Games are hard.
Not always because the controls are complicated or the enemies are unfair, but because games often demand a surprisingly broad mix of skills.
Hand-eye coordination. Strategic thinking. Mental agility. Observation. Pattern recognition. Multitasking. Memory. Timing. Patience. Adaptation.
In other words, many of the same skills required by real life, just turned up to eleven and occasionally involving dragons.
To help players understand how all these abilities are coming together, games use a range of systems to track development. These systems tell us where we are, how far we have come, what resources we have available and what might happen next.
