Doste peered anxiously out the window. The moon was high, and there were a scant few clouds to hide its light. There was no one about at this time of night, but he remained nervous all the same. He drummed his fingers on the windowsill.
“Is this truly necessary?” he asked over his shoulder. His wife, Brynn, sat by the fireplace with their guest, and his eyes focused on their reflection in the glass. “We could think this over another night.”
The cloaked figure sat hunched opposite Brynn, poring over items in a deep wicker basket, and paused, silently looking first to Doste then to his wife.
“We have thought on this,” said Brynn, her voice soothing and warm. “We have thought and spoken and prayed, but this will be our chance.”
Doste felt himself frown slightly and a breath hissed from his nostrils, but he didn’t offer further protest. He joined them by the fire, and his gaze fell to the cloaked figure who had begun arranging items from the basket onto a small, whittled tray and grinding them with a mortar and pestle. Some of the reagents he recognized – whiteleaf powder, blackroot stems, Kingfoil moss – but some of the others being ground made his stomach uneasy.
“Yes, well,” he muttered, “I had imagined the help of a medicine woman in more of a…traditional sense.”
The figure cackled, and what little light from the fire reached into her hood briefly showed a face with unsettling features. “What I bring you,” laughed the hag, “is stronger than any medicine or faith you will find.” There was the smell of swamp water when she spoke, and her voice cracked against the ear like broken branches. She mixed the last of her components and brushed these into a separate bowl of liquid, viscous as blood.
Doste looked to his wife, but Brynn met his eyes easily with a smile, undisturbed by the creature’s presence. Her warmth never ceased, and he took such comfort in that. He allowed himself a deep breath, and together they waited for the hag to finish her concoction. When she had, she set the bowl between them and reached out with a gnarled hand, palm up.
“My payment,” she said simply.
“Oh, of course,” said Brynn, almost embarrassed. She reached into the folds of her dress and came away with a folded piece of cloth, which she handed to the hag. The hag looked it over quickly by the light of the fire and, seemingly content, stowed it within her cloak. Doste wore his confusion on his face, but Brynn discreetly shook her head at him.
“Place it beneath your bed, leaving it undisturbed for one week,” instructed the hag. “After your next bleeding, have your husband take you. Then, you will bring the bowl into the wilderness to the north and empty its contents onto the roots of an oak which bears a scar in its bark. When this is done, well…” Though her face was hidden in the darkness of her hood, the two could hear lips sliding back over wet teeth in the way of a grin. “Enjoy motherhood,” she concluded.
Brynn nodded solemnly, though she softly quaked with an inner excitement. She searched her thoughts for a few moments, struggling for words. “Thank you,” she said finally, the start of tears shimmering in her eyes.
They exchanged nods, the hag collected her things, and had opened the door when Doste stood.
“What if it doesn’t work?” he asked.
She paused in the doorway, the quiet howl of wind behind her, and she turned to face him. Still behind the darkness of her hood, he could feel her eyes on him. She gently cackled. “Then I’d suggest you visit an herbalist, Doste,” she laughed. “Because the problem then would lie not with my aid nor your wife’s womb.”
In the time it took for his cheeks to flush and for him to blink, the doorway was empty and the two were left alone, the hag’s laughter echoing hauntingly on the nighttime breeze. Doste turned to Brynn.
“What did you give her?” he asked.
“All she wanted was a poem on something of my mother’s,” she said. “So, I wrote her an old nursery rhyme I remembered from when I was young onto a piece of her wedding gown.” Brynn shrugged. “Cunning women are strange. But what’s more,” she strode over to her husband and embraced him, “is that we’ll soon have a family, Doste.”
END
This was another character origin I wrote up for someone’s D&D campaign. The first half of it, at least. It goes on to be for a warlock who’s part hag, essentially, but I never finished that bit (gave the notes to him to complete…I think. It was a few years ago.), so the first half is more neatly wrapped up than I otherwise left it.
Anyhoo, more stuff on the way. Hope your days are treating you well. 🙂
Self awareness is an important skill, and I do think that it’s a skill. Some folks are good at it off the rib, and some of us need to cultivate it carefully through attention and practice. In my view, it’s an important skill too, maybe the most important as it relates to one’s degree of emotional intelligence, as other forms of empathy and the ability to interpret others’ actions and words can spring from your own self awareness.
And I believe much of this following an infamous game of Settlers of Catan.
I enjoy boardgames and shared tabletop activities a lot (talked about that recently, in fact). It’s a great hobby that can be social, intellectually challenging, adventurous and just plain fun. But that doesn’t mean it comes without its faults. I’m reasonably certain everyone has those family members or know a That Guy who’s either overly competitive, prone to being spiteful, or otherwise capable of ruining a good boardgame night.
