This essay is a bit short, so please point out areas where there could be more narration or reflection.
Just like everyone, I use YouTube regularly. Maybe not as much as most people though. I mostly listen to music, and occasionally watch videos of people dissecting game mechanics. There's really only one vlog that I watch, but not often.
On the music I listen to, I think I listen to different things than most of my friends and peers. I listen primarily to game soundtracks, and occasionally movie scores, though I also listen to the band Rush, but they're not exactly the kind of band that most of my fellow classmates listen to. I think that my choice of music to listen to is a product of my parents. I say this because my dad has been a Rush fan since before I was born, and also plays a lot of video games, listened to their soundtracks, and my parents have shown me several movies that have excellent soundtracks.
The selection of videos that I watch are fairly representative of what sort of person I am. I'm the sort of person to tear apart the mechanics of a game so that I can fully understand the game, and hopefully be able to use my deeper knowledge of any given game to outplay other people. Hence why I watch videos of other people dissecting game mechanics. I want to see what other people see and find out what sorts of things I overlooked.
As for the vlog that I watch, it's a bunch of people who make their living by making almost professional-grade videos for their main channel. For those of you who might be interested, the channel is called Sam and Niko after the founders of the YouTube studio, and their main channel is Corridor Digital. I've always liked cameras, especially the more professional ones. And these people use cameras all the time. They also have a huge arsenal of nerf and airsoft guns, which they use in making their videos.
All of this boils down to me watching videos of people doing things that I enjoy, and listening to the music that I like.
But as I've glanced at my friends' computer screens, I haven't seen them watching any of the same things that I watch, which is at some level surprising, but also not surprising at all. It surprises that me that all of my friends basically watch the same things, and that despite having shared experiences with them for almost four years now, I haunt a different section of YouTube than they do. Just as I do, they are watching videos pertaining to the activities they enjoy and listen to the music that they like.
I think the best thing about YouTube is the variety of content you can find. Some people use it for their news because that's how they are most receptive to it. Other people may use it to watch other people play the games that they enjoy. Still others just use it to listen to music, as I am as I write this. In fact, most people use YouTube for a combination of these things. There's so much out there that anyone can find channels that they enjoy on YouTube, no matter what background they come from.
Thursday, April 26, 2018
Thursday, April 12, 2018
I wasn't good enough.
2:25 800m run. Three seconds better than the leg of the 4x800 that I had run four weeks before, 12 seconds better than anything I had run last year. I could have done better. My parents are impressed, but I am disappointed with my pacing. I could have taken the second lap harder.
I always want to get better. Even when people around me tell me that I’ve succeeded, I ask myself, “If I could do that, how much further can I make myself go?” Going back to that 800 meter run, I asked myself how much more time I could have cut off if I had pushed myself harder through the middle two laps. I expect a certain standard out of myself and it shows when I make a mistake.
There are a couple of modes I fall into when I make a mistake. They generally fall into one of two types. The first is when I realize I messed up after doing something is done. In these cases, I wonder what I could have done differently. Sometimes the answer is obvious, sometimes not. Something like forgetting how algebra works during a test is something that is obvious after I start talking to other people who did the same problem. In that case, I just have to pay more attention next time. Other things, like with social interaction, it isn’t as clear when I've overstepped boundaries. It can take a while before I find out that I'd made a mistake, and by that time, it can be too late to fix things. I used to agonize for long periods of time, sometimes multiple days, on what I could have done, and how that might have made things ‘better,’ but I've since realized that that doesn't do me any good. So I accept that I messed up, and put my energy towards figuring out what to do next.
The other type of mistake is the ones I notice while I'm making them. When that happens, I tend to buckle down and focus on problem at hand, often at the cost of clear communication. This particularly shows up when I'm playing hard missions of Warframe with my dad. (I know, I write about this a lot, but I've invested over 1200 hours of my life into this game.) When things go sideways, I stop talking and start playing furiously. I start making faster movements, generally playing better, but my team has no idea what I'm doing, where I'm going, or what they can do to help. This is the point when my dad usually tells me "Talk to me. I get that things are going poorly, but I don't know what you want me to do to help out." It doesn't help that I play very fast characters, so if I blitz off on my own, it's unlikely that my team can catch up to me. This problem stems from me expecting to be able to do anything and everything. When things start going wrong, I want to solve the problems then and there, as soon as I can. And I also expect to be good enough to solve these problems on my own, even when the situation quickly shows me that I really do need some help.
