne games do not take you by the hand and if you want to find out more about the lore, you have to take a closer look at the items you are collecting and the NPC’s you will meet on the way while playing. 
Even Nanoq, the great hunter and wanderer, has to take a rest once in a while. "Nanoq breathing in deeply", white pastels, Kristin Raphaela Otti (2024, Hotel, Café & Konditorei Hecher, Wolfsberg)
Each and every single one of them tells a story. Your gaming experience and level of knowledge of the world you are playing in fully depends on your level of presence and willingness to engage with it.
Many a secret will only be revealed to you, if you open your eyes to observe and your heart to see. If you do not, the game never shows you, that the story of the world you are wandering in is very much alive and not dying as it may seem on the surface. |
Orion was a character playing both sides of the chess board. A Grand Master. Those who really enjoy the game albeit, never stop learning. "Orion", coloured pencils, Kristin Raphaela Otti (2002, a character for a forum-based online role-playing game)
You also learn a lot about dressing right for different occasions. Walking into a bout with a dex build wielding a large wooden club is usually not the best idea, Havel’s armor set is a boon, until you run into a magic build that dances around you and turns your heavy armor set into your bane. It is like using a tennis racket in a badminton match.
Co-op and working together is also a way to go, but here is one advice: Do not follow anyone blindly, no matter how much you trust them and how experienced they seem to be. There is no such thing as a master. A friend of mine, Simon, and I were playing “Dark Souls II” together with me taking on the role as the guide as I had already Platinum’d the game. We had built trust by playing together and being on the same EASHL team for fourteen years. At the start of the Lost Bastille in “Dark Souls II”, there is an abyss. Sometimes you do have to dive in head first to challenge a boss in the games, like the Darklurker for instance, but more often than not, you will experience a respawn. There is one spot which will cause you to glitch right into your demise and said abyss and I hit it perfectly. Down I went and Simon ran right after me, trusting in that I knew exactly, what I was doing. Well. We had a good laugh about it. Life will find a way to teach you and sometimes it does it in the most unexpected of ways. The Soulsborne games have taught me a lot about failing simply being a way of finding out, what does not work, and failing better being a way of slowly working on yourself, whilst granting yourself the permission to acknowledge that every single time you respawn and start another run, you have celebrated the only victory there is: The one over who you were just a moment ago. Yes, if you read between the lines, I was a trophy collector and hunter once upon a time. Now I have re-learned, how to play the games just for the pure joy of them. Life will find a way. Always. Kristin Raphaela Otti |
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