One night – and what’s follow isn’t to say that Alan was being a That Guy, in fact, it might have been me in this case, but – we were over at our close friend Alan’s house for a dinner thingy and game night. On the docket, Settlers of Catan, and for sake of a cast, the players are myself, Alan, my wife Mandy, and our friend Micah.
You’re likely familiar with Catan, but if you aren’t, the short version is that you’re trying to reach ten Victory Points, and you do so by building Settlements, Cities, and Roads through collecting resources and trading them with other players. Everyone starts with two Settlements on the board, and thus, everyone starts with two points. Just eight more to go! There are also bonuses you can earn by, for example, building The Longest Road. <grumble, grumble>
So the game starts and right away Micah starts kicking the rest of our asses, to put it mildly. In a few short rounds, thanks to his admittedly strategic planning, shrewd trading, and some good luck, he rockets up to seven Victory Points. SEVEN! The rest of us all still just have our starting two. Part of that pool of points is the couple one gets for having the Longest Road.
I planned my start poorly that game, so my prospects at eventually winning are slim, but I could build roads. In fact, it was just about the only thing I could do. So I start aggressively building roads on the map to try and steal some points back from Micah, give the rest of the table a chance to catch up. In a round or two I’ve nearly surpassed Micah on roads, and much to my shock, confusion, and dismay, Alan blocks my move.
I…I stare at him. My flabbers are ghasted. My bams were well and truly boozled. And so I ask Alan, my dear friend whom I love just what the fuck he was doing.
His response: “…but you always get Longest Road.”
I discovered that night that I have a pet peeve when it comes to boardgames. It…God, it gets under my skin when somebody makes a tactically stupid play at the table. I don’t mean making a mistake, or a Hail Mary longshot, or forgets something, or has a misunderstanding, or even makes an admittedly risky choice for the sake of a big payoff or just for chaotic fun. Those things are all either understandable or are great in and of themselves. But when someone makes a decision that goes directly against even the most basic and rudimentary strategic sense…
Even writing this now, this game having taken place years ago, I shake with fury at his answer.
To reiterate, as I did to Alan then, all I was capable of at that table that night was building roads. You cannot win by building roads. You must construct Settlements and Cities to win. In blocking my road expansion, Alan only hurt our collective chances of competing with the far-and-away frontrunner, Micah. And I tried explaning that past games just cannot matter in one like this, especially with the dynamic at the table at present.
But it was cool. I pivoted, redirected my expansion and went another way…and he blocked me a second time, for the same reason.
I almost flipped that goddamn table. And it’s a heavy table. And I have a bad back.
Now please don’t imagine I made (much of) a scene. I’m not a voice-raiser or a shouter. And I don’t get angry at much. For the most part, I find displays of anger to be more embarrassing than they are likely to be justified – just my life experience. But like, I did berate him pretty good, but not with anything that was cutting or couldn’t be within the (stretched) bounds of good fun. And I still bring it up. And will do until we’re geriatrics, likely.
Anyway, what do I bring up this story and any of the rest of it for? Well I’ve come to find that ‘Longest Road Thinking’ – that is, an emotional response to a situation that actively hurts the one having it while simultaneously justifying said response as being helpful – can be found off the Catan board and out in the real world. In fact, I’d be willing to be that over the course of that last sentence, a few examples from your own life (or social media) probably sprang to mind.
But while relating these things to real life – another detour.
There’s a documentary out there called Behind the Curve. To summarize it here in brief, it explores those in our society that believe in a flat earth, and in my opinion it does a fair job of presenting them as neutrally as could be done, allowing prominent members of that community involved in the work to represent themselves rather than poke low-hanging fun at them. The juxtaposed flat-earther interviews with those of astronomers, psychologists, and other scientific minds as a sort of counter, foil, or opposed argument to balance them.
In the end, the documentary posed Flat Earth Thinking – that being something which to you might make perfect sense or seem perfectly adequate, despite those around you disagreeing, sometimes vehemently – is something that can happen to any of us, and challenged the audience to consider what thing, what belief they might hold could be their own personal Flat Earth, and why they hold that particular belief.
Tying this rant together in an effort to bring it to a close: Settlers of Catan is just a game.
Boy howdy, did Alan’s stupid, stupid move with blocking my road not deserve the amount of energy I’ve given it over the years, but I like to harness it differently now. Now, when I catch myself having an emotional trigger to an event, it gives me pause. Not always a big one, but just enough to consider if the thing I’m considering doing or saying is about to block someone’s longest road.
I’d love to sit here and say this was something I put together for you, something I sat on and thought about and pored over and worked on for your enjoyment and betterment – but it’s not. This is about to be an anecdote for myself to come back to later and be embarrassed that I put out to the public.