Given how I react to mistake, I’d say I'm pretty hard on myself. I expect to do my best at whatever I do and am disappointed when I'm not. Sometimes that's me not knowing how far I can push myself and unintentionally limiting myself, such as in running, sometimes it's just straight-up overestimation of my ability. But because of this, I've learned to accept my mistakes and move on to figuring out how to avoid those mistakes. There's no changing the past. We have to live in the world we've created for ourselves.
I always want to get better. Even when people around me tell me that I’ve succeeded, I ask myself, “If I could do that, how much further can I make myself go?” Going back to that 800 meter run, I asked myself how much more time I could have cut off if I had pushed myself harder through the middle two laps. I expect a certain standard out of myself and it shows when I make a mistake.
There are a couple of modes I fall into when I make a mistake. They generally fall into one of two types. The first is when I realize I messed up after doing something is done. In these cases, I wonder what I could have done differently. Sometimes the answer is obvious, sometimes not. Something like forgetting how algebra works during a test is something that is obvious after I start talking to other people who did the same problem. In that case, I just have to pay more attention next time. Other things, like with social interaction, it isn’t as clear when I've overstepped boundaries. It can take a while before I find out that I'd made a mistake, and by that time, it can be too late to fix things. I used to agonize for long periods of time, sometimes multiple days, on what I could have done, and how that might have made things ‘better,’ but I've since realized that that doesn't do me any good. So I accept that I messed up, and put my energy towards figuring out what to do next.
The other type of mistake is the ones I notice while I'm making them. When that happens, I tend to buckle down and focus on problem at hand, often at the cost of clear communication. This particularly shows up when I'm playing hard missions of Warframe with my dad. (I know, I write about this a lot, but I've invested over 1200 hours of my life into this game.) When things go sideways, I stop talking and start playing furiously. I start making faster movements, generally playing better, but my team has no idea what I'm doing, where I'm going, or what they can do to help. This is the point when my dad usually tells me "Talk to me. I get that things are going poorly, but I don't know what you want me to do to help out." It doesn't help that I play very fast characters, so if I blitz off on my own, it's unlikely that my team can catch up to me. This problem stems from me expecting to be able to do anything and everything. When things start going wrong, I want to solve the problems then and there, as soon as I can. And I also expect to be good enough to solve these problems on my own, even when the situation quickly shows me that I really do need some help.
Given how I react to mistake, I’d say I'm pretty hard on myself. I expect to do my best at whatever I do and am disappointed when I'm not. Sometimes that's me not knowing how far I can push myself and unintentionally limiting myself, such as in running, sometimes it's just straight-up overestimation of my ability. But because of this, I've learned to accept my mistakes and move on to figuring out how to avoid those mistakes. There's no changing the past. We have to live in the world we've created for ourselves.
Friday, March 30, 2018
Ode to Computer
I'm short on reflection, but I don't know where or how to put that in for this essay. Also, I would like to split up the third paragraph, so if you find a good place to split it, please tell me.
Considering the amount of time I've had my laptop and how much I've used it over the past three years, I can't bring myself to write a love letter to it. There are some good reasons why I would, but other reasons why I wouldn't.
It's not a piece of junk, not by a long shot. It has a dedicated graphics unit, which is better than most laptops, and an ok CPU. Also, the backlit keyboard is nice. It doesn't weigh as much as some other laptops I’ve looked at much, which is convenient for lugging it around all day, and best of all, it's not a touchscreen. If it was, people would troll me endlessly.
