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

by Daniel Wendler

  Turtling also works with friends. If your friend is being obnoxious, you don’t want to get angry with them. But if you turtle, you can often signal to them that they should quiet down.

  For instance,

  Friend:

  “Hey, whatcha doing?”

  You:

  “I’m trying to finish this project—it’s almost due and I’m running out of time.”

  Friend: [Not getting the hint]

  “Oh, that’s cool. I’m just hanging out. Anyway, what are you doing this weekend?”

  You:

  “Right now, I’m just trying to finish this project that’s almost due”

  Friend: [Still not getting the hint]

  “Aw, that’s boring. Why don’t you tell me about the weekend instead?”

  You:

  “Right now, I’m just trying to finish this project that’s almost due”

  Friend: [Finally getting the hint]

  “Oh, okay. I’ll leave you alone so you can focus.”

  (Of course, you could also just tell your friend “Hey, I can’t talk right now.” But if they don’t get the hint, then you can just turtle and that will quickly drive your point home, without being offensive.)

  Unfortunately, turtling only works against verbal harassment. If someone is threatening you with violence, that’s your cue to leave. But since verbal harassment is much more common than physical aggression, turtling is an excellent skill to have.

  Quest 2.6 (Type: Collection)

  Quest Objectives:

  Practice turtling five times

  Quest Description:

  The easiest way to practice turtling is if you have a friend or family member who can help you. Just ask someone to pretend to tease you, then respond to their teasing with turtling. If you end up getting flustered and forgetting to turtle, reset and try again. Keep practicing until you can maintain your turtle phrase without a problem. Success means that you were able to calmly repeat your turtle phrase until the other person got bored and ran out of things to say.

  If you don’t have another person who can help you, it’s still possible to practice. Just place two chairs facing each other. Make one chair the “teasing” chair and one chair the “turtle” chair. Start by sitting in the “teasing” chair, and try to tease yourself. Then move to the “turtle” chair and try to respond by turtling. It will feel a little goofy to move between the chairs (and I don’t recommend doing this in public!) but this will help you get into character. Pretty soon, it should feel pretty natural, and then you can practice against yourself. Think of it like single-player chess.

  Quest Rewards:

  The ability to stay calm when someone is teasing you

  Avoid telling people personal information you don’t want to share.

  Make it harder for others to bother you

  Side Quests:

  Brainstorm some “turtle phrases” (such as “I’m sorry, I’m not interested” or “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to talk about that”) that you can memorize and use when necessary

  Play a game of StarCraft (or another RTS) against the computer. Experiment with a turtling defense.

  Keep your eyes open for other people who engage in “turtling.” If someone starts to turtle in response to your questions, that’s a sign that you should change the topic and stop pestering them.

  Multiplayer Level Seven: Sandbox Gameplay

  Sandbox games are phenomenally fun.

  In sandbox games like Minecraft, Skyrim or Grand Theft Auto, the developers don’t force you to follow a set storyline or pursue specific objectives. Instead, the game hands you a massive world to explore, a ton of fun things to do, and lets you do whatever you want.

  I think part of why sandbox games are so popular is because they are deeply immersive. Your ability to create whatever kind of experience you like allows you to play the game in a way that feels right to you. Skyrim allows you to be a selfless hero, a greedy thief—or a tourist who just wants to wander around and admire the scenery. Minecraft allows you to be an explorer, a builder, or just a pig puncher. You have the freedom to add your own personality to the gameplay experience, and that’s why so many people love them. Other games that put you on a rigid pathway might have beautiful graphics and fun gameplay, but they don’t suck you in quite the way a sandbox does.

  As you might have guessed, there’s a connection to social skills here. See, when you talk to someone, you can make the experience like a sandbox, or like a traditional linear game. You can either give someone the freedom to build something that shows their own personality, or you can drag them along a rigid path. While the rigid pathway can be easier to create, giving someone a “sandbox” conversation is more likely to create connection.

  So how do you create a sandbox conversation?

  Well, you need to follow two steps.

  First, ask open-ended questions instead of closed ended questions. Closed-ended questions can only be answered in a few ways, while open-ended questions can be answered however the person likes. For instance, if you ask someone “How many siblings do you have?” they can only really answer by giving a number. However, if you ask someone “What is your family like?” they can answer however they want.

  Second, ask questions with subjective answers, not objective answers. In other words, ask questions about experiences and emotions, not facts. Subjective questions invite the other person to talk about what it’s like to be them. They invite the other person to share their feelings, their memories, their unique experiences. Conversely, questions with objective answers tend to stifle connection. Asking someone “What were you like as a child?” is more likely to spark a good conversation than asking “Where did you grow up?”