This is about the time I caught…The Glow.
I started playing Magic: the Gathering (yup, and there goes anyone that made it even this far) back in the Summer of 2018. I’d heard the horror stories of how much people can just pour money into the hobby, how much it financially drains you, and I was determined not to be another statistic. I bought two little 60-card starter decks and said, “That’s quite enough for me. THIS will be my Magic collection and I’m happy with it.”
Suffice it to say, it did not stop there.
To date, I’ve built and dismantled more Modern decks than was ever worth counting, and maintain a rotation of eight Commander/EDH decks with themes all important to my heart and soul: Izzet Artifacts, Elves/Tokens, Blue-Black Mill, mono-Green Hydras, Jeskai Time Wizards, Rakdos Goblins, Boros Angels, and Liliana Necromancy/Zombies. With the exception of Time Wizards, who has yet to ever come through for me meaningfully and was probably a mistake, I love each of them dearly.
So, now that the stage is set, our tale…
I was over at my good friend Josh’s house for a day of cards with friends. These same friends, mind you, put me through a baptism of fire when I first started playing – which was good. As I was learning the basics, they beat the ever-loving shit out of me most games. But I persevered, learned, and took those lessons of brutality to heart. All for this day…
First game of the day was just against Josh, since I showed up first (a rare occurrence). I pulled out my ‘Selvala, Heart of the Wilds‘ Hydra deck and got to business. That said, Josh was using his pride and joy, a Sliver Overlord tribal deck that cost, probably, about two grand. Selvala, bless her heart, held her own valiantly, but was ultimately overcome (it’s okay, every hero’s journey needs to begin with struggle).
It was close, and to this day I’m convinced that if I hadn’t drawn into so much goddamn land, I could have taken him. Or, if I’d used my pride and joy, my first love, my Saheeli, the Gifted artifact deck, I could have had him up and out of there in no time. (She was the underdog of her Commander block in 2018, but together, we trained her up and put some real power behind her punches with practice, study, and plenty of steroids.)
Once our friends arrived, the REAL show began.
I’m not sure what it’s like with other people’s play groups, but it tends to be within ours, that when a person wins a game between four players, it’s in a single, fell swoop: an infinite combo (thankfully rare), an “if X, then win the game” condition, or a huge move like a surprise Craterhoof Behemoth stomping that takes out all other three players at once.
This day…this day was different.
We start off, it’s a table with FIVE of us, which is a lot of players for a game of EDH; not monstrous, but a lot. I pull out my Rhys the Redeemed elves/tokens deck for this one. His main win condition is either cheating out a Felidar Sovereign for a sort of cheaper win, or raising an army of saprolings, squirrels, and elves, then plopping out the ol’ Craterhoof Behemoth trick; either way, its quickest route to victory involves annihilating the table or the game all at once.
This day, however, I knocked out each of the other four players through combat damage, individually. It was a deadly dance of politics to incite a fight with only another player at a time to not draw any undue aggression, healing up my wounds with lifelink abilities after each skirmish, and maintain token numbers to be a reasonable presence without being a threatening one. It was kind of like a fight scene out of an action movie, where the hero is surrounded by henchman who come at him all-at-once-ish, but really one at a time, and by the end of it, it’s the hero who’s done all the ass-whoopin’.
It. Was. Glorious.
And it came down to a razor finish. I knocked out the third of my opponents, trying to leave enough defense to withstand my final opponent’s turn since I was the only remaining threat, when he equips a Colossus Hammer to one of his soldiers and swings all out at me. I had enough tokens remaining to block enough of the assault that it left me with two Life left…TWO. Then I was able to counter-swing on my next turn for the finish.
So I sat back, packed that deck away in its box, and contentedly notched my name in the win column for that night, feeling good. I’d gotten my win out of the way, and it was awesome. So, for the next game, I go back to my Selvala – Hydras deck, to give it another, Sliver-less try.
This time, there’s far more in-fighting at the table, with there being more aggressors than just myself, finally. Combat damage is being dealt back and forth among players, but no one is going for the knock-out yet, presumably so everyone can stay in the game until it ends; a noble gesture, but not a lesson my hard Magic upbringing taught me to embrace with them. I see an opportunity late game to flash in a Hydra Broodmaster on an end step before my turn begins. If I remember right, I had Unbound Flourishing on board, so I got to make her go monstrous where ‘X’ got to be something nice and big like ‘8,’ and then for combat on my turn, I throw down an Overwhelming Stampede and do exactly what one might expect…
…
…I…
…I stampeded the table.
Playful groans and gasps made their way around the table. And my proud triumph turned slightly to embarrassment….embarrassment that I was still inexorably proud of.