On to things it is not. There are much better laptop processors in existence, same with GPUs. The screen only looks good within a few degrees of directly in front of it and has been scratched up by the keyboard. The hinge is roughly a quarter broken, and I think the battery life is degrading. I'm starting to see some problems with storage, but that’s just because I have over 400GB of games installed with a total storage of 690GB. Both USB2.0 slots are loose, the speakers are broken to the point where I just unplugged them. It didn't come with a drive cage, so the second hard drive occasionally shakes loose. I'm missing five of the ten screws from the case, with more likely to come. Speaking of which, the bottom case is cracked in a few places from all the times I've had to take it off to plug my hard drive back in. Because it didn’t come with a drive cage. It’s also not the laptop that I had originally wanted. I had wanted an MSI laptop with similar specifications, but my parents didn't want to get it for me, citing price and weight reasons. (Besides, that model got some serious upgrades when the Nvidia 10 series came out, so if I had gotten my way, I'd just have been disappointed a year later) My dad wanted to get me a Toshiba laptop, but I would not stand for that. The storage was less than I wanted, and while there was an option for a dedicated graphics unit, it wasn't a very good one. Also, it was a Toshiba. Not exactly the coolest of computer brands, and I wanted a cool computer.
Yet for all that, my computer has been mostly reliable. It allows me to get all my schoolwork done, and then immediately I can switch to enjoying a game of some sort without having to change computers. I do like having that ability in a computer. I'm glad that I stood my ground and got a computer with the specifications I wanted. It's been nice to have a fully solid-state storage setup on a machine that can run most games. Load times are nice and fast. Still, I don't think I'd write a love letter to my current computer. Also, the AC adapter stopped working while I was writing this.
But considering that this one is deteriorating (see the missing screws, dents, and other damage, broken AC adapter!), I should be able to make a reasonable case to my parents for getting a better computer for next year. Definitely for college.
Considering the amount of time I've had my laptop and how much I've used it over the past three years, I can't bring myself to write a love letter to it. There are some good reasons why I would, but other reasons why I wouldn't.
It's not a piece of junk, not by a long shot. It has a dedicated graphics unit, which is better than most laptops, and an ok CPU. Also, the backlit keyboard is nice. It doesn't weigh as much as some other laptops I’ve looked at much, which is convenient for lugging it around all day, and best of all, it's not a touchscreen. If it was, people would troll me endlessly.
On to things it is not. There are much better laptop processors in existence, same with GPUs. The screen only looks good within a few degrees of directly in front of it and has been scratched up by the keyboard. The hinge is roughly a quarter broken, and I think the battery life is degrading. I'm starting to see some problems with storage, but that’s just because I have over 400GB of games installed with a total storage of 690GB. Both USB2.0 slots are loose, the speakers are broken to the point where I just unplugged them. It didn't come with a drive cage, so the second hard drive occasionally shakes loose. I'm missing five of the ten screws from the case, with more likely to come. Speaking of which, the bottom case is cracked in a few places from all the times I've had to take it off to plug my hard drive back in. Because it didn’t come with a drive cage. It’s also not the laptop that I had originally wanted. I had wanted an MSI laptop with similar specifications, but my parents didn't want to get it for me, citing price and weight reasons. (Besides, that model got some serious upgrades when the Nvidia 10 series came out, so if I had gotten my way, I'd just have been disappointed a year later) My dad wanted to get me a Toshiba laptop, but I would not stand for that. The storage was less than I wanted, and while there was an option for a dedicated graphics unit, it wasn't a very good one. Also, it was a Toshiba. Not exactly the coolest of computer brands, and I wanted a cool computer.
Yet for all that, my computer has been mostly reliable. It allows me to get all my schoolwork done, and then immediately I can switch to enjoying a game of some sort without having to change computers. I do like having that ability in a computer. I'm glad that I stood my ground and got a computer with the specifications I wanted. It's been nice to have a fully solid-state storage setup on a machine that can run most games. Load times are nice and fast. Still, I don't think I'd write a love letter to my current computer. Also, the AC adapter stopped working while I was writing this.
But considering that this one is deteriorating (see the missing screws, dents, and other damage, broken AC adapter!), I should be able to make a reasonable case to my parents for getting a better computer for next year. Definitely for college.
Thursday, March 8, 2018
The Storyteller
This is kind of a hybrid between 'role of procrastination' and 'doing nothing'. It's short, so please point out any places that could use expansion. Also, any help with transitions would be great.
I'm sitting in front of my computer, wondering what to write for the day. I have deadlines approaching, and not enough initiative. So I get up and grab myself some ice cream while I think for a bit. I've always enjoyed telling myself stories. They may involve me or other real people, sometimes not. Oftentimes not actually. My parents always told me that I had a great imagination.
