Life is a video game and here are the rules

01-16-2026

This is a very unique idea I’ve been thinking about recently. It’s a combination of my thoughts and the patterns I’ve noticed while traveling the world and paying close attention to how people live, think, and move through the system.

Most people do not realize they are inside a simulation-like video game. Not because they are unintelligent, but because the game never announces itself. There is no opening screen. No tutorial message. No pause where someone explains what is happening. Life just starts moving, and you are expected to keep up.

You begin by winning a sperm race out of roughly 500 million in a single shot of jizz from your dad. You are born into motion. Systems are already running. Expectations are already set. By the time you are old enough to ask questions, you are already being measured, scored, and pushed forward into play. Once you see this clearly, you cannot unsee it.

Rule 1: If you don’t choose a main quest, the system auto-assigns one

A main quest is your primary direction in life. It is what most of your time, energy, and decisions serve.

If you never stop to choose one, society chooses for you.

The default questline usually looks like this:

School → full-time job → marriage → mortgage → retirement.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this path. The problem is that most people never consciously choose it. They just wake up one day already deep inside it.

In video game terms, many players never open their quest log, which simply means they never pause to ask, “What am I actually playing for?”

Rule 2: Your spawn point is pure RNG (Random Number Generator)

RNG stands for Random Number Generator.

It means luck. Chance. Variables you did not control.

You do not choose where you are born.

You do not choose your parents.

You do not choose your early environment.

Some people start with more money.

Some start with safer homes.

Some start with better education or stronger connections.

Others start with hardship.

This is not a moral statement. It is a mechanical one.

It is almost as if everyone enters the world wearing a default utility belt. You don’t get to choose what’s on it. You don’t get to swap items. And you don’t even realize you’re wearing it until much later in life.

That utility belt can quietly shape your confidence, your risk tolerance, your personality, and even the range of futures you believe are possible, all before you are old enough to question any of it.

Here are some of the most common items people are born with on that belt.

 1. Citizenship in a stable country

A strong passport means safety, mobility, opportunity, and legal protection by default.

 2. Parents with money

Not luxury. Cushion. Mistakes cost less. Risk is survivable.

 3. Parents with high-paying or professional careers

Doctors, engineers, executives, lawyers. This brings structure, expectations, and guidance.

 4. A safe and stable childhood environment

No chaos. No constant survival mode. The nervous system develops normally.

 5. Good genetics and baseline health

Energy, immunity, and the absence of chronic illness quietly compound over decades.

 6. Access to quality education

Good schools, tutors, test prep, and environments where learning is normalized.

 7. Parents who stay together

Emotional stability and fewer fractures during development.

 8. Living in a high-opportunity city or region

Jobs, networks, information, and exposure cluster geographically.

 9. Parents with strong social networks

Early introductions often matter more than resumes.

 10. Above-average intelligence or learning speed

Faster pattern recognition makes almost every system easier to navigate.

 11. Emotional stability or low baseline anxiety

Calm minds make better long-term decisions under pressure.

 12. Conventionally attractive appearance

Pretty privilege is real, even when people pretend it isn’t.

 13. Tall or athletic physical build

Especially impactful for men in leadership, dating, and confidence formation.

 14. Parents who understand money

Early exposure to investing, leverage, and long-term thinking.

 15. Cultural fluency in dominant norms

Knowing how to speak, dress, and behave in power systems.

 16. A respected or credible last name

Signals trust before competence is proven.

 17. Early exposure to technology and the internet

Information advantage compounds faster than almost anything else.

 18. Parents who actively advocate for you

Teachers, coaches, and institutions respond differently when parents push.

 19. A financial safety net

The ability to fail without permanent damage.

 20. Being born without visible disabilities or cognitive impairments

Removes friction most people never have to think about.

None of these items are earned.

They are rolled.

Two people can work equally hard and still end up in completely different places because one entered the game with tools the other never had access to. Complaining about RNG does not reroll your character. It only wastes time.The game begins wherever you spawn.

Rule 3: Your base stats are fixed at character creation

Base stats are your natural traits. Think of them as how your character was built at birth.

Common examples:

 • INT (Intelligence): how quickly you learn, analyze, or think abstractly

 • STR (Strength): physical power, endurance, or bodily resilience

 • CHA (Charisma): communication, likability, persuasion

 • DEX (Dexterity): coordination, speed, precision

 • CON (Constitution): health, stamina, recovery

 • Luck: being in the right place at the right time

You roll these once in life.

If you have high intelligence, leaning into learning, strategy, or analysis makes sense.

If you have high physical strength, building, lifting, or physical trades may feel more natural.

If you have high charisma, sales, leadership, or social roles often come easier.

Forcing yourself into the wrong role drains energy faster and makes you constantly rethink your life.

