Use it or lose it?

October 11, 2019 9:46 AM

Is anyone familiar with a video game where the player's skills fade or diminish with disuse (ideally in a clear way)? We're working to teach my son about how practice maintains skills, even if it doesn't improve them. Since most games have a user reach a "level" and maintain skills at that point, he (and now I) wanted to know if there were any games where you can lose skills through disuse?
posted by TofuGolem to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Football Manager is a really complicated game of soccer (football) team management and if you don't train and play your players their skills diminish.
posted by GamblingBlues at 9:52 AM on October 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

In Skyrim, you can lose some accumulated experience by spending long periods in jail, but that's a rare event.
posted by Mogur at 10:11 AM on October 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

In many level-based RPGs, your skills might not diminish per se, but if you don't keep upgrading them through "exercise", they will fall below the expected curve for your experience.
posted by jozxyqk at 10:20 AM on October 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Sports games definitely employ this mechanic. I've played at least two baseball games that did this, one of them was MLB the show and I don't remember the other.
posted by dbx at 10:21 AM on October 11, 2019

If you don't exercise skills in Rimworld, you will lose them (and if you don't train animals, they will revert to the wild), but that's a lot of overhead just to teach that point, I think.
posted by praemunire at 11:07 AM on October 11, 2019

Punch Club!

There is an ability to buy upgrades that stop you from losing points, but in general if you don't train one of your attributes it will atrophy. Just using the ability isn't enough. You have to /train/.

It's a pretty simple sim/management style game. It's basically just about punching your way to revenge in a very 80's movie fashion. It's not G-rated. Maybe PG though. ... It does open with a cinematic of a dude getting shot. Maybe watch the trailer on Steam.

The other thing I can think of is Ultima Online. Which isn't exactly timely.
posted by Zudz at 11:14 AM on October 11, 2019

To be clear, are you asking about the "player" losing skills or the "player character"? To the former, I've always found it interesting how a significant part of the leveling in a challenging game like the Dark Souls franchise comes from the player learning where things are and becoming very skilled in a specific sequence of moves. It's almost a Groundhog Day kind of mechanism of learning where things are and how to react to them.

I wouldn't recommend that franchise in particular because it's likely not age appropriate, but any game that involves memorization, such as a rhythm game, might be an interesting illustration of this effect on the player. If your son learns a particular sequence and leaves it for a few months, it'd likely be clear how much he'd have forgotten when picking it up again. You could even make it a friendly challenge of one of you continuing to practice and then coming back together in a few months to see who has the skills then.
posted by past unusual at 12:15 PM on October 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

It's otherwise full of terrible examples for pretty much anyone, but Grand Theft Auto San Andreas has this as a basic game element. Your character needs to exercise regularly, work out at the gym, and eat healthy, or he gets out of shape, affecting his speed, endurance, and attractiveness.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:54 AM on October 12, 2019