So I threw up my hands and said, “Woooof, y’all. Alright, my bad. I’ve had my fun for the night, had my fair share. Shit, I’m sorry,” all while laughing with them. “Looks like I caught The Glow tonight. I’ll change it up and just be a spectator for this next one.” I put away my Hydras, rolled up my foresty-colored play mat, and pulled out my Blue-Black Mill/Persistent Petitioners deck, headed by Phenax, God of Deception.
(My FAVORITE game ever of Magic is a story for another time if I ever again feel baseless enough to do another one of these posts, but I will say that what follows here might be my SECOND-FAVORITE ever game of Magic I’ve played.)
For the uninitiated, Mill-strategies in the Commander format are widely seen as a pretty unwise route to victory as, instead of the directness of combat damage, you’re trying to empty out your opponent’s 100-card deck. 1) It can be pretty slow, understandably. 2) It also usually has to be pretty focused, so with multiple opponents, your capacity for offense has a built-in cap. 3) To make up for its weaknesses, a mill deck usually has to be pretty focused on that goal, so defense can be somewhat lacking, leaving you kind of open. 4) Lastly, people, on average, fucking hate being milled and seeing their stuff get dumped into the graveyard, so it builds your villainy meter at the table pretty quickly (ie Players cheer when someone kills you in the name of public good, nobody mourns your loss, and they line up to poop on your grave).
This game was different.
Some brief stage-setting: It’s a 5-player game this time around, and since I don’t imagine any of them will EVER read this, I’m going to be using their real names. To my left, was my buddy Brent, who was playing mono-red Dwarves; to his left was Kopa, who was playing a Blue-Red-White ‘Voltron’ deck; followed by Woody, who was playing Blue-Red-Green elementals; followed at last by our illustrious host Josh, who was borrowing someones mono-blue artifact deck.
I draw my opening hand to see that I have two Petitioners, three land, a counter spell, and Thrumming Stone. In case it’s confusing as to why that’s cool, here’s the break-down: Since I can have as many Petitioners in my deck as I want, I run twenty-eight as a multiple of four per the card’s ability. That’s enough of a percentage that they come up commonly enough and have good odds at the Ripple ability without clogging up my draws. Thrumming Stone basically says if you cast a Petitioner, you can look for another one to get played, which will look for another one to get played, which will look for another one to get played, yatta yatta, on until you have all twenty-eight of your Petitioners out – if you get lucky to roll on like that and provided none have gotten killed.
In my mind, I immediately see what I have to do: stall and be ignored long enough to drop Thrumming Stone and a Petitioner in the same turn – a seven mana cost – to hopefully let the Ripple effect take over. So if I can draw well and keep below radar until about Turn Nine, I have a shot at totally fucking over the table. Plus, hang onto that counter spell as an insurance policy.
So the game begins, and right out the gate Josh takes an aggressive lead. He rolls out artifacts and gadgets left and right, big equipment to buff his creatures, and throwing hot damage around the table. In addition, he starts lightly milling the table, which is where my Greatest Performance of Deception begins (Phenax would be proud).
We’re all getting milled for one or two cards at a time. With the rest of the table, I playfully and dramatically groan, pleading for him to maybe just forego the effect rather than having it go through, and commiserating with the other players at our misfortune, but inside I’m thrilled. Every card that gets skimmed off the top that isn’t a land card or a Petitioner is fantastic. He mills my Mind Funeral? Great, I don’t need the heat anyway. He dumps my Consuming Aberration? Super, I have something to jokingly “complain” about not getting to play. Every one of those is another turn closer to the land base that I need.
And so it goes, Josh battles and harasses the rest of the table while I draw, maybe play a land, pretend to have my hands tied, and pass. It comes to a point where I have six lands out and I’m just waiting for one more before I can pull my move, but I’m worried to death about something that would destroy my Thrumming Stone. Josh has become a huge threat at this point, in a night that’s twice seen a single player butcher the table (#humblebrag), and he gets up to go pee. Everyone else starts conspiring as to how to turn the tide against him.
“Hmm,” I ponder aloud. “Hey, do any of you have any artifact-removal? That way, we could get rid of his [insert specific dangerous artifact here that I’m totally blanking on].” “No,” says Brent. “No,” replies Kopa. “No,” laments Woody. “Ah, bummer,” I say, looking down at the artifact in my hand.
I play Phenax, just so it doesn’t look too much like I’m intentionally doing nothing. Josh comes back, then Kopa pulls a huge play that sees him kill Josh outright, but one that fortunately makes him become an even larger threat. So Woody follows that by detonating the board with an All is Dust (thankfully the turn after I used that counter spell to stop him playing an Eldrazi). With Josh dead, it comes to me, and I draw my seventh land. I figure if ever there was a blessing from the God of Deception that I’d played my role well and it was time to set the plan in motion, it was now.
