Level Up Your Social Life: The Gamer's Guide To Social Success

by Daniel Wendler

  Table of Contents

  How To Use This Book

  Stage One: Character Creation Level One: Press Start

  Level Two: Random Encounters

  Level Three: Leave the Starting Zone

  Level Four: Go Into The Tall Grass

  Level Five: Infinite Lives

  Level Six: Hardware

  Level Seven: It’s Dangerous To Go Alone

  Stage Two: Multiplayer Level One: Pong

  Level Two: Minecraft

  Level Three: Parsers

  Level Four: The Whelk

  Level Five: PVP

  Level Six: Turtling

  Level Seven: Sandbox Gameplay

  Stage Three: Looking For Group Level One: ET The Extra Terrestrial

  Level Two: Consistency Makes The Clan

  Level Three: Go Karting With Bowser

  Level Four: Speedrunning Gone Home

  Level Five: Left 4 Dead

  Level Six: The Sims

  Level Seven: Modding

  Appendix 1: Cheat Codes

  Appendix 2: Achievements

  Appendix 3: Where To Play Every Game Mentioned In This Book

  About the Author

  Level Up Your Social Life: A Gamer’s Guide To Social Success

  By Daniel Wendler

  Copyright © 2016 by Daniel Wendler

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  If you are afraid, come forth.

  If you are alone, come forth now.

  Everybody here has loved and lost

  So level up and love again

  Call it any name you need.

  Call it your 2.0, your rebirth, whatever—

  So long as you can feel it all,

  So long as all your doors are flung wide.

  Call it your day #1 in the rest of forever.

  If you are afraid

  Give more

  If you are alive

  Give more now

  Everybody here has seams and scars

  So what. LEVEL UP.

  —Vienna Teng, Level Up, from the album Aims

  ©2013 Soltruna Music www.viennateng.com

  How To Use This Book

  I know you’re anxious to jump into the guide itself, but take two minutes to read this section first. Everything will make much more sense if you do.

  This guide is organized into three stages. Each stage has seven levels, and each level has one main quest and three side quests. (There are also some bonus appendixes because everyone likes bonuses.)

  The Stages

  The stages divide the book into three different section, each focusing on a different goal. The stages are an easy way of tracking your progress, as well as telling you the “big idea” I’m trying to address in each part of the book.

  The first stage, “Character Creation” focuses on changing your habits and routines. You’ll be changing your life in little ways—like being more social, more open to experience, and more willing to take risks. The goal is to make you more naturally social, by making social connection part of your everyday life.

  The second stage, “Multiplayer” is all about conversation skills. You’ll learn how to have successful conversations, how to read body language, and how to connect with others.

  The third stage, “Looking For Group”, is about building friendships and going deeper with friends. The focus here is on building in-depth relationships—making new friends, getting closer with the friends that you’ve got, and feeling more connected with others.

  The stages are designed to be completed in order. Character Creation prepares you for Multiplayer, which prepares you to succeed when you start Looking For Group.

  Levels

  Levels are basically mini-chapters. In each level, I’ll talk about how a concept from gaming can help you improve your social life. Then I’ll give you a main quest and some side quests to help you practice what you learned.

  Main Quests

  Each level has a main quest for you to complete. Quests are a way for you to apply ideas from the book to your life. Much as you complete quests in RPGs to make your character more powerful, you’ll complete these quests to make yourself more social.

  Each quest includes:

  The quest objectives (what you do)

  The quest description (how you do it)

  The quest rewards (why you should do it.)

  There are three kinds of quests.

  Collection Quests: Do something a certain number of times.

  Daily Quests: Do something once a day for a week.

  Weekly Quests: Do something once a week for a month.

  Feel free to tweak this if you want. If once a week seems too difficult, try every other week. If you want faster progress, try twice a week. If you really like a quest, do it over and over.

  The most important thing is to pick a pace that you can stick with. The goal is to move fast enough that you’re making progress, but slow enough that you don’t feel overwhelmed.

  Side Quests

  Each level has three side quests. Side quests are bonus challenges, and each one is different. They might give you an extra opportunity to practice, make the main quest more challenging, or introduce you to the games I talk about in the level. Side quests are totally optional, but you’ll get more out of the guide if you do them. I recommend doing at least one per level, and it’s great if you can do all three.

