Greetings
Hm. I suppose this is the part where I introduce myself formally.
Greetings. I'm a long-time Lurker that has finally decided to join the website officially. Given that I'm hoping toi have my storygame published, I'll likely be refraining from adding my storygame to the website and thus head off any normal legal hurdles. However, since that's a bit of time and writing in the distance, I'll be active on the forums and with feedback.
Obligatory Synopsis of My History with the Genre
Ah, where to begin... My first taste of CYOA was with the brightly multicolored Goosebumps series. I think I begged my parents to pick it up for me at a school book fair in elementary school. Although I later discovered (in order) Fighting Fantasy, D&D, the original CYOA books, and the Lone Wolf series by Joe Dever, I have always held the Goosebumps games dear to me. Something about them always interested me, and I think we can all agree the writing and plots weren't chief among the suspects when you compare it with what I'd seen of its competitors. For any of you that watch Penny Arcade or Extra Credits, you'll be nodding here when I note that IMMERSION was the key. It certainly was the key for me, although it took a long time to realize it for what it was.
The sense of agency in these games and the very real threat of failure are beautiful and sorely lacking in all other media forms. Movies lack agency but can create failure as a plot result, while most games have the sense of agency down pat but struggle to make failure anything other than a 'Continue?' screen. This combination is probably exactly why I loved Dig-Dug and other arcade style games when I was younger and even today. It is most certainly the reason I came to love Starcraft.
Please allow me first to say that if I had never discovered Starcraft, I likely wouldn't have ever come to this website. Starcraft has been hugely influential to me, perhaps moreso than any game can (or should?) be, for two important reasons. The first is the commitment to improvement, and the second is a man famous for his passion. No passion jokes from those of you in the know.
Learning the Commitment to Improvement
In a game of Starcraft, where the primary competitive mode is 1v1, you and your opponent start with equal resources and worker units at the beginning of the game. There are no perks, nothing is added in, and the only reward for having played for a longer period of time is a generally higher capability at the game. There are also no teammates on which to blame your failures in the 1v1 ladder environment on which the competitive scene is built.
There are only three races, so you can feel free to switch to whatever is 'imba' at your convenience. The game requires a high level of Actions Per Minute (APM), requires strategic decisions, and rewards tactical ingenuity. You can have the ingenuity, but if your fingers aren't fast enough to act as quickly as you think you will lose. You can move your fingers quickly, but if you have no plan, you will lose. If you encounter something for the first time, fail to scout properly, or fail to simultaneously manage your economy while maneuvering your units, you will lose. Many times. In myriad ways, all of which will test both your patience and the endurance of your unfortunate keyboard.
All of this leads to my first point: If you lose in Starcraft, it's purely your own fault. But if you win, you win because you simply outplayed, outperformed, and outmaneuvered your opponent. It's the sweetest feeling in the world, and the only way to obtain it is through practice. Lots of it. The first rule of Starcraft is that you suck, period.
Deciding to be Good
This gaming world meant I had two options. I could accept that I was terrible, or I could dedicate myself to the art of improvement. Having decided on the latter, I ran into the twitch.tv / Youtube stylings of Sean "Day[9]" Plott. And then, I listened to Day[9] Daily #100. If you have never seen or heard of it, you need to press Ctrl+T, type in "www.youtube.com", and press Enter. In the search bar, type "Day[9] Daily #100" and press Enter.
There is a lot... and I do mean a LOT... of things to be gained from watching it. I've watched it at least 6 times over several years. Suddenly, I was hit by a bolt from the blue. This video, which I had seen multiple times, suddenly spoke to me as more than a person that played the same game. What hit me the most was the section where Day[9] talked about Fross / Froz (spelling unknown)... that he would just DECIDE to be good. He mentions that, at one point, Fross would watch a professional player have a brilliant game only to say "That's garbage, I can do better".
And then he would do better.
That blew my mind. Suddenly everything Day[9] spoke about in that video became far more vivid for me. He would decide to be good, and then just do it. I paused the video and looked around at all the books I had read but thought were garbage. Those that could have been written better, were successful in spite of their abysmal writing and characterizations, that proposed to be games but were stultifying bores. What about all the games I had playtested and ground myself into the ground improving for somebody else?
What about everything I was passionate for that I let slip by thinking I had another day to get to it? [EXPLETIVE REDACTED]. That. Noise. So I find myself here :)
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tl;dr - I'm here with a vengeance, and you will hear more of me :) And please check out Day[9] Daily #100.