Rule 4: Your build is customizable

Your build is how you combine your stats, skills, and habits over time. Base stats are mostly fixed. Skill trees are not. A skill tree is anything you repeatedly practice and improve. This is where choice finally enters the game.

 1. Discipline

The ability to do what you said you would do, even when motivation disappears. This is the root stat. Everything else depends on it.

 2. Communication

Clear speaking, writing, and listening. It affects relationships, income, leadership, and conflict resolution more than almost any other skill.

 3. Physical Fitness

Strength, stamina, and mobility. A stronger body supports a clearer mind and higher energy across all areas of life.

 4. Emotional Regulation

The ability to feel emotions without being controlled by them. This prevents impulsive decisions under stress.

 5. Focus and Attention Control

The ability to concentrate without constant distraction. In an attention economy, focus is a competitive advantage.

 6. Consistency

Showing up repeatedly without needing novelty. Most progress comes from boring repetition done long enough.

 7. Self-Awareness

Knowing your strengths, weaknesses, patterns, and triggers. You can’t improve what you refuse to see.

 8. Learning How to Learn

Reading comprehension, note-taking, pattern recognition, and synthesis. This accelerates every other skill tree.

 9. Decision-Making Under Uncertainty

Choosing without perfect information. Indecision is often more damaging than being wrong.

 10. Stress Management

Managing pressure without collapse. High performers are not stress-free. They are stress-adapted.

 11. Social Intelligence

Reading rooms, understanding incentives, and navigating group dynamics. This is different from charisma. It’s awareness.

 12. Time Management

Directing attention and energy toward what actually matters. Time is fixed. Priorities are not.

 13. Boundary Setting

Saying no without guilt. This protects energy, focus, and long-term goals.

 14. Financial Literacy

Understanding money, budgeting, saving, and investing. This is not about being rich. It is about avoiding traps.

 15. Resilience

The ability to recover from setbacks without quitting. Every long game requires this stat.

 16. Critical Thinking

Separating signal from noise. Questioning narratives instead of absorbing them passively.

 17. Health Habits

Sleep, nutrition, hydration, and movement. These quietly boost or nerf every stat.

 18. Adaptability

Updating beliefs and strategies when reality changes. Rigid players break during meta shifts.

 19. Confidence Built on Competence

Confidence earned through skill, not ego. This compounds faster and lasts longer.

 20. Delayed Gratification

Choosing long-term gains over short-term relief. This single trait predicts outcomes across health, money, and relationships.Two people can start with the same stats and end up with completely different lives based on what they train. This is where personal responsibility actually matters.

Rule 5: XP only comes from reps

XP = Experience points

Experience points are earned the hard way. There is no shortcut around this.

You can read books, watch videos, listen to podcasts, and scroll advice all day long. None of that gives you real XP. It gives you ideas. It gives you language. It gives you awareness. But it doesn’t change you.

XP only comes from doing.

You don’t learn how to manage money until you actually lose some. You don’t learn relationships until you’ve been hurt, hurt someone else, and had to sit with the consequences. You don’t learn confidence by thinking about it. You learn it by putting yourself in situations where things might go wrong and surviving them.

Touching a hot stove teaches you faster than a lifetime of warnings. Your body remembers. Your nervous system remembers. That lesson sticks.

This is why people can spend years “preparing” and still feel stuck. They’re trying to learn without paying the cost. The cost is action, risk, embarrassment, failure, and repetition.

The system doesn’t care how smart you are or how good your intentions are. It only rewards reps.

If you want to level up, you have to move.

Rule 6: There are two types of people in the world, main characters and NPCs

This isn’t an insult. It’s a pattern.

A main character is actively playing their life. An NPC is running scripts they never chose.

A main character chooses a direction, even if it’s wrong at first. An NPC waits for instructions, permission, or the “right time.”

A main character acts, fails, adjusts, and keeps moving. An NPC avoids failure and stays stuck in planning or comfort.

A main character uses information to make moves. An NPC consumes information as entertainment.

A main character questions default paths and expectations. An NPC follows them because that’s what everyone else is doing.

A main character understands discomfort is part of progression. An NPC confuses comfort with safety.

Most people aren’t NPCs forever. They’re just unaware they’ve been playing that role. The goal is to be a 1 of 1 main character in your own video game at the end of the day.

Rule 7: Acquiring gold in the video game

Gold is money and in this game, money matters. A lot.

Not because it makes you a better person, but because it gives you optionality. It gives you freedom points. It lets you decide how you spend your time, who you answer to, and what situations you can walk away from.

Money removes friction. It buys time. It lets you leave bad jobs, bad environments, and bad dynamics without begging for permission. Without money, even smart people get stuck playing quests they never wanted.