  Obviously, there is a lot of overlap between these two steps. Subjective questions are much more likely to be open-ended than objective questions. But there are some subjective closed ended questions (“What is your favorite memory from childhood?”) and some objective open ended questions (“What did you do this weekend?”) If possible, ask questions that are both open ended and subjective. If you can’t do that, at least try to ask questions that are at least one or the other.

  Note that it’s okay to ask closed-ended objective questions sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with asking someone what they do for a living, or how old they are. But closed-ended objective questions do not tend to lead to deeper connections or great conversations, so you should make an effort to use open-ended, subjective questions when possible.

  As a metaphor, even sandbox games have some linear gameplay elements (Skyrim starts with a linear tutorial, for instance.) But a good sandbox game developer tries to give the player as much freedom as possible. As a good conversationalist, you should do the same.

  Quest 2.7 (Type: Daily)

  Quest Objectives:

  Ask at least one “sandbox” (open ended and subjective) question per day.

  Do this for one week.

  Quest Description:

  I’m starting you small on this quest—only one question per day.

  But there’s a reason I structured it this way. I want asking sandbox questions to become a habit for you, and the easiest way to accomplish that is through consistency. So it’s better for you to ask one question each day than for you to ask a million questions on day one and then forget about it on day two.

  Of course, you are welcome to ask more than one sandbox question per conversation, or ask sandbox questions in more than one conversation per day. But make sure you get at least one per day. After a week of this, it should feel more natural to use these questions all the time.

  Quest Rewards:

  Easier to connect with others

  More interesting conversations

  Opportunity to learn about others

  Side Quests:

  Write down a list of “sandbox” questions that are universally applicable. Memorize a few and have them ready for your next conversation.

  Ask yourself some “sandbox”
questions and “linear” questions, and answer them as if you were in a real conversation. Get a feel for how the different questions prompt different responses. (Note: If you ask yourself a sandbox question and you don’t know how to answer it, others may not know how to answer it either, so consider changing it.)

  Try to build a combo! In your conversations, practice asking sandbox questions that build on previous sandbox questions. For instance, if you ask someone “What do you like about your job?” and they reply “I like my coworkers—we have a lot of fun together” you might ask them, “What is your favorite memory with your coworkers?”

  Stage Three: Looking For Group

  Looking For Group Level One: ET The Extra Terrestrial

  In 1983, the video game maker Atari—at one point the fastest growing company in America—lost over half a billion dollars (1.5 billion in today’s dollars.) They shed more than a third of their workforce, and went into a tailspin from which they never recovered. The company was eventually split into pieces and sold to different buyers, and their destruction was so massive that it contributed to the entire U.S gaming industry entering a deep recession (known as the Video Game Crash of 1983.)

  There were multiple reasons for Atari’s implosion. The video game market at the time was heavily saturated, with a massive number of companies producing competing consoles. Game quality was often low, with many games produced by companies primarily as marketing tools. For instance, the Purina dog food company made a game promoting its dog food—as you might expect, it was not a very good game.

  But one of the biggest reasons for the implosion was a single game: ET The Extra Terrestrial. The movie version of ET had been released earlier that year, and it was a smash hit. Atari smelled an opportunity and spent millions to buy the licensing rights to ET. Then they whipped together a game in just six weeks, and printed millions of cartridges in anticipation of massive sales.

  The thing is, games that are made in just six weeks don’t tend to be good games. And ET was no exception. In fact, it’s considered one of the worst games of all time. Atari spent millions on a popular license, produced millions of game cartridges, and dropped a ton of money into marketing and promotion. But ET ended up being such a flop that Atari buried their excess cartridges in a New Mexico landfill.

  It didn’t matter how much Atari wanted ET to be a success, or how much they were willing to invest in marketing. Some games are just impossible to make successful.

  The same thing is true of friendships. Some people just don’t want to be your friend. Maybe they have enough friends, or maybe they’re really busy, or maybe they just aren’t interested. No matter how much time you invest in pursuing these people, you’re rarely going to see any positive results.

  Worse, some people are happy to spend time with you, but they’ll treat you poorly. They accept your invites to hang out, but they’re rude to you, they don’t respect your decisions, and they make you feel crummy. Every minute you spend with these toxic individuals will make your life worse.

  Think of these people as “ET friends.” An ET friend is someone who is a waste of your time and effort. That doesn’t mean that they’re a terrible person or that you should consider them an enemy—it just means that nothing good is likely to happen if you attempt to befriend them.