  Appendixes

  At the end of the book are three appendixes: Cheat Codes, Achievements, and Game Directory. Cheat Codes has quick tips and tricks that you can use in social settings, Achievements are tongue-in-cheek awards for using this book, and Game Directory shows you where you can play every game I mention in this book.

  Quest Strategy Guide

  In some video games you can level up just by reading a book, but real life doesn’t work that way. In real life, you need to practice if you want to get better at something.

  That’s what the quests are for. The more quests you complete, the faster you’ll reach your social goals.

  But be careful. If you start too many quests at once, you’ll be overwhelmed. If you start quests too slowly, you won’t make much progress.

  To strike the right balance, I recommend the following strategy:

  Start a new collection quest when you finish the last collection quest

  Start a new daily quest each week

  Start a new weekly quest every other week (so you should have two active each month.)

  In other words, you should usually be working on one collection quest, one daily quest, and two weekly quests at a time. That’s four quests total, which is challenging but doable.

  Of course, this is just a rule of thumb. You might find that you prefer to do more or less at a time. Or you might find that you can do a lot of easy quests at once, but need to slow down when a hard quest comes along. If you feel challenged but confident you can handle it, you’re probably doing the right amount. Basically, think of it like the difficulty setting on a video game—if you’re getting creamed, make it easier. If you’re sailing through without a challenge, make it harder.

  You should also try to track your quest progress. It’s a hassle, but if you track your progress, you’re much more likely to succeed. A few options for tracking quests:

  Pen and paper (especially if you tape it up somewhere you see it every day)

  A spreadsheet

  Todoist.com

  H
abitRPG.com

  I recommend setting aside a certain time each day for updating your quest progress. For instance, you might give yourself five minutes during breakfast or dinner to review your current quests, update your progress, and perhaps re-read a tip from the guide. This might sound like a lot of work, but once it becomes a habit it will feel effortless. Plus, daily checkups will make you much more likely to success with your social goals.

  Stage One: Character Creation

  Level One: Press Start

  This is not going to be easy.

  I’m going to ask you to change. I’m going to ask you to grow. I’m going to ask you to fail, again and again until you learn to succeed.

  But I promise you, it will be worth it.

  It was for me.

  When I was growing up, I was the nerdiest, most awkward kid you could ever hope to meet. My comfort zone began and ended with my Super Nintendo, and my social abilities were limited to 1) talking about Star Wars 2) talking about video games and 3) talking about Star Wars video games.

  In high school, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a condition that makes it much harder for me to learn social skills naturally. So I decided to learn them deliberately, like I was studying a foreign language. At that point, it was about survival more than anything. I just wanted to stop the teasing.

  But I was dreaming too small.

  Learning how to be social is far, far more than avoiding bullies. It’s about giving your life more meaning. The memories that matter the most to me are not boss battles or high scores. They’re memories of people. I remember late night conversations, dinners with a table full of friends, and incredible dates that ended with kisses in the rain.

  I think everyone deserves those kinds of memories. I think everyone deserves a place where they belong, close friends who know them deeply, and the confidence to put their best foot forward in new social settings.

  And I wrote this guide to help you get there.

  Here’s what I need you to do

  Quest 1.1 (Type: Daily)

  Quest Objectives

  Open the book every day this week.

  Yes, that’s really it.

  Quest Description:

  Most people quit.

  This quest is about making sure that you don’t.

  Here’s the thing. Being more social is not rocket science, and it’s not magic. Like most skills, if you work at it a little bit every day, over time you will get a lot better. The key is just making sure that you work at it a little bit every day—without giving up!

  So here’s your quest.

  Open this book tomorrow, and then keep opening it every day for a week. You can read it for five minutes. You can read it for an hour. You can even just skim the table of contents if you really want

  Here’s why. If you want to succeed socially, you need consistency. You need to let social growth be a regular part of your daily life. Most MMOs keep user interest with daily quests—you’ve got to log in at least for a few minutes to finish the daily quests. You need to have the same kind of consistency with your social life.

  Obviously, it’s not the end of the world if you skip a day. But if that skipped day turns into a skipped week and then a skipped month, you’re in trouble. That’s why it’s so important for you to practice consistency.

  So your first quest is simple: Read this book every day this week. Of course, you can keep reading today. But I want you to commit that you’ll pick up the book for the rest of the week too. Think you’re up to the challenge?