So I do. I plop down that land, set out my Thrumming Stone, and play a Petitioner, which chained so marvelously well into all the rest that I exploded from a board state of absolutely nothing, into twenty-eight Petitioners out and proud (total milling potential of 84 cards, basically lethal at that point). Plus, with that All is Dust, everyone needed to rebuilding their boards to pose any threat.
Brent’s turn, he plays a couple of dwarves to reconstitute his board, and at his end step, I mill out Kopa. Playing Jeskai colors and the potential he had for out-of-nowhere kills, he had to go. So after that, it’s just me, Brent, and Woody. On Woody’s turn, he plays Nikya of the Old Ways to regain some board presence which, if you ask me, made my next decision really simple.
It came back to me, and Brent starts talking to the late Kopa that “if I just had one more land, I could blow up his entire fucking board.”
Me, listening to my opponent spill the beans so brazenly.
With Woody self-handicapped and unable to cast non-creature spells – meaning no big bombs, no board wipes, no nothin’ – and with Brent openly admitting he might draw into a way to kill me…
…
…yeah, duh, I milled the shit out of him.
Final turn came down to just me and Woody. His turn comes up, he plays a creature that can’t attack on account of summoning sickness, swings all-out for about 11 damage which I readily greet headfirst. Turn comes to me, I mill him down to dust to make my bread and make it my third straight full-table victory of the night.
A feat of which I was so embarrassingly proud, I just spent the last too-many hours bragging about it on an internet blog.
Hey all, the inactivity on here’s been bugging me, so it’ll get a bump here soon, I promise (to you, the one reading this – and feel privileged. I mean “one” as in “you [singular], the one individual who’s eyeballs will be taking in these words besides my own.” Meaning this is strictly between you and I. Traffic through here’s been down lately, and, I mean, c’mon, can’t blame anybody, am I right? So, anyway, this parenthetical one-on-one has gotten a bit stretched, so onto the body of today’s agenda…).
If I’m lucky, you’re a gamer. And if I’m doubly lucky, you’re a gamer in your mid-twenties or so, and have probably heard of, if not played Blizzard’s ‘Diablo II.’ I found the game when I was about eight and played it like it was my job- nay, religious duty, and my favorite playable class was The Necromancer.
Not that I’ve always had a bend towards corpse jockies (called such by an issue of ‘The Shaman King’ in Shonen Jump I read at about the same age, and I’ve never let it go), I actually began with a penchant for the good guy, so I leaned paladin. But after I grew up a touch and discovered the power of having pets and monsters do my bidding for me, pet classes have become a favorite.
When I was about sixteen or so, I’d started yet another play-through of Diablo II, and with a combination of luck, strategy, planning, and patience, I’d built the BEST Necromancer to date. With a focus on a narrow selection of skills and carefully laid out enchantments, aided with lucky finds, Xavier Gravetide (I was sixteen) had a near-infinite supply of mana, bone shields provided at no cost to him, curses also provided at no cost, and a Seal Team Six formation of skeletons, golems, followers, etc. Didn’t have a ton of health, but it didn’t matter – he NEVER got hurt.
Never.
Ever.
I made it through every on of each Act’s bosses without taking a single point of damage. Just send in the horde, back them up as necessary, curse here or there, and boom, job done. That was Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto the Lord of Hatred, Diablo the Lord of Terror, and Baal Lord of Destruction all pathetic dead goop under my shoe without a single hit landed against me.
But even all that fearsome might couldn’t stand up to the ultimate mega-villain…
Geek Squad.
After a while, the laptop I ran all my games on had lived its best life through to the end. It lived a hearty six years up to that point (and would go on to serve another valiant four more), but needed some resuscitating. And so, lacking any meaningful tech savvy myself, I asked my mom if we might take it into Best Buy to see Geek Squad.
They said, “Ah, sure, dude. We can totally fix ‘er up. Basically a hard reboot. Just do a solid back-up of what’s on it, wipe it clean, tune it up, and reload the data. Boom, good as new. Is there anything in particular you want saved?”
I’d never been more serious with anyone in my entire life: “Yes. Dear God, yes,” I said. “Anything and EVERYTHING to do with ‘Diablo II’ or ‘Xavier,’ keep it like your life depends on it.”
You…you know what they saved inSTEAD of those things?
The ‘readme.txt’ file.
The goddamn readme.
Anyway, the fall of that mighty hero that I sunk probably some 200+ hours into is what ruined my faith in humanity. You’d think it’d be something more dramatic on a world scale to do that, but nope. It was Geek Squad “agents” murdering Xavier Gravetide through sheer incompetence.
