Reddit Hypothetical: Video Game Abilities

Reddit is a great website, for many reasons. It can also be a huge time suck. For that reason, I won’t go on and on about how useful or entertaining it is sometimes, but I will give a short intro so the context of this post can be understood by non-Redditors (users of the site).

Reddit bills itself as the “front page of the internet”, and that’s a pretty accurate way to describe it. It relies entirely on user-submitted content, to various “subreddits” (subdivisions of the page that center around a specific subject, such as r/pics or r/funny), and the visibility of the links are in turn dependent on the votes (upvotes/downvotes) of users. Basically, anything you see on the “frontpage”, or on the frontpage of various subreddits, has been given the seal of approval from potentially thousands of users.

I won’t explain Reddit any further to you, and hopefully you already know about it, or my explanation was good enough. If not, you can check out this PDF document that explains it a bit more.

The reason I bring all this up so you have at least a little bit of context and understanding when I say what I’m about to say. One of the subreddits whose posts often make it to the front page is r/gaming, due partially to its high membership. Recently, I noticed a very interesting post that asked a pretty cool (and difficult to answer) hypothetical. Hit the jump for that, and join me as I attempt to answer it.

Submitted by Reddit user Accipehoc

As you can see, Accipehoc provides you with ten separate options, and asks you to choose two of them. In order to make this very difficult decision a little bit easier, let’s start by narrowing down the list. As I eliminate an option, I’ll explain why.

Step 1: Eliminating Options 2, 3, 5, 7, 10

2. View Shift: All of these options are definitely useful to a certain extent, but view shift seems, in my opinion, to be the useful (most useless?). It would certainly be cool to have, and I would take it in a second if it was the only option given to me, but when factoring in the other potential options, eliminating this one is an easy choice.

3. Jumping/Landing: This one was a little harder to eliminate, but still did not manage to make the top five. As someone who stands at 6’2”, this ability would allow me to jump over 30 feet, and still manage to land safely. While it does sound pretty awesome, whenever I discuss superhuman or super-ability hypotheticals, I always factor in real-world usage. It would definitely be great (and very, very fun) to have this ability, but were I to ever use it in public, I’d instantly be declared a freak. In shows such as Heroes that place superhuman abilities in real-life scenarios, there always seems to be the danger of getting caught and experimented on. That’s not something I’d want.

5. Pockets: Needing to be able to fit these potential items into a bag makes a it slightly easier to eliminate. If I could magically carry, essentially anything, I would never have to worry about parking or leaving something at home. I could also be an extremely efficient drug dealer, if I so desired. There are nearly limitless potential ways to use and abuse this ability, but since the item would have to fit in a bag, it’s not as tempting to me as it might be to some.

7. Character Creator: Now I’m not going to try and convince you that there’s not a single thing I would change about my appearance, but I am at least mildly satisfied with the way I look. Wasting one of my two choices on this would be useless to me, though I could see how the case would not be the same for others (the severely overweight, physically handicapped, or differently-raced in locations where that is an issue). Luckily, I live in Canada, where one’s gender, appearance, or physical limitations are not nearly as difficult to live with as in other places. For that reason, and my being (relatively) comfortable with the way I look, this option is out of the running.

9. Pause Button: As someone who often struggles to get a good night’s sleep, this one was very tempting. If the darkness aspect was eliminated, it would be even harder to rule this one out, but by including it, one’s options in using this ability are essentially completely limited to thought and sleep. While that would be very nice, the darkness aspect is just too big of a factor to ignore, so this one is gone too.

1. Menu and Stats: As the first choice on the list, I was immediately tempted to make this one of my options. I don’t consider myself much of a gamer, and I was a big fan of The Sims when I was younger. It seemed kind of cool that in playing The Sims, you can track your Sim’s progress in various different categories, and have those categories updated whenever you did certain tasks (like read a book or work out). It would be kind of cool to see how these (and others) stats updated, but it’s just not as good as the others.

That’s it. There’s four left, and I just can’t choose between Exp. Points, Cheat Code, Extra Life, and Save Point. It’s just too difficult. That’s why I’m looking to you, my wonderful readers, to help me narrow it down. Reminder: you have to choose two, and the descriptions of each ability are listed in the graphic above. Did I make a mistake in eliminating the other six? Which two would you choose? Can you think of an obvious reason one of the final four should be eliminated? Which should take its spot?

I look forward to hearing what you all have to say.

Top 4 Answers on Reddit So Far:

On_Letting_Go:
Save points and extra life -> live forever
in the event you die, you get reborn from your extra life then revert back to your save from a happy time in your life (meaning your extra life is back) when you reach old age just revert back and live your life again completely differently

Callahan_:
3 and 7. Be a 600 pound woman jumping on top of buildings and shit.

iwillhavethat:
Cheat Code and Save Point. Cheat code to get anything I want/need in life, Save Point to make sure I can retroactively take care of anything, once I am aware of its existence.

japcordray:
Save Point and Character Creator. Save my “game”, redesign my character and live my life. When I’m not happy with it, revert to a previous save before I used the Character Creator, use it again to make something else, and do that.

To see how other Reddit users answered this question, you can click here.