Why Tetris is like climbing and the Zen art of playing Modern Warfare 3

Years ago I had an argument with my brother about whether climbing was like playing Tetris. I argued that it was: he that it wasn't. Obviously it's not exactly like climbing, but as in climbing the slow accumulation of errors, of less effective choices means that you either have enough energy to make it to the top or you don't. In most other respects they are utterly different, but I would never have made that connection if I hadn't at times previous done a lot of climbing and played a lot of Tetris.


This trick of making odd connections is valuable. At root it is a human survival skill. We don't have large muscles, sharp teeth, thick fur or particularly acute senses. But what has given us a somewhat unequal advantage in the struggle for life is our ability to look at a stick and a lumpy nodule of flint and see a spear. This in turn is based on a broad knowledge of sticks and rocks and what happens when you bang things together. One could misinterpret such things as play, but I call them research. Taking the elements of experience and bringing them together in ways that combine the old and familiar to create something that, in time, will lead to pizza wheels, nuclear submarines and bikini waxing.


So lets bring the the four elements of the title together. We've had Tetris and climbing, but what of Zen and Modern Warfare? Connection one: I've played a fair amount of Modern Warfare recently. I've been thinking about it too. I'm not talking about daydreaming, or fantasising about awesomely lengthy kill streaks, but rather about what the best way to play might be. The objectives are clearly defined, but there are a large number of ways to achieve them. I'm a big fan of a game mode called Domination in which the two teams fight over and attempt to hold three positions marked by flags. In essence, the plan is obvious, you run to the flag and kill anyone on the opposing team. Once you capture the flag, you kill anyone on the opposing team who approaches it.


Simple. But on one level that's like saying you win the game, by winning the game; you climb the Eiger by getting to the top. It's quite a high level plan.


Unfortunately, beginners interpret it too literally and, when pushed, so do more experienced players. You can see them run towards the flag, stand there out in the open, spinning round looking for enemies, or lie on their belly praying that no one sees them. Then they run to the next flag by the shortest route and do the same. The problem with this approach is that it is predictable. If I know that 90% of playes will run straight for the nearest flag then I can intercept them, or wait for them in cover, or flank them, or, most satisfyingly of all, I can lob a grenade at their location from half way across the map.


To be predictable is to be dead, which is generally to be avoided.


Under stress people will do exactly the same stupid thing over and over again. They'll run round exactly the same corner they got shot running around just five seconds ago. And they'll do it over and over again. The mind fixes on a particular low level plan and becomes inflexible.


In order to play well, one needs to take the familiar - the layout of the map, the weapons, the knowledge of how others typically play the game - and come up with something new, to improvise under pressure in constantly changing circumstances.


Some people talk about map control, about holding down a particular part of the map, or controlling the engagement, whereby you engineer situations where you meet the enemy on your own terms, but these are also high level plans.


Which is where connection 2 comes in: the Zen Art of Walking About a Busy Town. If you've ever been in a hurry in a crowded city centre, you'll know the frustration of navigating the intersecting pathways of thousands of occasionally bovine shoppers, sightseers and lollygaggers. The overall aim is to get to the station before the train leaves, but the low level plan breaks down into a series of looking for gaps in the flow of people and darting into them.


The problem comes when one spots an opening in the crowd and rushes into it only to find that forward movement is again forestalled. Movement becomes a series of frustrations, the effort of forming and enacting a series of short term plans that show very little actual gain saps one's reserves of patience.


The alternative is to abandon the plans, to stop trying to weave in and out, to slip into gaps, overtake lumberers, dodge and weave. Instead, and this sounds like a bad idea until you try it, you focus your gaze on some non-specific distant point in the direction you want to go, and you walk. The experience is hard to describe. By widening your focus from one gap in the crowd, or one person to pass, you start to see how the paths of people intersect, where the gaps are going to be, how your own movements subtly alter the patterns in the crowd. Suddenly the weave of the crowd opens up. There is space to spare. Progress is rapid. All frustration is gone.


Walking about town, Modern Warfare, Tetris, climbing, writing, painting, are all effortless when you hit this point. You won't necessarily be perfect, or even good, but you will be better than you were when you got mired down in the details.