Ciao, everybody (again, meaning YOU, person reading this).
PS – And to address any concerns or would-be waggled fingers, I wound up not ACTUALLY being all that torn up about it and the “ruined my faith in humanity” thing was more of a joke. I actually sort of thought of it as an honor, to think that I’d built a character so strong that only a force from OUTSIDE the game was powerful enough to kill him.
Hey all, happy Thursday. [For those that notice, this is a re-post. I’m caught up working on some pretty exciting stuff I hope to have news about soon AND I liked this lil’ list. So, in case you missed it, check it out. 🙂 ]
No fancy intro. Here goes. Get ready
for a loosely-structured, mostly ranting sort-of-essay.
The Five Big Reasons Employers Should Hire Gamers (and other Awesome Points)
Problem-Solving Nature Boiled down to its basics, employers want someone who can problem-solve; and, at its barest, that’s all games really offer (and fun doing it, duh). Being a gamer means understanding the problem you’re presented with and all its parameters – or even sometimes working with incomplete information and making the most of that. This is going to be a hilariously extreme example, but I once heard a nugget of wisdom that went something like this: “You can learn how to perform open-heart surgery in two weeks, but surgeons go to school for years to learn how to handle all the things that can go wrong.” Does…does that make sense, what I’m trying to say? When starting a new job, you’re trained how to perform a task or serve a particular function – and that’s robotic. But having the baseline to foresee, anticipate, and correct aberrations where they arise (ie problem-solving skills), is just as necessary. Whether that’s exploring a ghostly mansion, outmaneuvering enemy troops on an alien planet, or doing your day job, absolutely every angle involves observing an obstacle and calculating a way of overcoming it – which is the heart of gaming in a nutshell.
Knack for Optimization Employers want optimization. Whether that means someone who can manage their time really, really efficiently, or someone who can enter a situation with fresh eyes and suggest an improvement others haven’t seen. How does gaming relate to this? Have you ever heard of “Power Gaming” or “Min-Maxing?” The entire point for some gamers is to take what they have, view the systems they’re told to operate within, and get the absolute, objectively best result that they can. That can mean working with the bare minimum to greatest effect (like a lvl 1 Pyromancer speed run of Dark Souls) or obtaining the objectively best sword/gun/armor/meta deck in the business (like in just about any JRPG that’s ever existed). You may have even heard some gamers in your own circle talk relentlessly about trying to “break the game” (lookin’ at you, Bryce). For the uninitiated, while that may sound like a bad thing or something harmful, what it translates to is “trying to become so overwhelmingly good at a particular thing that you reach as close to 100% efficiency as is humanly (or, in my cousin’s case, inhumanly) possible. This usually, in gaming terms, refers to a character’s Strength stat or skill in Stealth being so goddamned high that they can use that and that alone to achieve anything; but it can absolutely also refer to the way your work space is organized, your priorities are stacked for the day, the way your orders are processed, or the roles those in your team play out.
Familiarity with Flow State Sometimes the word “gamer” conjures an image of an either lackadasical kid in a beanbag chair with a glazed expression or sometimes a zealous young woman with a headset tuned into a fast-paced and loud FPS (“first person shooter”, for the laymen) like DOOM. When imagined this way, a Suit-n’-Tie might wonder, “What good could that person be for what I need?” To them, I would offer two words: flow state. Also known as “being in the zone,” “zoned in,” or “getting tunnel-vision,” operating in flow state is a particular state of mind I’m sure we’ve all experienced at some point or another in our lives. In it, you’re hyper aware, extraordinarily sharp and focused, make moves with dedicated efficiency, and even experience time differently. While it’s common enough with fast-paced video games, it’s not like it’s exclusive to that medium. I suck at it, but apparently it’s a common occurrence among chess players – being four, five steps ahead of your opponent (baker’s dozen if you’re playing against me), carrying contingencies, routes, and back-up plans in your noggin. Same thing goes for playing card games of all varieties. So of course it applies to the work place just as easily, and that makes for an incredibly handy state of mind to be well-practiced in, as many gamers are.
“I just need this done.” Not all jobs are fun. In fact, if you listen to complaints around the watering hole or to your friends after they’re shift lets out, it’s not uncommon for people to complain about their jobs being boring or simple. I’m not disparaging shit, by the way, but be it flipping burgers, counting inventory, inspecting the same incoming products all day, or janitorial duties (all venerable trades), there’s yet another gaming mindset that ensures a dedicated performance… Have you ever heard of “grinding”…? Whether it’s defeating 500 of the same enemy type in a given region, saving the same generic peasant from the same generic wolves 100 times to become a legend, or collecting random bits and baubles of bullshit, it’s been a stable pillar of video games few would dispute. It’s pretty damn common in big RPG’s, World of Warcraft probably being the most notorious. “I need ten goat horns!” cries the farmer. “Come, bring me twenty bundles of molleybarrow weed!” shouts the alchemist. “Ah, the sword is yours, if you simply bring me thirty northern white rabbit anuses,” barters the eccentric merchant. The point simply being: menial, repetitive tasks done efficiently is just as within a gamer’s wheelhouse as everything else discussed so far.
