Off-Topic: Ramblings on Careers, Self-Confidence and the Future

This is a personal post mostly about me. If you’ve no interest in me or what I do for a living, come back another time!

It’s been a wild week ever since resigning my current position as HR business partner last Friday. I took it on myself to tell all of my close clients personally, because the relationships I have established over my time here deserved no less. The feedback was overwhelming and both motivating and emotionally difficult. I’m not used to such an amount of sympathy or people in leadership positions becoming misty eyed at the prospect of my departure. Then again, I have also never before worked anywhere with the same degree of personal commitment; it’s true that you need to invest yourself in order to get something back. All that said life goes on of course, in business there’s no such thing as being irreplaceable. I like that about it, it’s honest about the facts of life.

That leaves me with returning to the open road and hunting my next prospect, as I always have. I am leaving a stable, safe environment and good relationships behind not because I am not content but I am no longer motivated (a difference that is best explained by Herzberg’s two-factor theory on motivation). What I do for a living has stopped being just a job, what I seek is challenge and fulfilment. I spend a great deal of time working and expect a high performance of myself – but not for free. And free is not just about salaries, it’s the whole package. It’s like the difference between a great MMORPG and a lacklustre one: you can have fun with the second for a time but in the end, you’re left wanting for the more well-rounded world. And as long as we have the means, why should we content ourselves with anything less?

I am incredibly grateful for the last few years. They have been fruitful in so many ways, not just because they advanced me but because I have learned such a great deal about myself. I’ve learned what I do not want anymore. And I’ve learned that there’s a place for someone like me, with my skillset and personality which is not as naturally accepted in women as it is in men. Time and time again I had to fight for my voice, especially a frank and dissenting one sometimes, one that challenges those your peers don’t dare challenge. Here’s a secret: they love it when you do, they find it so refreshing. It took a moment to gain people’s trust but once I had, they appreciated and respected me for how I am. I didn’t need to play a part and maybe for the first time ever, I feel completely confident in myself. Love it or leave it, this destroyer of worlds is embracing herself. And say what you want about other people’s judgement, it feels damn nice to have them in your corner!

bc

Unfortunately or luckily, I can’t stay anywhere when there are no new targets and old routine sets in. I’ve known this for a while, that I require a vision of my future, a next step or goal lest I become very unwell. After I finished my University degree, I fell into a deep hole. Before I decided to switch careers four years ago, I was in existential crisis. Where do I go from here – what am I hunting next? It doesn’t even matter what the dream is, just have one and work your ass off. I don’t always stick to the course but I need a sense of direction, forward forward always forward. Most of us need to earn their passage and just hang in there, climb up a little at a time and be bold when switching jobs. A new position shouldn’t be all about what you already know and can do, it should contain things you’ve yet to learn. I’ve recruited qualified staff for a while now for different branches, and one comment by our head of IT stuck with me when one day, he told me about his findings concerning female candidates (which are rare still in IT): “The difference is that men boldly apply for a job even if they can’t fully do it yet, whereas women wait a long time and think they have to be perfect before they apply for the job.” Such unexpected insight.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.”

The next three months will be about vetting different positions not for other people but for myself. Being a major geek, I am hoping to land back in the IT world which is among the more progressive and dynamic environments. I’ve not given up hope to work with people someday that are at least a little nerdy and into tech. I also look forward to using my English skills again and maybe work more project-based, specializing further. Further further…..but first, I’ll take a month off to travel! I am after all, also an explorer at heart and it’s the open, undestined road that keeps me sane in MMOs too. Such a contradiction or maybe just a complementary necessity? I seem to exist best at extreme ends of a spectrum and already as a child, boredom was my nemesis. I grew up performing under constant stress that was none of my choosing, I learned how to escape but I still need the stress even today – pressure, challenge and overcoming fear are what I know. It’s a sobering analyzis that one, how I was made but each of us has their own genesis. Understanding mine has helped me accept what I need. Once you can do that, it frees up energy for other things and you’ll likely make better choices for yourself. What we need and what we want blah. Life is messy!

Fingers crossed.