But for all the stories I've made up over the past seventeen years, I find it hard to find ones that are objectively true. Even the games I played in elementary and middle school took place half in my head, making things up as I went along, drawing from a deep well of books, movies, and games, and reacting to what crazy imaginations my friends brought to the game. Looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t join some tabletop RPG community.
However, coming to Uni changed things for how I used my imagination during the day. First was that the Uni yard is smaller than the areas for recess at previous schools I had been at. Second was the installation of a computer in my daily life (pun intended). This opened a door to entirely new forms of entertainment. Suddenly, my imagination was not being used as much since the settings and the characters were largely dictated by the creator of the game. Still, I wasn’t on my computer all the time, and I still got sent off to bed before I was really tired. So I would tell myself stories to pass the time between when my parents told me to go to bed and when I fell asleep. In these hours, my imagination is just as free as it had been when younger, though back then, it was active at other times as well.
As I got access to greater and greater computing power, I could play more sophisticated games that had their own stories with rich settings and open-ended characters that I could use and expand on in my stories. So while having a computer constantly with me resulted in a less open-ended use of my imagination during the day, it gave me fodder to use at night. This is not to say that my imagination was completely shut off during the day. It was now focused towards game theory, conceiving of devious strategies and evaluating my performance. You know, practical things. Things that I could turn around and apply and experiment with as soon as I had free time with my computer.
So now, my imagination is used for ‘practical’ uses during the day, but can still spread it’s wings and fly in unexpected directions at night. At night, as you fall asleep, the barrier between your practical mind that gets you through the day and the mind that makes your dreams blurs, and it’s fun and sometimes even profound what things you can discover by simply exploring the vast expanses that are your imagination.
I'm sitting in front of my computer, wondering what to write for the day. I have deadlines approaching, and not enough initiative. So I get up and grab myself some ice cream while I think for a bit. I've always enjoyed telling myself stories. They may involve me or other real people, sometimes not. Oftentimes not actually. My parents always told me that I had a great imagination.
But for all the stories I've made up over the past seventeen years, I find it hard to find ones that are objectively true. Even the games I played in elementary and middle school took place half in my head, making things up as I went along, drawing from a deep well of books, movies, and games, and reacting to what crazy imaginations my friends brought to the game. Looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t join some tabletop RPG community.
However, coming to Uni changed things for how I used my imagination during the day. First was that the Uni yard is smaller than the areas for recess at previous schools I had been at. Second was the installation of a computer in my daily life (pun intended). This opened a door to entirely new forms of entertainment. Suddenly, my imagination was not being used as much since the settings and the characters were largely dictated by the creator of the game. Still, I wasn’t on my computer all the time, and I still got sent off to bed before I was really tired. So I would tell myself stories to pass the time between when my parents told me to go to bed and when I fell asleep. In these hours, my imagination is just as free as it had been when younger, though back then, it was active at other times as well.
As I got access to greater and greater computing power, I could play more sophisticated games that had their own stories with rich settings and open-ended characters that I could use and expand on in my stories. So while having a computer constantly with me resulted in a less open-ended use of my imagination during the day, it gave me fodder to use at night. This is not to say that my imagination was completely shut off during the day. It was now focused towards game theory, conceiving of devious strategies and evaluating my performance. You know, practical things. Things that I could turn around and apply and experiment with as soon as I had free time with my computer.
So now, my imagination is used for ‘practical’ uses during the day, but can still spread it’s wings and fly in unexpected directions at night. At night, as you fall asleep, the barrier between your practical mind that gets you through the day and the mind that makes your dreams blurs, and it’s fun and sometimes even profound what things you can discover by simply exploring the vast expanses that are your imagination.
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Frisboi Cedrico
This is responding to the 'What objects tell the story of your life?' I feel like I'm a little short on reflection, so it would be nice to know where readers would want more reflection.
The first time my frisbee got thrown up on top of Uni Gym, I was devastated. I was a subbie at the time, and one of the seniors had thrown a little too high and it got caught by the wind. The frisbee blew down off the roof about a week later, but not before I had gotten two new, identical frisbees from my dad and the senior that lost the original.
This frisbee has been through a great deal of abuse. It’s an Aerobie Superdisc. It’s been stepped on, slammed into sides of buildings, kicked, etc. It lived in my backpack for a couple of years. And most recently, it was on top of Uni Gym for around ten months.
