...and why I want to win

I played a game in college called Warcraft 3. Produced by Blizzard, it came out before World of Warcraft did, and is a real time strategy game rather than a role playing game. The appeal of Warcraft 3 to me was not the mechanics of it, or the unit control, or even the strategy. The appeal was the online ladder system .

I was good at Warcraft 3 because the ladder was an immediate, objective metric of my worth in the game. When I won I felt elated and egotistical; when I lost I felt hurt and insulted. I studied the matched I played; I studied the matches other people played; I spent time in class and before bed imagining new strategies and tactics. As a result of three years of heavy playing, I eventually was ranked in the top 100 players in the Americas and qualified for the World Cyber Games regional tournament.

All of which now means precisely shit. The game is dying, I haven't played since 2005, and none of the accomplishments I spent so much time earning mean anything outside the scope of that specific video game.

So was that time wasted? Would I be a better person, however you wish to define that, if instead I had spent that time writing fiction and working towards my dream of being an author? I contest it wasn't, and I wouldn't be, because of the things that game taught me.
The foremost of which is that I like winning. I was never athletic and was a theatre kid in high school, so WC3 was my first taste at competition that I had a chance at winning. And I frickin love it. The competition itself is secondary, I want to win, and if I don't win, I want to get better so I can. A vice to some, and in some situations, knowing that I love to win makes it easy to motivate myself in areas that aren't video games.

I want to win at writing a book. Not writing a book means I lose, so I wrote a book.

I want to win at getting published. Not getting published means I lose, so I'm busting my ass to get published.

I want to win at being in shape. Being in bad shape means I lose, so I work out four days a week and eat right.

There's no room for idleness if you want to win. There's no room for not feeling like it, or rationalization; those are just excuses if you want to win. Don't want to write? Fine, all that means is you're losing. If that stings, do something about it so you can win. Some people give themselves pep talks, I call myself a loser.

Playing WC3 also taught me that not everyone wants to win. Some people just want to play. These people get more enjoyment out of the game and competition than they do out of the result. They play 'for fun,' without thinking of improvements or optimal strategies. As a result, they drift. Their innate talent takes them to a certain level, and there they stay, whether that's at level 5 or 10 or 20, they always play the hand they were dealt. Beyond video games, these are the people who are perfectly content to plug away at a decent job for however long they're needed, and have nice safe hobbies in their free time, whether that's watching TV or going for walks or reading. They're content with where they are, because they're just here to have fun. Alternatively, they may feel empty or directionless, and seek to find meaning outside of the game, through religion or family.

Other people wanted to win, but only if they were playing 'fair,' which is defined by some arbitrary set of rules that exists only in their own mind. I never cheated, meaning I never used a hack or otherwise modified the game in any way to give myself an advantage. But I played dirty, and that agitated people who thought a noble loss was better than a backstabbing win. These players wanted to improve, but only if they could stay within their mental construct of fairness. Beyond video games, these people want to be objectively successful, but they want to do it inside an existing framework. They want to be managers, executives, owners. If they hit a ceiling, they exhaust themselves pushing against it before complaining about how the system is unfair, never thinking to remove themselves from the system. They may be bitter and angry if they cannot succeed, but if they do, they feel morally justified and righteous, because they succeeded the 'right' way.

Me, though, I just want to win. I want use all the tactics, use all the strategies. If I'm good, it's because I want to be. If I fail, it's because I picked the wrong strategy and didn't pull it off properly. Try something different next time. I plan on winning this game, and I'm going to have a blast when I do.

Losing the only game that matters...

Today I woke up at 6:30 so I could shower and eat before I went to work a job I don't hate. About 11 hours later, I came home $200 richer. I need that money to pay rent, feed myself, keep the lights and internet on, and pay expenses on my car and student loans. These are the obligations I've chosen to take on, and my current arangement lets me afford these things and have a little left over to save and go out once a week or so. As far as real life money and possessions are concerned, it's a nice situation.

But if this were a game, I'd be losing.

The rules of the game are simple. The only resource worth mentioning is time, because it's something everyone has, but everyone has a finite amount. In the interest of fairness, we'll give everyone the same 24 hours, rather than worrying about years, which can vary from person to person. The object of the the game is to aquire as much time as possible, because time is necessary for all other activities. And because time cannot be created, it can only be consumed, the mechanic by which this works is to devide time into two categories: obligation time and free time. The more free time a player has, the greater control they have over their life.

I spend 11 hours a day preparing for work, commuting to and from work, and sitting at my desk at my job. I sleep seven hours a day, which is two hours fewer than I'd like. Making and eating food takes another 1.5 to 2 hours a day, and random chores like hygene take another hour. That leaves me with a little more than 3 hours a day for non-necessary persuits, as defined by the obligations I've chosen. That's 12.5% of my day that's free to use as I see fit. 20.5 hours spent on obligaitons to aquire 3.5 hours of free time.

Put another way, I tolerate seven hours of obligation to live one hour of life. I'm getting shafted on this trade, and I'm losing this game.

Which is how it should be, according to conventional thinking. People who win the game are always outside the mainstream, whether they win by being insanely rich, like an A list actor, by minimizing their obligations, like a wandering hippie, or by finding a way to meet their obligations in their free time, like an artist or entrepeneur. But most people don't win the game. A great many people have a fullfulling, enjoyable time losing the game, but they still lose.
I want to win. I want to flip that trade, and I want to do it sooner rather than later. You can have fun playing the game, or you can have fun winning the game, and I'm going to play to win.

Battlesongs of Hope World Almanac: Part 1 - The World

Battlesongs of Hope takes place in a world that most readers will recognize as Earth, even though it isn’t. Most readers would also recognize the time period as mid-20th century, but those years mean nothing there.

Battlesongs takes place on a large continent that is demarcated primarily into those lands which have been recently under Wizard influence, and those that have not. The boundary between these lands is fuzzy, primarily because the Wizards' lands were so vast and their power so great that there were no other powers on the continent to whom a boundary would be useful, and also because the Wizards are now dead, and so their influence has been waning of late.

The Wizard continent is presumably surrounded by an ocean, although because its role in the book is solely to help regulate the weather, it warrants little more mention.

The Wizard lands span mountains and coastlines, swamps and forests, but the greatest area of land is occupied by vast rolling fields that experience a temperate four seasons. Few cities dot the plains, due to the Wizards’ tendency to consolidate people and resources. Expansive farms turn the fields into a checkerboard of crops from horizon to horizon. The characters of BSOH are not particularly educated regarding life outside of the city, and therefore unfortunately do not know the proper names for many of the landmarks and features in the hinterlands.

The largest Wizard city, which the characters usually refer to as “the sprawl” when discussing it in aggregate, forms a centerpiece in BSOH. This city is so massive that it is much more useful to refer to the districts within the city, which take the names given by the Wizard clan that presides (or rather, presided) over them. The size and population of each district is variable, as Wizards control territory in the city according to their clan’s relative strength and favorability in the eyes of the Two Houses.

Resources and technology in the Wizard lands generally tend to obey the laws of physics. If there is oil in the Wizard lands, it has not yet been found. Liquid fuel is instead produced from algae or plant material, and is generally far more valuable than gasoline. Oddly, electronic computing does not work at all in the BSOH world, despite all theories and calculations indicating that it is possible. The Wizards and most other scholars have concluded that this one discrepancy in natural law must be due to magic.