QOTD: MMOs are like the Plague

“There are many good reasons most games studios don’t attempt an MMO, and why all of the advice to indies is to avoid it like the plague. Basically? Because it’s the plague.

An MMO is the most expensive and complex design choice you can possibly make. In some ways it makes the 64bit problem look like a school project. Moving from single-player to multi-player adds complexity. Moving to large numbers of players who expect to be able to interact with each other en masse, chat, trade, work together, work against each other, connect any time of the day or night, never lose any saved data, never have their accounts hacked, never lose out to a cheater or a scammer, and never be abused in chat by a troll… well, it’s games development in “Extreme difficulty” mode. “MMO” also makes people think of complex character sheets, and massive, massive, massive replayability.” [James Hicks]

Yesterday, the folks over at Massively OP featured a lengthy commentary by Ascent’s lead developer James Hicks on the kerfuffle around Star Citizen. It’s an insightful read about all the great risks and challenges that come with such massive, crowd-funded projects and naturally, his above statement about the MMO genre as a whole stood out to me and bears repeating. We are so used to our AAA-MMO gold standard and so very demanding, it’s easy to forget what a remarkable feat every running MMO(RPG) is to begin with. Developing massively multiplayer online worlds is diving into a bottomless well or as Hicks called it, the plague – one we get to enjoy without all the peril until no one’s left who would lead us there.

darkest dungeon artwork

darkest dungeon artwork

OTC – Big Deals Edition: The Challenges of Virtual Poop, Undertale and DPS Meters still suck, thank you!

You guys, I actually used “poop” in a topic title! *Achievement unlocked!*

otc

The big deal that is pooping in ARK

I’ve been playing some ARK over the past weekend after finally upgrading my old graphics card to a 970. The game is beautiful but also rather straightforward and boring, to the point of where I am calling over-hype. Coming from the suspense that is 7 Days to Die, ARK still has a long way to go before it catches my survival fancy – “just surviving”, as in making sure you’re not starving, isn’t a good enough reason to sink hours into a game and build fortresses for me. That’s all well though and I will return to ARK once it received more content love and fixing.

Of course one very under-reported, hilarious feature in ARK is your character’s defecation mechanic which has caught many an unsuspecting player by surprise. It also spawns fantastically comical forum threads such as this one which was my main inspiration for looking into the topic. For those who don’t know how it works, just a brief summary: player characters in ARK randomly poop all over the place with a “you defecated” message popping up on your screen and an overly realistic bowel sound effect going along with it (eww). Also, you can pick up player poop and do things with it! There’s apparently a way to initiate pooping yourself (I did not know this), rather than being taken by surprise when your character relieves himself in the middle of your base like he’s part of the livestock.

This is noteworthy because most games never dare venture into the no-go zone that is human poop, no matter how high their authenticity bar is set otherwise. I only remember encountering virtual pooping in the Sims and Conker’s Bad Fur Day myself in the past. Even toilets as part of game settings are kind of a big deal, as was recently deliberated in this RPS article. Cross-reading different ARK forums, there’s plenty of players utterly aghast at this, nevermind all the violence and moral decay portrayed in videogames otherwise but…..poop? No way! I actually got a buddy of mine to play ARK and he is turned off so much by the defecation thing, he’s already stopped playing. I couldn’t stop laughing after it “happened” to his character the first time around!

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So many places to do your business!

Now, I am possibly the last person to ask for poop mechanics in videogames, or any simulation of mundane bodily functions for that matter, since I’m all for the idealized, stylized and aesthetically pleasing fantasy environments! The fuss over something as trivial as poop in a game like ARK cracks me up though; I guess I’m okay with the fact that my human body does that sort of thing and so does yours because y’know, we’re part of nature no matter how fancy we dress and talk. We tend to be fine with “manure” (different word for poop!) from beefalos when playing Don’t Starve, so let’s try be a little less Martha Steward about the whole thing, shall we?