The story with me and frisbees goes back to elementary school, where nobody wanted to include me in the PE sports, and they had a good reason. I was trash. But at some point, my dad and I started throwing around a frisbee for fun. At first, all I was trying to do was touch the flying disc. Later, around the start of middle school, I had gotten good enough to catch reliably, and throw pretty well too. Not that my classmates knew; I was still excluded for the most part. It was around this time that I got the frisbee mentioned above.
All of this exclusion changed when I started going to Uni. Nobody knew me or my story, so I could start fresh. When we got to the Ultimate Frisbee unit in PE, I got to see how I could do if I was included in the game. It took a while to figure out the specifics of playing in a group, since I hadn’t had the opportunity to do that at all. But I was also throwing around my frisbee with Will after school, and it didn’t take us long before we were lobbing it back and forth to each other across the entire Uni yard. For the first three years at Uni, I was building a reputation among some people as ‘that one guy who always has the frisbee.’
However, this reputation was among a very small number of people, so during Cross Country season, there was one day when I didn’t go to the morning run, but a bunch of the other guys did, and they played Ultimate Frisbee over by the Atkins tennis center. They also played again that afternoon, and I was with them that time. The best moment of that day happened just as we were about to head back. We were tied 2-2, and the next point would be the end and we would head back to Kenney. One of my teammates missed the catch in the endzone, and the opposing team was just starting to cheer that they hadn’t lost when I ran in behind and caught the frisbee about three inches from the ground. It was after this that the boy's cross country team started calling me Frisboi Cedrico.
My frisbee got thrown up on top of Uni Gym again at the end of Sophomore year, and just recently was recovered. It’s severely damaged. It's held together by the rubber ring. There was a plastic disc that used to be clear, but now is some opaque frosted color, and cracked. I've had the thing for around six years now, and I don't think it will fly again, but I'll keep it to remind myself of everything I've done with that frisbee.
The first time my frisbee got thrown up on top of Uni Gym, I was devastated. I was a subbie at the time, and one of the seniors had thrown a little too high and it got caught by the wind. The frisbee blew down off the roof about a week later, but not before I had gotten two new, identical frisbees from my dad and the senior that lost the original.
This frisbee has been through a great deal of abuse. It’s an Aerobie Superdisc. It’s been stepped on, slammed into sides of buildings, kicked, etc. It lived in my backpack for a couple of years. And most recently, it was on top of Uni Gym for around ten months.
The story with me and frisbees goes back to elementary school, where nobody wanted to include me in the PE sports, and they had a good reason. I was trash. But at some point, my dad and I started throwing around a frisbee for fun. At first, all I was trying to do was touch the flying disc. Later, around the start of middle school, I had gotten good enough to catch reliably, and throw pretty well too. Not that my classmates knew; I was still excluded for the most part. It was around this time that I got the frisbee mentioned above.
All of this exclusion changed when I started going to Uni. Nobody knew me or my story, so I could start fresh. When we got to the Ultimate Frisbee unit in PE, I got to see how I could do if I was included in the game. It took a while to figure out the specifics of playing in a group, since I hadn’t had the opportunity to do that at all. But I was also throwing around my frisbee with Will after school, and it didn’t take us long before we were lobbing it back and forth to each other across the entire Uni yard. For the first three years at Uni, I was building a reputation among some people as ‘that one guy who always has the frisbee.’
However, this reputation was among a very small number of people, so during Cross Country season, there was one day when I didn’t go to the morning run, but a bunch of the other guys did, and they played Ultimate Frisbee over by the Atkins tennis center. They also played again that afternoon, and I was with them that time. The best moment of that day happened just as we were about to head back. We were tied 2-2, and the next point would be the end and we would head back to Kenney. One of my teammates missed the catch in the endzone, and the opposing team was just starting to cheer that they hadn’t lost when I ran in behind and caught the frisbee about three inches from the ground. It was after this that the boy's cross country team started calling me Frisboi Cedrico.
My frisbee got thrown up on top of Uni Gym again at the end of Sophomore year, and just recently was recovered. It’s severely damaged. It's held together by the rubber ring. There was a plastic disc that used to be clear, but now is some opaque frosted color, and cracked. I've had the thing for around six years now, and I don't think it will fly again, but I'll keep it to remind myself of everything I've done with that frisbee.
