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I really don't like unfair games.
And by that, I mean games where it is entirely possible for one person to collect an insurmountable lead strictly through chance, without strategy or tactics.
I had a recent event of this a little while ago in a Mario Party session. Now, Mario Party is semi-strategic, in that you can control things like how well you do in minigames to amass the coins that purchase Victory Points and strategic assistance, like being able to throw multiple dice or to obtain a larger-than-usual amount of coins during a turn. So you can form a broad stroke of strategy, and try as much as possible to minimize the effect of the die roll. Done well, the game stays relatively even.
Ultimately, however, your fate is determined by a die. And so, when on the first turn, the other team found the special space that leads to a free Victory Point, that was an annoyance. On the second turn, though, I hit the space that would produce a free Victory Point...where the other member of the opposing team was.
By the time my team got our first VP, the opposing team had three. And then they hit the space where a VP would have to be surrendered instead of gained... right before my turn, so one of ours had to be given back.
By this point in the game, the conclusion was foregone, and I quipped that the machine had it out for me this game. The rout continued.
Rather than ragequit, I soldiered on to the end of the game, but there wasn't much enthusiasm left. Significant Other asked the other team if getting all the VPs was boring, getting an affirmative. This was supposed to needle me into making more of an effort to have fun, apparently, as my lack of fun apparently was making it no fun for anyone else.
This dislike of chance is often mistaken, especially by Significant Other, as "Silver doesn't have fun if they aren't winning." I'm okay with not winning - I don't win games a lot, but I have fun in the company of others. I am okay with games where bad strategy turns out to bad results, so that I can learn good strategy. Or games where you may end up winning or losing by a chance element, but that it all stays close if the strategy is good.
But I roll poorly a lot of the time, and so I end up spending a lot of my strategy trying to make the most points I can regardless of whether the rolls are good or bad. If I have to trust that the dice are going to be nice to me to make progress in a game, or there's a strong element of random that can't be controlled, I may not have as much fun as anyone else, unless I'm in a particular mood where the enjoyment of company is more important than the fairness of the game. Otherwise, I tend to avoid games of chance, primarily chance, or games where luck is a major factor. (Slot machines get a pass because of the pretty visuals and the bonus games and the utterly virtual currency.)
This dislike extends into places like fighting games on consoles. If a game says that it uses an adaptable difficulty, that's okay, or it displays the difficulty of the level so that I know what's coming, fine. But if it has a set difficulty level (or a settable level), I expect the difficulty to stay at that level the whole way through that mode. Many games start with a simple set at that difficulty, and then as the stages progress, the difficulty starts to increase, such that with several stages in, the easier-set difficulty is kicking me soundly instead. That's not fair - I set my difficulties to be challenging bit winnable, and I want them to stay that way, instead of adding extra difficulty on top. This can cause hair-tearing, controller-tossing frustration when the difficulty level spikes, no matter the setting. Enough curb stomping of me, whether by person or machine, and it stops being fun and I stop playing (with people) or I go look up cheat codes or AI exploits (for machines).
So I don't like games that are or seem unfair or heavily luck-based, unless they're fun despite the randomness.
Another thing: Kids are Genre Savvy, sometimes dangerously so. Intelligent kids, even more so.
It probably comes as little surprise that in our earlier years, when it came time to receive our certificate that detailed the standout thing about us that year, "academic excellence" was our catchphrase. It started in kindergarten, and continued each year that by the point of the fifth grade, we specifically requested of the teacher (the school we were in had one teacher for all subjects in K-4, and exchanged classrooms for a couple subjects between the fifth and sixth graders) to not use "academic excellence" on the certificate that year. Everyone else seemed to have changing virtues from year to year, but for five years, a single note sounded for our certificates, and at that time, we were worried that there wasn't anything else about us that was worthy of note.
So what should appear on the certificate for that year? "Academic excellence...and a good personality." I don't really remember what the other part was, because even fifth-grade me knew that I was going to be the academic excellence kid from then on out. And so it was - there's an entire collection of pins collected from middle and high school in relation to good grades, a degree with Honors and distinction, and a graduate school degree as well, just in case the point wasn't blazingly obvious.
At what cost, though? Knowing you're the smart kid, and having everyone reinforce you're the smart kid doesn't help with any other parts of your development. Thus, another thing:
[CN: Body image talk]
I'm ambivalent about body image and whether or not I'm a physically attractive person to anyone. I am assured this is the case by Significant Other and some of their friends now, but at that formative point where people are insecure about themselves and could use external reimbursement (also called the teenage years), there wasn't any explicit external indication. What indication there was always came after the fact - at graduation and heading off to college, or after that point, then it came out that there may have been people who thought so. Late is not helpful in that idea of self-image, so far too much of identity is wrapped up in what is known and not what isn't. So there will be days of staring in the mirror and wondering what anyone would see as attractive. Not by making inappropriate comparisons to image-manipulated cover models and declaring ugliness by not looking fully like them, but not being able to look at the body and decide there are attractive parts of it, because there's no frame of reference of "this is attractive on you" from earlier in life to say, "Yeah, I guess it is" to.