The Tunes of the Undertale

Undertale, a successful Kickstarter project that’s been created for the most part by one guy named Toby Fox, has recently been released on Steam with a bang. Not only is it difficult to find anything but raging reviews from players and journos alike, the fact that many would go as far as calling it the best RPG they ever played or at least among the best, got me curious to check it out myself. Only about 1 hour in and without wanting to spoil anything, I think it’s safe to say that lovers of the (J)RPG genre will find this to be an interesting journey for its toying with player expectations, tongue-in check approach to classic tropes and unorthodox approach to round-based combat. That is, if you can get over the minimalistic graphics. I’m not even sure how much I like Undertale yet myself but there is something about it I need to get to the bottom of.

What’s already won me over is the game’s soundtrack – a whooping 101 tracks of oldschool goodness composed by Toby Fox again (that guy!), and available for only 9.99$ on his bandcamp site. If you’re at all into retro VGM, this is for you and one great deal for the buck!

And MMOs are still better without DPS meters

Most players who have ever spent a decent amount of time in FFXIV: A Realm Reborn will at some point talk or write about its incredibly friendly community that seems at odds with the current WoW-based MMO standard. I have mused on this not too long ago and so have other bloggers, and it requires no great leap of logic to grasp that FFXIV’s lack of (acknowledged) DPS meters, as well as its very forgiving dungeons for the most part, have a lot to do with it. FFXIV relies heavily on social engineering in many different ways and pugging is as essential to the player experience in this MMO as it is in WoW and other games, toxic hells that their LFGs have become. I have lamented the state of pugs in WoW as well as in Guild Wars 2 in the past and Eri did in fact recently write a similar review on returning to Tera.

Now Rohan linked an interesting experiment from reddit in his post yesterday, in which some guy parsed both the harassment and the DPS for pugs in both FFXIV and WoW. Bottom line: the jerks in WoW are often also the “good” players (no doubt using meters as their justification). In FFXIV on the other hand, in case of a bad pug it’s more likely that the loudmouth is also a bad player (that’s simply never detected). So far goes the result of the experiment.

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More dps whyyyy…look I have a pretty angel!

It’s easy enough to believe this data. Like Rohan, I fail to see how any of the two options are superior in theory because well, I generally don’t want any jerks in my pugs. Doing well on meters doesn’t entitle you to be a jerk. Where I disagree slightly is the bottom line that the two approaches to meters are on the same level / cause equal inconveniences; in reality I am a lot less often subjected to harassment in FFXIV than I am in WoW by virtue of how the FFXIV devs handle meters. And this is a big deal.

Would you rather deal with a 5% chance of getting ebola or a 70% of getting SARS?  The 5% suck but are preferable to the 70%! Naturally, these are my uncorroborated percentages to illustrate approximately how often my pugs have been awful in FFXIV vs. WoW. Source whatever you like, it would surprise me greatly if you didn’t end up with a huge disparity between these two titles. I must have done a 100 runs myself in FFXIV by now and I recall precious few group disbands either, outside those 2-3 single raid boss encounters everyone seems to loathe.

Of course the question of whether bad players matter much towards outcome, factors into this and once more FFXIV appears to be more laidback and forgiving where the majority of its puggeable content is concerned. I mean look….the 4-man dungeons aren’t exactly difficult. I am still undecided whether WoW’s dungeons are truly that much harder to warrant meters – I’ve a feeling this is not the case. The amount of harassment in WoW happens because meters are readily available and because people can. So, I’ll take a few loudmouth players in FFXIV who are “also bad” any day, if it means a much friendlier overall community.

[FFXIV] A special Heavensward Tribute

I am in love with Eorzea; the snowy lands beyond Coerthas, the forests of the Black Shroud, the windmills of La Noscea. The sense of scale and immersion created in the zones of FFXIV are only matched by LOTRO. And some of them are unrivaled entirely. I didn’t expect to ever find a “go-to MMO” again after WoW, a game that I will log on to after an exhausting day just to unwind and find comfort in its world. FFXIV is that for me.

My journey through Heavensward has been rather wonderful up to this point, both in terms of traveling around as well as following the engaging storyline. I have taken around 900 screenshots of this expansion alone. There are so many favorites that I decided just picking a few and uploading them somewhere won’t do – this time, I’ll showcase them a little differently than usual.