Crossover Skills This one is probably the least apparent, but the most important, and that’s the surprising infrastructure of crossover skills that video games can help develop. Best explained by example, I found that in my last job, XCOM 2 had weirdly prepared me rather well for what my job entailed. In brief, I was responsible for keeping a room stocked with necessary materials for the manufacturing process of the facility – making sure not to run out of particular substances, but also not to overstock as we didn’t have the space and that would result in a jam (essentially). For those not familiar, the XCOM games are centered around managing a para-military base tasked with fending off an extraterrestrial menace. This includes the well-being, training, equipment of a roster of soldiers, the layout of the base’s facilities, power consumption, queue of projects, so on and so forth, all while battling a computer-controlled alien force that wants to kill you and everything you stand for. It sounds a little funny, but the skills of resource and inventory management, logistics analysis, anticipation of needs, risk balancing, and orchestrating teammate synergy were all surprisingly appropriate skills developed by a video game and applied in a real world occupation.
And there you have it, a loosely-structured, mostly-ranting list of 5 Big-Ass Reasons for Employers to Hire Gamers. But one more point before we go and I do the whole “See ya Thursday!” thing: the ‘games as art’ argument. It doesn’t really hold a place in the list of reasons games apply to work place efficiency, but it holds a place in my heart, as it should all of yours. Once upon a time, video games might have been all shoot-’em-up’s, Pong, and simple sports simulators, but nowadays the industry is transforming more and more into a place for pieces of interactive fiction with a driving focus and emphasis on the art of storytelling. We still call them “games,” and they are as many include a failure state (Game Over screens and such), but to see works like Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last Guardian, Detroit: Become Human, The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, or the Last of Us and not see the creative beauty, energy, and genius that goes into those creations, then YOU CAN GO FU- ….
Sorry,
that was going to be more aggressive that we really need here. In
a more measured sense, if we can take the traditional, romantic
sentimentality we hold for curling up with a book on a rainy day and
getting lost in the world between the pages and realize that other
mediums hold the same capacity for imagination, empathy, and
engagement…well, shit, I think the world would be better for it.
Imagination’s part of the human experience, and one of the most
beautiful privileges we enjoy as people. Why would you let a simple
stigma close that door?
No fancy intro. Here goes. Get ready
for a loosely-structured, mostly ranting sort-of-essay.
The Five Big Reasons Employers Should Hire Gamers (and other Awesome Points)
Problem-Solving Nature Boiled down to its basics, employers want someone who can problem-solve; and, at its barest, that’s all games really offer (and fun doing it, duh). Being a gamer means understanding the problem you’re presented with and all its parameters – or even sometimes working with incomplete information and making the most of that. This is going to be a hilariously extreme example, but I once heard a nugget of wisdom that went something like this: “You can learn how to perform open-heart surgery in two weeks, but surgeons go to school for years to learn how to handle all the things that can go wrong.” Does…does that make sense, what I’m trying to say? When starting a new job, you’re trained how to perform a task or serve a particular function – and that’s robotic. But having the baseline to foresee, anticipate, and correct aberrations where they arise (ie problem-solving skills), is just as necessary. Whether that’s exploring a ghostly mansion, outmaneuvering enemy troops on an alien planet, or doing your day job, absolutely every angle involves observing an obstacle and calculating a way of overcoming it – which is the heart of gaming in a nutshell.
Knack for Optimization Employers want optimization. Whether that means someone who can manage their time really, really efficiently, or someone who can enter a situation with fresh eyes and suggest an improvement others haven’t seen. How does gaming relate to this? Have you ever heard of “Power Gaming” or “Min-Maxing?” The entire point for some gamers is to take what they have, view the systems they’re told to operate within, and get the absolute, objectively best result that they can. That can mean working with the bare minimum to greatest effect (like a lvl 1 Pyromancer speed run of Dark Souls) or obtaining the objectively best sword/gun/armor/meta deck in the business (like in just about any JRPG that’s ever existed). You may have even heard some gamers in your own circle talk relentlessly about trying to “break the game” (lookin’ at you, Bryce). For the uninitiated, while that may sound like a bad thing or something harmful, what it translates to is “trying to become so overwhelmingly good at a particular thing that you reach as close to 100% efficiency as is humanly (or, in my cousin’s case, inhumanly) possible. This usually, in gaming terms, refers to a character’s Strength stat or skill in Stealth being so goddamned high that they can use that and that alone to achieve anything; but it can absolutely also refer to the way your work space is organized, your priorities are stacked for the day, the way your orders are processed, or the roles those in your team play out.