Thursday, February 1, 2018
Me and My Dad, Gamers Both
Sorry for the wall-of-text-y essay. It works better for the sort of writing I'm used to doing (freshman history papers anyone?). Anyways, this was responding to the prompt "what have you accomplished with your family."
There's a bit more detail I'd like to put into this, so please point out places where I'm rambling or could cut some details and still keep the substance. Any other comments that would help me improve the piece would be appreciated too.
My dad and I play a lot of computer games together. The main one that we’ve played over the past year and a half is Warframe. As a family, we have created a space for ourselves in a tiny corner of the Warframe community. We have a clan entirely populated by people we know in person, with almost everything researched, and enough resources accumulated that whenever a new item is added to the tech labs, we can start researching it usually within hours or even minutes of the update. I often play missions with my dad, especially the harder ones. Both of us is individually capable of completing all but the hardest missions, but it’s still nice to run the easier stuff with my dad occasionally. I’ve formed a very significant bond with my dad over Warframe and other games. We can spend hours discussing various strategies until we’re both so tired that we can’t think of anything else, then get up in the morning and pick up where we left off once we’re thinking straight again. Talking to my friends, none of them seem to have quite as strong a bond with their dads as I do with mine.
There is unfortunately some imbalance in-game between me and my dad, which has caused some conflict in the past. My dad has way more time available to him to play, so he can gather resources faster than I can, simply because he has more time. On a couple of occasions, this has led to me burning out, filled with disappointment and doubting my usefulness to a group, since I don’t have as much variety of equipment I can contribute. These were ultimately pettiness on my part. I was placing too much stock in being exactly on my dad’s level and not enough in what I was already bringing to a squad.
Between the amount of time my dad has to play, research new concepts and playstyles, test them, and accumulate resources, he has become a pretty good player despite being older than the average gamer. What he doesn’t have in reflexes, he makes up in solid strategy. I don’t have as much time in my day to play, so I’ve focused my playing on getting better at just playing the game, building game-sense and reactions, rather than the logistics. This difference in focus results in me usually playing as the group’s main damage dealer and my dad playing some sort of supporting role. It’s a comfortable balance that lets me do the things I enjoy in the game (shooting pesky AI enemies in the face) while letting my dad enjoy everything he’s worked so hard to get.
I’ve watched my dad play games for almost a decade and have seen how he plays things. Having played the same games for almost as long, often with the guidance of my dad, I’ve built a love for gaming that sometimes is detrimental to getting other things done. More recently, I’ve seen examples of near-professional level play from my cousin and Will. Between these, I’ve learned how to control the tactical terrain of the game, though not as well as my dad, and also shoot quickly and precisely, though again, not as fast or accurately as the pseudo-pros. I’ve come to accept that it’s unlikely that I will ever be as good as my dad at logistics, as well as accepting that if I wanted to play as well as Will or my cousin, it would take more dedication than I can afford or enjoy.
For that year and a half I’ve been playing Warframe with my dad, I was doing everything with him. More recently, I’ve been venturing out on my own, but when I need a group for something that I can’t or don’t want to handle on my own, my dad is the first person I ask to join me.
There's a bit more detail I'd like to put into this, so please point out places where I'm rambling or could cut some details and still keep the substance. Any other comments that would help me improve the piece would be appreciated too.
My dad and I play a lot of computer games together. The main one that we’ve played over the past year and a half is Warframe. As a family, we have created a space for ourselves in a tiny corner of the Warframe community. We have a clan entirely populated by people we know in person, with almost everything researched, and enough resources accumulated that whenever a new item is added to the tech labs, we can start researching it usually within hours or even minutes of the update. I often play missions with my dad, especially the harder ones. Both of us is individually capable of completing all but the hardest missions, but it’s still nice to run the easier stuff with my dad occasionally. I’ve formed a very significant bond with my dad over Warframe and other games. We can spend hours discussing various strategies until we’re both so tired that we can’t think of anything else, then get up in the morning and pick up where we left off once we’re thinking straight again. Talking to my friends, none of them seem to have quite as strong a bond with their dads as I do with mine.
