I made an observation like this once before, about video games affecting my thinking in real life, when I wondered what my rapidly-developing infant son would spend his next skills points on. (Answer: Agility (he's now walking), Defense (he now has more teeth), and Speechcraft (he can now say 'bus').)

Anyway, this past weekend, I ran a 5K race, pushing my son along in a jogging stroller. The race was packed. Over 9000 people. From the starting signal, it took 6 minutes before my son and I even crossed the starting line!

So, it didn't turn out to be much of a race. With so many people, and with me pushing a big stroller, I could hardly pass anybody. It was frustrating—I was hoping that we would get an excellent racing time, and here I was stuck behind slow runner after slow runner.

Then I thought about different game modes, like fighting games with Survival or Time Attack, and I saw this situation as the same thing. I was in a race, but the game mode here was not to run into other people, of which there were plenty. Then it became fun again. I dodged and weaved and navigated like a craft charging through bullet hell or a Battletoad on a hover bike, and I was satisfying my alternate objective since the standard time objective wasn't working out.

In the end, we beat the game mode, because we finished the race without hitting anyone's heels or making anyone fall over, and we had a good time of it too. Once more, thank you video games!