Money doesn’t change who you are. It amplifies it. If you’re disciplined, it gives you leverage. If you’re reckless, it exposes you faster. Gold isn’t character. It’s a multiplier.

In game terms, money is access. Access to health, space, education, and better choices. It lets you skip unnecessary grind and choose higher-quality problems.

Money isn’t happiness and it isn’t purpose. It’s freedom points.

And in a game built on choice, having more options is almost always better than having fewer.

Rule 8: Physiognomy is not under your control, but it is extremely important

Physiognomy is the idea that people assign traits, intentions, and value to you based on your physical appearance, especially your face, body, and overall presence. Whether it’s fair or accurate doesn’t matter. The game applies it anyway.

Humans make snap judgments before logic ever shows up. Before you speak. Before you act. Before you prove anything. The system reads your avatar first and fills in the blanks on its own. This isn’t something you choose. It’s something that happens to you.

People instinctively associate certain physical traits with certain qualities. Strong jawlines often get read as confident or dominant. Softer features get read as kind, gentle, or passive. Height gets associated with leadership and authority. Facial symmetry gets mistaken for competence. A calm, relaxed face gets read as trustworthy. A tense or anxious face gets read as unstable or unsure.

None of these interpretations are guarantees. But they are defaults. They are the assumptions people start with before you ever get a chance to show who you really are.

Physiognomy affects:

First impressions

Who gets listened to in a room

Who gets interrupted mid-sentence

Who gets the benefit of the doubt

Who gets challenged, questioned, or tested

Most of this happens subconsciously. People aren’t sitting there analyzing you on purpose. Their brain just fills in a story automatically. Over time, this compounds.

If the world consistently reacts to you as confident, capable, or high-status, you start internalizing that feedback. Your posture improves. Your voice steadies. You speak with less hesitation. Your confidence grows because the environment keeps reinforcing it.

If the world consistently doubts you, overlooks you, or questions you, that feedback sinks inward too. You second-guess yourself. You hesitate more. You speak less clearly. Not because you’re less capable, but because the system trained you to doubt yourself. That’s how physiognomy affects confidence long-term. Not because it defines who you are, but because feedback loops shape behavior.

This is why two people with identical skill levels can carry themselves completely differently. One was reinforced early. The other was questioned early. The system trained them differently, even if neither of them consciously realizes it.

I’ve gone back and forth on whether physiognomy is destiny or not. The more time I spend on earth, the more I realize it is very real between the ages of roughly 13 to 55. After that, everyone gets older and wrinkly and the visual hierarchy flattens out. But in that middle stretch of life, physiognomy absolutely shapes experiences, confidence, and opportunity.

It influences how teachers treat you, how peers respond to you, how authority figures listen to you, how strangers react to you, and how often people assume competence or incompetence before you ever earn it. That doesn’t mean you’re trapped. The correct move is understanding the mechanic. You don’t control how people initially read you. You do control how quickly you override that read.

Skill, competence, experience, and consistency eventually expose the truth. The game always corrects over time. But early impressions still determine how steep the climb feels at the start. Physiognomy explains why confidence feels easier for some people and harder for others, even before effort enters the picture. It’s not an excuse. It’s a variable. Once you see it clearly, you stop taking it personally. You stop resenting it. And you start playing around it intelligently.

Rule 9: Looksmaxxing

Looksmaxxing is the process of upgrading your character’s visible stats so you’re not playing the game with unnecessary penalties. This isn’t about vanity. It’s about mechanics.

The game reacts to how you look before it ever reacts to what you say, think, or know. First impressions are automatic. You don’t get to opt out of them.

Looksmaxxing is simply learning how to stop sabotaging yourself visually.

Here are the core rules.

Looks are a multiplier, not a replacement. They don’t replace skill, money, or competence, but they make all of them land harder. A good build with poor presentation still underperforms early game.

Health comes first. Fitness, body composition, posture, sleep, and nutrition affect how your character is rendered. A strong, healthy body signals discipline and capability without you saying a word.

Grooming is non-negotiable. Clean skin, trimmed hair, facial hair managed or removed, nails clean, breath clean. Neglect reads as low self-respect, even if it’s unintentional.

Clothes are stats. Fit matters more than brands. Clean, simple, well-fitting clothes beat expensive chaos every time. The goal is coherence, not flexing.

Posture and movement matter. How you stand, walk, and occupy space affects how confident your character feels to others and to yourself. Slouching is a debuff.

Style should match your build and role. Trying to cosplay a different archetype creates friction. Clean, aligned, and intentional always wins over flashy.

Looksmaxxing reduces friction. People listen more. Interactions start smoother. You get more patience, more grace, and more benefit of the doubt.

It also feeds confidence. Not fake confidence. The kind that comes from knowing you’re not being judged for avoidable reasons.

