I am what you’d call a game theorist. Not to be mistaken with the game theory that has to do with math and politics. Those topics fly a hundred miles over my head. What I do is overanalyze games. Technically, I’m a gaming theorist. I don’t make groundless theories either, because that’s just an idea. Theories can be proven. And there’s no better place to find evidence for these theories than in the games themselves. That, and I tend to watch MatPat’s Game Theory YouTube channel to get new ideas.
I could put that into practice, explaining my favorite theories, but we may not play the same games. Then we just have me rambling about games, and MatPat does that better than I do. What he doesn’t do is talk about the concept of gaming theory itself.
I used to play video games like any other person, blindly going through the story and accepting things at face value. Sure, I may not like the couples that got together, but alternatives to that were as far as I dared veer of the path. Then I began to find theories for my favorite video game series of all time: the Legend of Zelda. Some theories were dark, like how Link could be mourning his own death in Majora’s Mask. Others were a bit more creative, like explaining how one Pokemon is actually another’s shadow.
At once, I was captivated. New theories meant new alternatives. New alternatives meant new things to think about. Now, I’m not one to think too much. It makes my head hurt when it’s about complicated stuff. But pile gaming theories about true identities, realities in the game and lore together, you’ve got me hooked.
That was exactly what gaming theory did for me. It was a new way to look at games, surprising me with new perspectives on things I had never considered before. Heroes could actually be villains. Stories could all be in someone’s head. There were a thousand possibilities waiting to be found—not just by me, but by any gamer. Infinite theories lie out there waiting for a gamer to put a few facts together to make the impossible seem possible. New possibilities may come from thinking out of the box, but that may be where the truth behind the story lies. Or maybe not.
The answers may not be clear. The truth may never be officially revealed. Yet, gamers needn’t live in the dark or the straightforward. Just a simple theory can lead them closer towards the potential truth. Plus, I have to admit, it’s fun making new theories. It’s fun making the insane seem plausible. It’s fun taking a new spin on your favorite games. That may just be me though. Or it may just be a theory—a game theory.