The Characteristics of Gamers

People gravitate toward games they are good at, I think. There are other factors to consider, such as what their general circle of friends play, but often there isn’t much dissent among friends. Anyways, there is an ever persistent rift among fans of first person shooters: that of the Call of Duty and Halo franchises. To be sure, there is overlap between the two, but frankly no one gives a shit about similarities.

Lest I mislead any readers, I should point out that COD is significantly more popular than the Halo franchise. I used popular as a reference of how many people play it, and not how much people enjoy it. On some level this is to be expected, as the Halo series is largely praised for its plot, whereas COD is a multi-player powerhouse. But both of them have a campaign mode and multi-player compatability.

Although Halo’s plot is masterful, I won’t be discussing it. Instead I am curious about the gaming dynamics of the multi-player experience in both games.

My first experience playing Halo was at my cousin’s house when I was in about the fourth grade. At the time he had but an original Xbox, along with the first and second games of the franchise, released in 2000 and 2003-4 respectively. I was appropriately hooked, as it was quite a pleasure absolutely dominating my younger brother at the game and stalemating my cousin. Time went on and I surpassed my cousin in skill, and the perpetual stalemate lay between my cousin and brother. When the relatively recent time came to play Call of Duty, I fatally assumed that my Halo competence would extend to broadly defined first-person shooters. It didn’t, not at all. The game dynamics were so vastly different despite the shared characteristic of blazing gunfire. The fundamental difference between the two is that COD relies far more heavily on processing speed, reaction time, and accuracy, whereas Halo games select for anticipation of where your opponent is going to be next. The latter operates at a slower pace, so it is less of a burden to make sure you hit your opponent right away. However, this grace period extends to your opponent as well, so it really isn’t any easier. But it was far more easy for me to pick up on the second one, and much more fun as well. Even the best players at COD know that you scarcely have time to move around the map; in Halo, you have plenty of it.

I’m curious to what extent selection has played a role in both games. Obviously, they’re both diluted significantly because people don’t gravitate solely towards the games they’re good at. But it would be interesting to see.

Lack of Data

My recent posts don’t include data, like I wanted them to. This is due to the time constraints of school. I’m really not even a huge scholar, and there are students that juggle sports, Advanced Placement classes, and jobs while making time for something not so profoundly boring. It’s unfortunate for me that I have to sacrifice the last two in order to barely maintain this blog. I’m really just a lazy motherfucker. I used to view my peers with such disdain; not so much anymore. Even my teachers see my classmates as relatively dull. Some are, but on tests of nonverbal ability (math) they tend to hold up fairly well. But I digress.

Not posting scientific content hasn’t had me too unhappy, though. I like to write, and when I don’t include data I don’t fall prey to the constraints of research and analysis. Though I might hope to be analytical in my anecdotal content, I must practice what I preach, and anecdotes are not data. Besides, any readers I have probably want to learn something. It’s obvious that you don’t learn a damn thing in non STEM fields. An exaggeration, but a meager one.

The Fallacy of High IQ Techies

I’m fully aware that social science can be understood as the summation of correlations, trends, and proxies. In this respect, almost every stereotype has some fundamental truth to it (although this is self evident as I knew this even before I was familiarized with the social sciences.) But some trends and the causes behind them aren’t fully obvious to me. One of the most prominent might be the ostensible stereotype of intelligence and information technology. For relative outliers, like those that far surpass my own prowess and understand programming in depth, I understand this stereotype. But for the average layman with quick typing ability and command of basic computer functions, I do not understand it. At my school, it seems that most people cannot equal my own typing speed. Assuming a normal distribution, I’m not surprised- I’ve passed 100 WPM on brief ten second trials. On longer sixty second trials, I regularly hit the 98th percentile. This is in spite of the fact that those that care to measure their typing proficiency are above average for the general population, if only slightly, and statistically speaking there will be some hackers/cheaters the tilt the distribution to the right. This is mediated a bit considering that my generation/cohort is also more adept with computers than the general population.

Still, many peers seem to be impressed with my typing speed, along with my general speed and prowess with browsing the web. Personally, I know there are many STEM inclined individuals that have better command of basic functions, but I guess I hold up pretty well. My point is really that these functions are rudimentary at best. I’m not some programming wiz that’s synthesizing Java and C++ to rapidly sift through search results. And I don’t know why some of what I do is so difficult for people of otherwise average intelligence.