Familiarity with Flow State Sometimes the word “gamer” conjures an image of an either lackadasical kid in a beanbag chair with a glazed expression or sometimes a zealous young woman with a headset tuned into a fast-paced and loud FPS (“first person shooter”, for the laymen) like DOOM. When imagined this way, a Suit-n’-Tie might wonder, “What good could that person be for what I need?” To them, I would offer two words: flow state. Also known as “being in the zone,” “zoned in,” or “getting tunnel-vision,” operating in flow state is a particular state of mind I’m sure we’ve all experienced at some point or another in our lives. In it, you’re hyper aware, extraordinarily sharp and focused, make moves with dedicated efficiency, and even experience time differently. While it’s common enough with fast-paced video games, it’s not like it’s exclusive to that medium. I suck at it, but apparently it’s a common occurrence among chess players – being four, five steps ahead of your opponent (baker’s dozen if you’re playing against me), carrying contingencies, routes, and back-up plans in your noggin. Same thing goes for playing card games of all varieties. So of course it applies to the work place just as easily, and that makes for an incredibly handy state of mind to be well-practiced in, as many gamers are.
“I just need this done.” Not all jobs are fun. In fact, if you listen to complaints around the watering hole or to your friends after they’re shift lets out, it’s not uncommon for people to complain about their jobs being boring or simple. I’m not disparaging shit, by the way, but be it flipping burgers, counting inventory, inspecting the same incoming products all day, or janitorial duties (all venerable trades), there’s yet another gaming mindset that ensures a dedicated performance… Have you ever heard of “grinding”…? Whether it’s defeating 500 of the same enemy type in a given region, saving the same generic peasant from the same generic wolves 100 times to become a legend, or collecting random bits and baubles of bullshit, it’s been a stable pillar of video games few would dispute. It’s pretty damn common in big RPG’s, World of Warcraft probably being the most notorious. “I need ten goat horns!” cries the farmer. “Come, bring me twenty bundles of molleybarrow weed!” shouts the alchemist. “Ah, the sword is yours, if you simply bring me thirty northern white rabbit anuses,” barters the eccentric merchant. The point simply being: menial, repetitive tasks done efficiently is just as within a gamer’s wheelhouse as everything else discussed so far.
Crossover Skills This one is probably the least apparent, but the most important, and that’s the surprising infrastructure of crossover skills that video games can help develop. Best explained by example, I found that in my last job, XCOM 2 had weirdly prepared me rather well for what my job entailed. In brief, I was responsible for keeping a room stocked with necessary materials for the manufacturing process of the facility – making sure not to run out of particular substances, but also not to overstock as we didn’t have the space and that would result in a jam (essentially). For those not familiar, the XCOM games are centered around managing a para-military base tasked with fending off an extraterrestrial menace. This includes the well-being, training, equipment of a roster of soldiers, the layout of the base’s facilities, power consumption, queue of projects, so on and so forth, all while battling a computer-controlled alien force that wants to kill you and everything you stand for. It sounds a little funny, but the skills of resource and inventory management, logistics analysis, anticipation of needs, risk balancing, and orchestrating teammate synergy were all surprisingly appropriate skills developed by a video game and applied in a real world occupation.
And there you have it, a loosely-structured, mostly-ranting list of 5 Big-Ass Reasons for Employers to Hire Gamers. But one more point before we go and I do the whole “See ya Thursday!” thing: the ‘games as art’ argument. It doesn’t really hold a place in the list of reasons games apply to work place efficiency, but it holds a place in my heart, as it should all of yours. Once upon a time, video games might have been all shoot-’em-up’s, Pong, and simple sports simulators, but nowadays the industry is transforming more and more into a place for pieces of interactive fiction with a driving focus and emphasis on the art of storytelling. We still call them “games,” and they are as many include a failure state (Game Over screens and such), but to see works like Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last Guardian, Detroit: Become Human, The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, or the Last of Us and not see the creative beauty, energy, and genius that goes into those creations, then YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSE- ….
Sorry,
that was going to be more aggressive that we really need here. In
a more measured sense, if we can take the traditional, romantic
sentimentality we hold for curling up with a book on a rainy day and
getting lost in the world between the pages and realize that other
mediums hold the same capacity for imagination, empathy, and
engagement…well, shit, I think the world would be better for it.
Imagination’s part of the human experience, and one of the most
beautiful privileges we enjoy as people. Why would you let a simple
stigma close that door?
The Light of Day 