There is unfortunately some imbalance in-game between me and my dad, which has caused some conflict in the past. My dad has way more time available to him to play, so he can gather resources faster than I can, simply because he has more time. On a couple of occasions, this has led to me burning out, filled with disappointment and doubting my usefulness to a group, since I don’t have as much variety of equipment I can contribute. These were ultimately pettiness on my part. I was placing too much stock in being exactly on my dad’s level and not enough in what I was already bringing to a squad.
Between the amount of time my dad has to play, research new concepts and playstyles, test them, and accumulate resources, he has become a pretty good player despite being older than the average gamer. What he doesn’t have in reflexes, he makes up in solid strategy. I don’t have as much time in my day to play, so I’ve focused my playing on getting better at just playing the game, building game-sense and reactions, rather than the logistics. This difference in focus results in me usually playing as the group’s main damage dealer and my dad playing some sort of supporting role. It’s a comfortable balance that lets me do the things I enjoy in the game (shooting pesky AI enemies in the face) while letting my dad enjoy everything he’s worked so hard to get.
I’ve watched my dad play games for almost a decade and have seen how he plays things. Having played the same games for almost as long, often with the guidance of my dad, I’ve built a love for gaming that sometimes is detrimental to getting other things done. More recently, I’ve seen examples of near-professional level play from my cousin and Will. Between these, I’ve learned how to control the tactical terrain of the game, though not as well as my dad, and also shoot quickly and precisely, though again, not as fast or accurately as the pseudo-pros. I’ve come to accept that it’s unlikely that I will ever be as good as my dad at logistics, as well as accepting that if I wanted to play as well as Will or my cousin, it would take more dedication than I can afford or enjoy.
For that year and a half I’ve been playing Warframe with my dad, I was doing everything with him. More recently, I’ve been venturing out on my own, but when I need a group for something that I can’t or don’t want to handle on my own, my dad is the first person I ask to join me.
Thursday, January 25, 2018
The Fall of Browser Games
Online gaming sites can provide temporary enjoyment. Kongregate, NotDoppler, Armor Games, that sort of thing. I used to play these a lot. I would wake up in the morning on weekends and go through those endless lists of games, trying out the ones that looked interesting. Occasionally, I would find one and play it for the entire day. I’ve had some good times playing these stupid little flash games.
But around the middle of freshman year, I started to enter the world of ‘real’ computer games, the ones that you install on your computer, rather than temporarily connecting to through a browser. The first of these I was introduced to long before freshman year, Kerbal Space Program. It was, and still is, a fun game, but it takes a lot of time for a productive session, one that leaves me feeling like it was time well spent. The beginning of a turning point came when Noah Johnson introduced me to Planetside 2. Here was a game that I could play any time I wanted to, for any length of time I wanted to, and was developed by a branch of a huge company by people who were paid to work on the game, instead of just being one person’s hobby.
It wasn’t until over a year later, when I had been playing these ‘real’ computer games for some time that I started to realize that the browser games were just trash. There were a few good ones, but in general, they just weren’t good enough to match anything from the computer gaming industry. I started to realize that whenever I played browser games, I just felt disappointed, since now my expectations for a game are much higher. Browser games are massive time-sinks, and don’t bring as much satisfaction as a ‘real’ game does in the same amount of time. It was around this time, about a year ago, that I started deciding that it was time to let go of this relic from my childhood. If I wanted to put off working, I had more fun ways to do that. I haven’t bothered with these browser games since.
So I’ve been wasting my time more productively, playing games that I can really enjoy for hours on end and still feel like I haven’t completely wasted my time. At the end of the day, sometimes I think to myself, “What did I do with my day?” It’s these moments that I hate. I usually go on to agonize about what I could have done differently, what things I could have done that would have given me joy. But it’s a rare experience with these ‘real’ games. Yes, there are times when I just don’t play well, or don’t get anything done towards long-term goals, sometimes the session just isn’t fun. On these days, sometimes I regret playing that game that day. It happens. But the frequency of these bad days is way lower with these games than with a day used up playing the browser games. I’m still not to the point where I completely prioritize school work over relaxation, but at least I’m having fun instead of just ending the day disappointed.
So, I'm at 532 words for this, so I think I should expand it some. Where do you think I could do that? Anything unclear, poorly worded, or any weird jumps in focus?
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
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