Sophomore Year

There were so many things I learned sophomore year. Almost none of them came from school. Actually, I’d be hard-pressed to think of any, in absolute terms. They all came from my own reading on the net, primarily of politics and philosophy. This year, my interests lay in the sciences.

Not coincidentally, the one tidbit of information I did learn from school wasn’t even part of the curriculum, necessarily. The class was going over World War 2 and the motivations behind it. There are the political and legal stimuli that were necessary, but what was far more interesting had to be the psychological underpinnings. This was obviously not reviewed in fantastic depth; however, when we did review this material I tended to agree with my teacher. He noted that the individuals in post WW1 Germany were no different than ourselves, outside of unfortunate political circumstances. There is obviously a bit more to it than that; the Germans may have had more of a proclivity towards authoritarianism than ourselves. Actually, we know this to be true by virtue of our founding principles. But as a general piece of wisdom, my teacher was correct: it’s easy to think of Germany and particularly Hitler as outliers, when similar events might spur our own nation down that same path. He noted that many aspects of life can be described as having fascist tendencies. The most striking have to be sports. Many high school sports end off practice (I know mine does) by having all participants congregate in a circle and chanting some sort of colloquialism. There is a reason it is done, and that is to remind the team that they are fighting for something beyond themselves, the collective. Your shitty performance is detrimental to the entire team, and you don’t want to let that happen. Conversely, you are fighting for something bigger than yourself, and if you perform well it does not go unnoticed. You will gain recognition for your service towards achieving a collective goal.

Punitive measures also revolve around this idea of the collective. If you fuck up and are subsequently sent to run a few miles in atonement, it sucks, but you perservere. But if you fuck up and the entire team needs to run a few miles as a result, the physical pain is the last of your problems. The associated psychological damage is far more compelling: you are to be shunned by your team, reminded constantly that you are the sinner. Word gets round and you might be the butt of a few jokes. Are you going to fuck up again after that? Hell no.

Coaches know this. And though I understand their tactics, I wholly disagree with them.

Deceleration

I found myself walking home today and there were a couple instances I felt that death was rapidly approaching. The first was on a crossroad that conveniently intersected a freeway exit. As a good citizen, I waited for the walking insignia to appear and I began to walk- but wait! Though it was clear that it needed to stop, I saw a car on the freeway exit around 150 yards away hurtling towards me. And though it was my opportunity to cross, I waited for the car to stop at the crossroad before I walked. It turns out the car did see me, but I had not anticipated how quickly it would decelerate. Frankly, it seemed to be going too fast to stop. The same happened at another crossroad, and this one was more a boulevard of sorts: there were many different cars in their respective lanes racing towards me as I strode across.

All of this isn’t to say I found myself in a near-death experience. Every one of those cars were driving well within constraints of the law, and their deceleration had no trace of amateurism. My takeaway is how heavily we rely on technology. Had but one of them been driving with a faulty break system, I would be roadkill. Maybe I’m mildly complaining because I’m too poor to afford one myself. Probably more importantly, too lazy as well.

11:50

Though my lack of posts haven’t been particularly flattering on my behalf, much of it has been devoted to schoolwork and training. I am humbled more and more by own deficits, and rely more on conscientiousness than raw talent in several domains. It’s unfortunate, though, that I am compensating for intrinsic ability with grit so early on in my life. It is natural, though it occurs later on in life, and I am only seventeen. I am not the smartest person out there, nor am I the quickest on the track. Nevertheless, I feel I am doing better a giving my best in every respect. If I underperform relative to my expectations, I have love to fall back on. I love my girlfriend. And, as a corollary, I aim to be a better person too. The ideal is a positive feedback loop. Sadly, I am hyperanalytical and excessively neurotic, so much of my efforts to rely on raw self-determination dissipate into a smattering of foresights that I won’t be able to succeed. But today, I feel love, and this is why I am writing. I encourage anyone reading to cultivate and nurture their own relationships. More and more I realize that adage of effort > success is true. Not everything needs to go according to plans, as long as you are continually cultivating it.