[/CN]
We get the last laugh, though, of a sort, having chosen a profession where everyone is basically brilliant and great, and recognition for that is less than it should be, but when it comes, it's usually for something spectacular, because the bar is set so high. Which is a way of beating "academic excellence" and other generic praises, but which also generates insufficient praise and encouragement for the high-caliber work done on a daily basis. What was surprising and gratifying about the award nomination was that it was for something that is a highly complex maneuver to pull off on a yearly basis, but that looks routine from the inside because the procedure is so well documented and hammered out that there are very few hiccups and a process of what to do if there is a hiccup. Being recognized for Standard Operating Procedure is an invitation to really examine whether what seems simple really is. (I wonder, sometimes, whether those retail outlets that prominently post things like the speed of their checkout clerks are doing so in recognition of a job well done, or as a goad to the other employees to pick up the pace.)
The end result is that a lot of the defining of success, progress, and achievement is left up to me. Beyond compliance and excellence at the posted job description's requirements and whatever additional is added on top by cohort expectations and supervisor requirements, what constitutes success in the career is mostly an individual exercise. That could mean lots of conference attendance and places of prominence in professional organizations, recognition in professional publications, or just striving to give each person as complete an answer to their question as possible, putting an enjoyable book in every person's hand, and helping to solve community problems with information and collaboration.
These are all valid goals, and could all be sought concurrently, sequentially, or not at all. So maybe there isn't a standard solution to the question of what constitutes outstanding work. But for someone who's been constantly recognized throughout their formative years for their academic excellence, when there are no more grades or rubrics or well-defined assignments, then how do you define success, and how do you achieve it?
(For both: Any way you want to, so long as your supervisor approves. It's flip, but it's true.)
So yes, journey of constant self-discovery and all that. And it's quite possible that my current mental model of "expend what effort is necessary to achieve the greatest effect and no more" is predicated on the very adult realization that I am not one of the chosen few who have the power to make the world change based on my opinions. Or, for that matter, my organization. (I also have no idea whether I would thrive or bomb out completely in an environment where I did have that kind of power.) So it's best to conserve energy until the opportunity arises to be more and do cool things.
And possibly write blog posts about it.
And by that, I mean games where it is entirely possible for one person to collect an insurmountable lead strictly through chance, without strategy or tactics.
I had a recent event of this a little while ago in a Mario Party session. Now, Mario Party is semi-strategic, in that you can control things like how well you do in minigames to amass the coins that purchase Victory Points and strategic assistance, like being able to throw multiple dice or to obtain a larger-than-usual amount of coins during a turn. So you can form a broad stroke of strategy, and try as much as possible to minimize the effect of the die roll. Done well, the game stays relatively even.
Ultimately, however, your fate is determined by a die. And so, when on the first turn, the other team found the special space that leads to a free Victory Point, that was an annoyance. On the second turn, though, I hit the space that would produce a free Victory Point...where the other member of the opposing team was.
By the time my team got our first VP, the opposing team had three. And then they hit the space where a VP would have to be surrendered instead of gained... right before my turn, so one of ours had to be given back.
By this point in the game, the conclusion was foregone, and I quipped that the machine had it out for me this game. The rout continued.
Rather than ragequit, I soldiered on to the end of the game, but there wasn't much enthusiasm left. Significant Other asked the other team if getting all the VPs was boring, getting an affirmative. This was supposed to needle me into making more of an effort to have fun, apparently, as my lack of fun apparently was making it no fun for anyone else.
This dislike of chance is often mistaken, especially by Significant Other, as "Silver doesn't have fun if they aren't winning." I'm okay with not winning - I don't win games a lot, but I have fun in the company of others. I am okay with games where bad strategy turns out to bad results, so that I can learn good strategy. Or games where you may end up winning or losing by a chance element, but that it all stays close if the strategy is good.
But I roll poorly a lot of the time, and so I end up spending a lot of my strategy trying to make the most points I can regardless of whether the rolls are good or bad. If I have to trust that the dice are going to be nice to me to make progress in a game, or there's a strong element of random that can't be controlled, I may not have as much fun as anyone else, unless I'm in a particular mood where the enjoyment of company is more important than the fairness of the game. Otherwise, I tend to avoid games of chance, primarily chance, or games where luck is a major factor. (Slot machines get a pass because of the pretty visuals and the bonus games and the utterly virtual currency.)