This doesn’t mean looks are everything. They’re not. But pretending they don’t matter is how people stay stuck blaming the system instead of learning it.

Looks open doors.

Skill keeps them open.

Money expands the building.

Rule 10: Hypergamy

Hypergamy is the tendency to date up based on perceived value.

In video game terms, it’s when players choose partners with higher stats, better positioning, or more gold. This isn’t a moral judgment. It’s a mechanic.

People don’t pick partners randomly. They respond to confidence, competence, stability, status, attraction, and future potential. What matters is how valuable a character appears, not just who they are on paper.

Early on, this happens unconsciously. Over time, it becomes more practical. Looks matter. So do skills, money, and direction.

Hypergamy pushes behavior. It rewards people who upgrade their character and exposes mismatches when someone expects higher-level outcomes without leveling themselves.

Resenting this mechanic does nothing. Ignoring it creates confusion.

The system doesn’t care how fair it feels. It responds to your build.

If you want different results, you don’t argue with the game. Upgrade your own character.

Rule 11: Grinding beats talent builds

Talent helps early. Grinding wins late.

Some people are naturally gifted. They learn faster. They look better. They talk smoother. That’s real. But talent is a passive buff. It only works if you keep playing.

Grinding is what separates people long-term.

The person who shows up every day, even when they’re tired, bored, or uninspired, eventually passes the person who relied on talent and stopped when it stopped being fun. Most people quit right before the payoff shows up.

This applies to everything. Fitness. Business. Writing. Social skills. Money. You don’t need to be the best. You need to be consistent longer than most people are willing to be. The game rewards stamina more than brilliance.

Rule 12: This is a single-player campaign with multiplayer modes

At the end of the day, no one can play the game for you.

Your thoughts.

Your decisions.

Your mistakes.

Your consequences.

That part is solo.

But this game also has multiplayer modes, and they matter more than people admit. Friends, partners, mentors, teams, and communities can either stack massive plus EV points or slowly drain you.

The wrong people make everything harder. They normalize bad habits. They pull you back into old loops. They drain energy and momentum.

The right people do the opposite. They raise standards without saying much. They challenge you. They support you. They open doors you wouldn’t find alone.

You still have to play your own character, but who you party up with changes how hard the game feels.

Choose carefully.

Rule 13: Side quests unlock hidden perks

Side questing is how you find out who you actually are.

Most people think side quests are optional, like distractions from the “real” path. I think it’s the opposite. If you never side quest, you never really discover what your main quest should be in the first place.

You can’t know what you love if you’ve never tried anything. You can’t know what excites you, what drains you, or what feels meaningful if your life is just one straight line of responsibility.

Side quests are where preference is formed.

Trying things with no long-term commitment. Taking a yoga class. Learning to dance. Writing something no one asked for. Traveling alone. Sitting in a new country with no plan and no one who knows you. These experiences reveal parts of you that routine never touches.

A lot of people never get this phase.

They get tied down early. A relationship turns serious fast. Kids come before curiosity. Jobs turn into obligations instead of experiments. Bills stack. Time shrinks. Life speeds up. Before they realize it, they’ve built a life without ever exploring themselves.

As they get older, they don’t feel lost because they failed. They feel lost because they never tested anything. They don’t know what they like. They don’t know what lights them up. They only know what they’re responsible for.

Side questing is how you collect data on yourself.

What do you enjoy when no one is watching?

What do you gravitate toward when money isn’t involved?

What makes time disappear for you?

What makes you feel more like yourself?

You don’t answer those questions by thinking. You answer them by doing.

Solo side quests matter the most. When you’re alone, there’s no role to perform. No identity to maintain. You’re forced to sit with your instincts. Your boredom. Your curiosity. Your fear. That’s where clarity comes from.

Without side quests, people often choose a main quest that isn’t theirs. They inherit it. They default into it. Then they spend years wondering why it feels wrong. Side quests aren’t distractions. They’re reconnaissance. They show you what kind of game you actually want to play before you commit to one path forever.

Rule 14: You choose the win condition

There is no universal definition of winning.

There is no global leaderboard. No final score that everyone agrees on.

Some people want money. Some want freedom of time. Some want mastery. Some want peace. Some want family. Some want to build something meaningful. All of these are valid. Problems start when you chase a win condition you never chose.

A lot of people are exhausted because they’re trying to win a game they don’t even care about. They chase status because it looks impressive. They chase money without knowing why. They stay busy because stopping would force them to think. Choosing a win condition means deciding what actually matters to you before the credits roll.

When you do that, everything gets clearer. Decisions get simpler. Comparison loses its power. You stop feeling behind, because you’re no longer racing people on a different path. The game doesn’t punish you for choosing a different ending. It punishes you for never choosing at all. Pick your win condition early enough to enjoy the run.