Life Lessons from PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

It's not often that I pick up time wasters. There are tons of other more productive things to do these days, and I'd really rather spend the time thinking about new things I can share with my followers, or formulating a hypothesis for my next analysis. I came across PUBG recently however, and I really love playing the game. I still think it's a time waster, though that shouldn't stop me from extracting life lessons from playing the game. Maybe through that I can justify some of the time I spend playing it.

The Game Play

I will start with explaining the game play as briefly as I can to familiarize those who haven't come across the game. PUBG is a battle royale game, where about 100 players are dropped to a remote island via parachutes. The ultimate goal is to be the last man or squad standing. The objective to survive till the end of the game is often achieved by a combination of shooting skills and strategy. When players are dropped in the island, they have nothing but articles of clothing that wouldn't do much help in terms of survival. One of the first goals of the game is to aquire the tools you will need to engage in fights (guns, ammo, weapon attachments, body armor, and healing kits/items). These items are found in buildings.

The playable portion of the map at the start is enormous, but the game zone shrinks throughout the game forcing the last standing players to keep engaging in an action-filled fight to be the last one standing.

Where Do You Want to Land

This is one of the first important decision involved in the game play. Are you going to choose to land in bigger clustered buildings where the likelihood of finding great loots is higher, or are you going to start small with a pan or a pistol and build your gear up as you go? This will seem to be an easy question to answer on its own, but the risk involved in lading in a busier cluster of buildings is a higher propensity of facing other player who might have landed and equipped themselves before you do.

This type of decision making occurs often in real life. Are you going to take the bigger risk in exchange for potentially bigger rewards, or you'll play it cool and pace your slow but rather steady progress? I am neither an expert in PUBG nor in life so I can't attempt to advice you on which of those strategies is better. In the game, I've experimented with using a different mix of strategies when it comes to landing, I suggest you do too if you are going to be encouraged to play after reading this. You are bound to die the fastest in your first few games anyway while learning and getting comfortable with both the game play and the controls.

I've always viewed life as a big experiment, so I can say I've done a similar type of experimentation earlier in life until I got comfortable to say I've got the mix of risk-reward that works for me.

You Will Fail, Don't Get Discouraged

I've been playing the game in between tasks for the last four weeks now, and I only remember staying in the game for more than thirty minute a few times. Noob player like me are likely to die in the game within the first few minutes from landing. I will describe a few types of dying I've experienced in the game, then compare it to some of the failures I've experienced in life.

• I died in the game 90% of the time, like I failed most of the time when learning or doing something new.
• I died in the game having absolutely no idea why I died, like I've failed in doing things and not fully grasp why I did.
• I died in the game because I was cocky about being better equipped than the other players, like I've been beaten by newer players in real life in multiple occasions.

You are likely to die in PUBG, and fail every now and again in life. The key is to not be discouraged and keep going. You are bound to be a winner by improving yourself in the game and in life.

Focus on the Tools You Need

We often get fixated with the end-goals or our ideal road-maps; which organizations we wish to work for, what tittles and positions will we hold by when, or what kind of contributors or leaders will we become. Don't take me wrong, road-maps are important, and keeping an eye on the end-goal is necessary to succeed in most things, but all those will mean nothing if we don't equip ourselves with the skills and build competencies that are needed.

It is exactly the same in the game. Knowing that you have to survive until the end can make you think you will do well to hide, and that may work a few times, but by not carrying items that helps with survival you are actually exposing yourself.

Help & Get Help

Networking with people's been a really important part of my journey in building a career in my chosen field. Not only to improve myself in many aspects of getting my job done, but occasionally getting my ass saved by someone more skilled in a specific field that I know very little about.

This is true in the game too, specially in squad-mode. While you can try to up your game in all aspects of it, there'd always be those who will be better snipers, drivers, sweepers, and medics. Squads who help each other early in the game, by doing that which they individually do best have greater chances of surviving.

Be Open to Detours

No matter how well we prepare ourselves in chasing the lives we choose, we get forced to occasionally take another route. In extreme cases; chose to take a completely different direction. Not adapting to roadblocks that present themselves can be a career limiting choice. I haven't met anyone who travelled in a straight line towards success. Some of the most successful people I know are the ones who acknowledged they've made a wrong turn somewhere, learned from their experiences, then redirected themselves.

You will make many wrong turns in the game, and in most cases staying in the direction you were going leads to death.

If you are also playing PUGB, I'd love to hear your thoughts about life lessons you've picked up, specially the ones I haven't covered in this post. Chances are great that you are a better player than me so any tips will be greatly appreciated too.

Image Credit:

PUBG Cover Photo - Flickr
Parachuting from Plane - Pixabay
Set of Lab Equipment - Pixabay
Grim Reaper - Pixabay
Barrett M82 Anti-Materiel Rifle Sniper - WikiPedia
Fist Bump with Laptops - Pixabay
Road Closed - Pixabay