This dislike extends into places like fighting games on consoles. If a game says that it uses an adaptable difficulty, that's okay, or it displays the difficulty of the level so that I know what's coming, fine. But if it has a set difficulty level (or a settable level), I expect the difficulty to stay at that level the whole way through that mode. Many games start with a simple set at that difficulty, and then as the stages progress, the difficulty starts to increase, such that with several stages in, the easier-set difficulty is kicking me soundly instead. That's not fair - I set my difficulties to be challenging bit winnable, and I want them to stay that way, instead of adding extra difficulty on top. This can cause hair-tearing, controller-tossing frustration when the difficulty level spikes, no matter the setting. Enough curb stomping of me, whether by person or machine, and it stops being fun and I stop playing (with people) or I go look up cheat codes or AI exploits (for machines).
So I don't like games that are or seem unfair or heavily luck-based, unless they're fun despite the randomness.
Another thing: Kids are Genre Savvy, sometimes dangerously so. Intelligent kids, even more so.
It probably comes as little surprise that in our earlier years, when it came time to receive our certificate that detailed the standout thing about us that year, "academic excellence" was our catchphrase. It started in kindergarten, and continued each year that by the point of the fifth grade, we specifically requested of the teacher (the school we were in had one teacher for all subjects in K-4, and exchanged classrooms for a couple subjects between the fifth and sixth graders) to not use "academic excellence" on the certificate that year. Everyone else seemed to have changing virtues from year to year, but for five years, a single note sounded for our certificates, and at that time, we were worried that there wasn't anything else about us that was worthy of note.
So what should appear on the certificate for that year? "Academic excellence...and a good personality." I don't really remember what the other part was, because even fifth-grade me knew that I was going to be the academic excellence kid from then on out. And so it was - there's an entire collection of pins collected from middle and high school in relation to good grades, a degree with Honors and distinction, and a graduate school degree as well, just in case the point wasn't blazingly obvious.
At what cost, though? Knowing you're the smart kid, and having everyone reinforce you're the smart kid doesn't help with any other parts of your development. Thus, another thing:
[CN: Body image talk]
I'm ambivalent about body image and whether or not I'm a physically attractive person to anyone. I am assured this is the case by Significant Other and some of their friends now, but at that formative point where people are insecure about themselves and could use external reimbursement (also called the teenage years), there wasn't any explicit external indication. What indication there was always came after the fact - at graduation and heading off to college, or after that point, then it came out that there may have been people who thought so. Late is not helpful in that idea of self-image, so far too much of identity is wrapped up in what is known and not what isn't. So there will be days of staring in the mirror and wondering what anyone would see as attractive. Not by making inappropriate comparisons to image-manipulated cover models and declaring ugliness by not looking fully like them, but not being able to look at the body and decide there are attractive parts of it, because there's no frame of reference of "this is attractive on you" from earlier in life to say, "Yeah, I guess it is" to.
[/CN]
We get the last laugh, though, of a sort, having chosen a profession where everyone is basically brilliant and great, and recognition for that is less than it should be, but when it comes, it's usually for something spectacular, because the bar is set so high. Which is a way of beating "academic excellence" and other generic praises, but which also generates insufficient praise and encouragement for the high-caliber work done on a daily basis. What was surprising and gratifying about the award nomination was that it was for something that is a highly complex maneuver to pull off on a yearly basis, but that looks routine from the inside because the procedure is so well documented and hammered out that there are very few hiccups and a process of what to do if there is a hiccup. Being recognized for Standard Operating Procedure is an invitation to really examine whether what seems simple really is. (I wonder, sometimes, whether those retail outlets that prominently post things like the speed of their checkout clerks are doing so in recognition of a job well done, or as a goad to the other employees to pick up the pace.)
The end result is that a lot of the defining of success, progress, and achievement is left up to me. Beyond compliance and excellence at the posted job description's requirements and whatever additional is added on top by cohort expectations and supervisor requirements, what constitutes success in the career is mostly an individual exercise. That could mean lots of conference attendance and places of prominence in professional organizations, recognition in professional publications, or just striving to give each person as complete an answer to their question as possible, putting an enjoyable book in every person's hand, and helping to solve community problems with information and collaboration.
These are all valid goals, and could all be sought concurrently, sequentially, or not at all. So maybe there isn't a standard solution to the question of what constitutes outstanding work. But for someone who's been constantly recognized throughout their formative years for their academic excellence, when there are no more grades or rubrics or well-defined assignments, then how do you define success, and how do you achieve it?
(For both: Any way you want to, so long as your supervisor approves. It's flip, but it's true.)
So yes, journey of constant self-discovery and all that. And it's quite possible that my current mental model of "expend what effort is necessary to achieve the greatest effect and no more" is predicated on the very adult realization that I am not one of the chosen few who have the power to make the world change based on my opinions. Or, for that matter, my organization. (I also have no idea whether I would thrive or bomb out completely in an environment where I did have that kind of power.) So it's best to conserve energy until the opportunity arises to be more and do cool things.
And possibly write blog posts about it.
