Useless and Pointless Problem Solving

Personal

Timeliness is a concept it seems my mind has trouble with.

Years ago (and not even in a galaxy far, far way) I used to play a card game, a CCG called Raw Deal.

In a particular era of that game (Summerslam, if memory serves, back in 2002, though possibly I'm getting my dates wrong here, it was the set Trish came out in) I played a rather horrible and nasty deck based on the RTC superstar. I played a very dull variant of this consistent game winning machine called RTC Control. It had a very simple winning strategy, it played "3 clutches of doom" and working off that 3F, it went to victory.

During a very long spell of me winning with it, including a trip to Edinburgh in which I won a "hardcore belt" for 22 straight matches, I was very happy indeed (especially after my rather rubbish start to playing the game in which I couldn't win a game with my Jericho deck at all for quite some time). I then lost to a friend of mines deck, Graham, who played a superstar called Trish Stratus that had just come out in the Summerslam set.

The problem is, I could not see a method of actually beating him. His method of play was an autowin for him against one deck. He played one card (JR Style Slobbernocker) at 0F (because of Trish's) ability and then drew me out. And there was nothing I could do to stop him from winning using that method. Nothing.

I remember the setting in which he proved this clearly, as it was a tournament in Newcastle (at the Stout Fiddler pub). Some people had come up from Sheffield, including future UK champion Rob Maslen (who as playing Eddie, a rather broken superstar at that point) and I pretty much demolished the field with my deck. I had a future UK champion looking depressed and throwing rather pointless cards..

In other words, life was good.

Then I played Graham (who had been conferring heavily with another field of mine Ben). First turn, he plays JR Style Slobbernocker and declares he wins.

I spend the next 15 minutes thinking this through before conceding, yes, he wins.

1 matchup I cannot cope with.

My mind does cart-wheels for weeks. At the time I'm working a rather pointless job at the NHS, and my mind wanders and I spend hours upon hours while I read cardlists over and over again, looking for winning combinations, or a counter.

Last night, my mind (the cards are long gone for years) was just wandering as I was reading the paper on the way home and neatly dropped the answer in my lap. Put J.R. Style Clubberin' in the pre-match and you turn an autoloss into a win if he doesn't also pack a J.R. Style Clubberin', or at the very least a 50/50 draw if he starts playing J.R. Style Clubberin'.

And now the important bit.

WHAT A POINTLESS THOUGHT TO HAVE!

Given that the game is now dead, and the Summerslam era was only from 2002 till 2003 and the a multitude of future sets made decks change completely. It's a bit like finding the "secret" tactic of how to win the First World War in 2009. Pointless.

I spent about 3 minutes on the train trip berating myself on the train for not spotting the answer at the time, then another 5 minutes berating myself for wasting time berating myself over something so pointless.

Why that came into my mind though, why it actually filtered though, I find fascinating though. I haven't even thought of Raw Deal in YEARS. Really, years. Yet my mind still remembered the card text on a card, a specific (pointless) situation that will never re-occur, and had found an answer.

But..... how pointless was all that analysis? I sincerely hope my subconscious moves onto more important things!

Oh well, at least how this little cathartic post finally lays the matter to rest in my head....


Or maybe, just maybe, tonight my subconscious will give me the answer to that little puzzle game which so annoyed me when I was 8 in the train home today.... more pointlessness!



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Achievements: Artefacts of Social Capital

Can you drive? Well before I get into the car, and trust you to drive, I want to see your license to drive.

Can you swim? Well, I'm not letting you onto the boat until I see your Bronze swimming certificate! I can't trust you without that piece of paper!

Are you educated? Well, before I trust you to say anything sensible, can you show me your GCSE's or degree certificate?

Are you married? I don't trust your word that you are without seeing the ring!


We have artefacts of our achievements in our life. Some are just pieces of paper which are pretty meaningless, some mean a lot. These artefacts (in the literal sense of the word; created by man or modified by man) define some of us, and in our social culture define our lives.

As with the real world, as with the virtual.

You want to go to Naxx?

Well first link me the achievements The Fall of Naxxramas (25 player) and Epic, or you're not getting in.

With these, you can do Naxx and I can trust you to be part of a raid thats not going to completely mess up, without, you're obvious some social outcast who I don't want to associate with.

Is this a good thing, or a bad thing, I can't decide.

Certainly it has allowed the social capital of players to be more easily identifiable by other players, something high achieving players are certain to want, and it creates a new method of trust to be enabled (perhaps misleadingly so, but thats the subject of another post entirely) which previously didn't exist without extensive communication between players over time.

For many years WoW went on without these mechanisms of creating trust. Then we had the armoury, which allowed guild leaders and raid leaders to check specs and items their raid where using. Meters of varoius types have been used for years to measure players performance and to tell who is a "bad player" from who is a "good player" (again, with sometimes very misleading results!). And, of course, we've always had that age old chestnut of actually talking (or in the case of early wow, /w-ing) a person and chatting with them to make sure they aren't a complete (insert word of your choice here).

And now we have achievements. A useful addition to WoW? E-peen made into something you can have as a permenent addition to your character? or a useful social tool? Or indeed, perhaps both!

Certainly I'm concerned at the useage of these achievements to exclude certain players (as should game designers be!), but then again, as someone who's been able to show his e-peen bling to get into a raid, and more importantly, found that raid to be full of experienced and "good" players I can also see the upside too.

there are issues though, for example I have an up and coming Druid alt, who is e-peen bling-less... will I be able to get him into a raid? Will he be left out in the cold?

What of all those new players? What will their thoughts be when they have doors slammed in their faces because they haven't got the achievements?


Edit:


A friend has shown me the Underachiever addon. Fake bling! I laughed.

Holiday over......

......... and right back into it.

So, a long summer, with lots of various announcements from companies including Blizzards Cataclysm, which shockingly (to me) made a friend of mine who quit a while back re-join immediately to "try out" the WoTLK material before the new Cataclysm material came out.

I secretly think some people just will use any excuse.

On top of the online gaming and research I also started to explore another, very geeky, and definitely a "tribe" type of product over the summer in the form of Games Workshops Warhammer 40K. Yes, I've returned to my geeky roots and I'm a big boy playing with little models.

Again, what fascinates me is the gathered tribe around the hobby. Park at al (2007) wrote at length about the "consumptive tribe" surrounding warhammer games, and it's been very interesting to see it first hand, with it also giving me ideas as to the future directions, post PhD of my research into customer relationship management and retention. Though I'm sure I'll post in more detail at some other time about the various "hooks" that Games Workshop in particular has already tried through it's marketing to stick into my wallet.

What else? Well, the research analysis has been ongoing and for the most part, the number crunching side has come up with some interesting relationships which, on initial analysis for the most part, have some very interesting implications. (With in particular all the hand-wringing over the RMT market being something game designers might not want to worry about all that too much for instance....) But the heavy part of the write up still has to be done.

Oh well...

In positive news though, my bestest bosses at the bestest university in the whole wide world have given me a semester sabbatical before my PhD hand-in for write up. So that makes for a very happy Dave.

Indeed. to draw on my extensive WoW vocabulary... it's epic.



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