  Quest Reward:

  A higher chance of completing the book

  Better odds of achieving social success

  The rest of the book is super cool and you don’t want to miss out.

  Side Quests:

  Raise the stakes. Get seven five dollar bills, and stick them somewhere out of the way. Every day that you pick up this book, grab one of the five-dollar bills and use it to treat yourself to something fun. Every day you don’t read, grab a bill and make a $5 donation to charity—or if you really want to motivate yourself, just shred it.

  Write down three concrete, vivid goals. Imagine three specific, vivid goals, and write them down. Don’t pick abstract ideas like “I want to be more social.” Choose goals like “I want to be able to start a conversation with someone else and have it go well” or “I want to host a movie night for at least three other people.”

  Schedule time to read. Choose a specific time tomorrow when you’ll pick up the guide again—and set a reminder!

  Level Two: Random Encounters

  One of the most enduring tropes of RPGs is the random encounter. Want to make your character stronger? Walk outside of town until you run into a random monster, bash the monster over the head until it falls over, and then move on to the next monster.

  The implications of random encounters don’t make much sense (how does anyone get anything done when monsters attack them every ten steps?) But the basic logic is sound: If your character does a lot of little fights, they’ll be prepared to handle the big boss fight when it rolls around.

  And the same logic is true when it comes to social interactions. Obviously, there are some differences—please don’t bash random people over the head! But the big idea is the same. If you make the most of all of the little opportunities to be social each day, you’ll feel much more confident in high-stakes social situations.

  Unless you never leave the house, you probably have dozens of little opportunities to be social. Whether it’s the cashier at the store, or the person sitting next to you in class, or the coworker you work with, you have the opportunity to connect with several people each week.

  The thing is, most people waste these opportunities.

  Most people go through life treating others like NPCs, not like real people.

  See, when most people interact with strangers and acquaintances, they generally connect with them on a functional level, not a personal level. Connecting with someone on a functional level means you interact with them only enough to accomplish a particular function. For instance, you talk to the cashier just enough to check out. You talk with a coworker just enough to get information on a new project. When you add social pleasantries (like asking “how are you doing?”) you only add enough to accomplish the function of conforming to social norms.

  Connecting with someone on a personal level means that you treat them as a person, not an NPC. It means recognizing that they exist outside of their interaction with you, and trying to show some interest in them or a little compassion towards them.

  Practically, it might look like telling your cashier you appreciate their hard work. It might look like asking a barista what her favorite coffee is. It might look like asking your coworker about his weekend. It might look like asking a classmate how he did on the last test. It could just mean giving someone eye contact and a genuine smile. It might be looking at a name tag and saying “Thank you, [Name].”

  It isn’t that hard to do, but it can make someone else’s day. And it can supercharge your social confidence. Instead of remembering the times you failed socially, you can think about the dozens of little moments of connection you had throughout the week. Instead of relying on rusty skills to connect with a new friend, you can use abilities that you practice constantly. All it takes is a deliberate choice to treat the other person as a human instead of a tool—a fellow player, instead of a disposable NPC.

  That’s what today’s quest is all about.

  Quest 1.2 (Type: Collection)

  Quest Objectives:

  Create 10 moments of connection with strangers or acquaintances.

  Quest Description:

  This might feel a little awkward at first. And you might screw up. You might ask a question that’s a little too personal, or p try to start a conversation with someone who wants to be left alone.

  But that’s okay. Stick with it, and you’ll find you succeed more than you fail. And I think you’ll also find that these moments of connect
ion feel great, for both you and the other person.

  Of course, having a social life means more than connecting with random people. But we’re laying the groundwork here. Remember, random encounters prepare RPG heroes for the boss battle. Every time you deliberately create moments of connection, you’re getting a little more confident socially, and a little bit better at relating to others.

  Quest Reward:

  Start a habit of connecting with others

  Practice your connection skills

  Make ten people feel a bit happier.

  Side Quests:

  Don’t stop at making moments of connection with strangers and acquaintances—create some with family or friends, too!

  When someone creates a moment of connection with you, notice what they did that made you feel connected with. Then do that with someone else!

  Create a few moments of connection online. Send a friend an email just to say hi, or to thank them for something they’ve done for you.

  Level Three: Leave the Starting Zone

  Most games have some kind of starting zone for new players.