  Unfortunately, it’s easy to find yourself investing lots of time and energy into an ET friend. Maybe they lead you on, giving you the impression that they’re interested even though they never actually accept your invites. Or maybe you don’t have a lot of friends, and it’s difficult to say no to hanging out with someone even if they treat you poorly. Or perhaps they were a good friend to you earlier, but now they treat you poorly or don’t return your calls. Before you know it, you’ve invested weeks or months pursuing a friendship with someone and have very little to show for it. And because you’ve invested so much time chasing the ET friend, you haven’t put as much time into building friendships with other people. It’s a bad pattern to be caught in.

  Fortunately, there’s a simple solution. When you catch yourself wasting your time and effort with an ET friend, find someone else to spend time with!

  If you’ve invited someone to hang out several times and they turn you down each time, invite someone else. If someone disrespects and belittles you every time you hang out, stop hanging out with them. Hang out with people who will be good friends to you instead.

  Of course, just because someone is an ET friend today doesn’t mean that you should avoid them forever. They might be ignoring you because they’re super busy, or they might be rude to you because of problems in their personal life. If they used to be a good friend to you, you might try asking them why things have changed, and see if you can repair the relationship. Or if they were never a good friend to you, you might try cautiously reconnecting with them after a few months and see if their behavior has changed.

  But until you see evidence that things are better, you should be very careful about investing lots of your time and energy into an ET friendship. Focus on people who are likely to be good friends instead.

  Quest 3.1 (Type: Collection)

  Quest Objectives

  Write down an inventory of the people that you consider your friends, or people you are trying to befriend. Ask yourself the following questions about each person:

  Does this person treat me and others well?

  Does this person seem like they want to spend time with me?

  Do I like spending time with this person?

  If the answer to any of those questions is “No”, think about that relationship with that person.

  Quest Description:

  This quest is a bit touchy-feely, but give it a try. I think you might find it helpful.

  Your goal here is to honestly look at your friendships and ask yourself if they are good and healthy. If they are, then awesome!

  But if you realize that some of your relationships have serious problems, then perhaps you need to take action. Perhaps there is some conflict you need to resolve, or perhaps you are not being a very good friend to them and need to change your behavior. It’s also possible that you’ve found one of your “ET friends”, and the best response is for you to start spending less time with them.

  Quest Rewards:

  More insight into your relationships

  The opportunity to improve your friendships or find new, better ones.

  It looks pretty cool to think deep thoughts while staring into the distance.

  Side Quests:

  Take a few minutes to write down the best and worst friendships that you’ve had in the past. With the benefit of hindsight, try to identify what made the best friendships so good, and what made the worst friendships so bad. You may be able to identify some patterns that will help you avoid “ET friends” in your life today.

  Return to the list of your friends that you wrote down in the quest. This time, ask the questions of yourself. “Do I treat this person and others well?” “Do I act like I want to spend time with this person?” “Am I fun for this person to hang out with?” If any of the answers are “no”, then try to find a solution so you can be a better friend.

  If you find that many of your friendships seem to be “ET” friends, talk about your friendships with a trusted family member or therapist. Some advice and encouragement could help you get on a path to better friendships.

  Looking For Group Level Two: Consistency Makes The Clan

  My freshman year of high school, I bought the last copy of Tribes 2 off a dusty shelf at a game store. It turned out to be one of the best gaming decisions I’ve ever made.

  It wasn’t just that I had a blast playing Tribes 2—although I did. Tribes 2 was essentially capture the flag with jetpacks (and tanks, and sniper rifles, and a gun called the spinfusor that shot blue exploding disks). It was easy for enemies to kill you unless you moved quickly, so the game required you to get extremely good at maintaining momentum as you flew across the battlefield. If you slowed down, you
were dead. It was a mix of Battlefield, Titanfall, and Team Fortress—with a bit of gotta-go-fast Sonic thrown in for good measure. The gameplay was fast-paced and unique, and I loved it.

  But the gameplay of Tribes 2 wasn’t the best part. The best part for me, was my clan: Indiana Vehicles. I’ll be the first to admit that “Indiana Vehicles” is not the best name to strike fear into the heart of our enemies, but the clan’s founders lived in Indiana and they liked driving the vehicles in the game, so that’s the clan name they picked.

  Being a part of Indiana Vehicles was a fantastic experience for me. As a socially awkward freshman in high school, it was incredible to have a group where I belonged. To this day, I remember one of the other players posting a congratulatory message for me in our clan forums after I had performed a game-winning move in a close competitive match. My clan was more than teammates—they were friends.

  But here’s the thing. Those friendships only formed because we spent time together. Consistency was the glue that built our clan. Every Friday night, we would log on and game together. Every Friday, we would get to know each other a little more, we would make a few new memories, and our friendships would become a bit stronger.

  And eventually, lack of consistency made the clan drift apart. People moved on to new games, fewer and fewer folks came to the Friday night practices, and eventually the whole thing shut down. I’m no longer in touch with anyone from that clan.