Slideshow clips aren’t my favorite thing on youtube but in this case I felt it was a perfect way of arranging and uploading quite a lot of screenshots that are also tied together storywise and for the most part, in chronological order from lvl 50-60. For those who aren’t playing FFXIV or haven’t been to Heavensward just yet, my tribute will be less meaningful than for me maybe and other HW players. I get incredibly sentimental watching clips like this but I hope it can serve as a worthy teaser too for someone who’s never been to Eorzea, showing them a few of the most wonderful moments and sceneries to be encountered in this MMO. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW-4V-8xmDM

P.S. Yes, I like my dragons, what can I say!

OTC: Wildstar Relaunch, Star Citizen Kerfuffle and Steam Pricing

otc

OTC is a multi-topic category on mmogypsy.com

October is a wild month for gamers and not just thanks to so many great new releases in the coming days and weeks. On September 30th Wildstar finally relaunched, now fully free-to-play after its introduction of the CREDD meta-currency earlier in 2015. Even with relaunches like this one, it was apparently difficult for the developers to prepare a successful launch week and anticipate (mega)server load. Since last Tuesday I have logged into the game on several different days, after being greeted by a queue of ~2500 each time. Once I got in and wasn’t kicked by the loading screen, the experience went something like this:

  • Get spammed by 10826452628 achievements
  • Try to move character and write in guildchat
  • Retrieve 50 loyalty rewards from account inventory
  • Character starts moving…and keeps moving
  • There is now one new item appearing in my bag; I try activate it
  • My text appears in guildchat
  • The activated item is gone for good /sadface
  • My character is suddenly bald

Okay I made that last one up, although twitter was full of hilarious character bug screenshots by Wildstar players. Unfortunately the game has been really unplayable for me up to Sunday night, which was the last time I tried doing more than loitering in Illium. I am still subscribed too, so that’s a little meh – even if I totally agree with Anook that launch hiccups are part of MMO launches. But then, so are players whining about launch hiccups, so HANDLE IT!

All that aside, I profess a certain indifference to the whole thing; at the end of the day it’s still the Wildstar I left a few months ago, with bigger plots, more currencies and easier dungeons. Since the latter were not a primary concern for me anyway, it’s not like I am now getting the shot I never got before; I already raided in Wildstar and I have no interest in going back to raids. That’s not to say that I won’t binge-decorate the Manor de Syl sometime in the future but yeah, the novelty is limited in this case.

The Escapist versus Cloud Imperium Games

Space travel geeks and readers of dramatic mainstream gaming websites have been very agitated these last few days, as the whole kerfuffle between The Escapist and Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) has moved to second base. In case you’ve no idea what I am talking about, The Escapist has said some pretty accusatory and partly not-so-well-researched things (this is a good summary) about the hiring practises over at CIG and the overall status quo of the now $90 million-project that Star Citizen has become since the initial kickstarter for 500’000 bucks. I understand things have been significantly delayed from the original timeframe but hey, a backing surplus of umm 18’000% (correct me if I’m wrong, am bad at maths) is potentially overwhelming to anyone passionate to deliver the best possible product to their long standing fan base. Just sayin’ – two years are not a long time in AAA terms! I know what I’d be doing with some of that extra cash –

One year-long international backers orgy, for realz!

One year-long international backers orgy, for realz!

I  keep my fingers crossed that all the SC backers out there will still get to see their dream of space travel come alive, whenever that will be. As for The Escapist, the last time I intentionally visited that webpage they were interviewing “game developers” versus “female game developers”, while not exactly vetting some of their interview guests either. Ethics in game journalism (lol) is apparently not The Escapist’s forte, huh.

Understanding Steam Pricing

Last night I posed the below question to my twitter-wiki because I was puzzled over some of the not-conversion-rate-related price differences between certain games on Steam vs. Amazon vs. retail (nothing new, I know). I don’t buy any non-digital games anymore but as several people have pointed out to me in the discussion that ensued, regional VAT regulations play a part and whether we are talking digital-only releases or games that still go over the counter. Another reason as pointed out by Armadillo may lie in physical presence of services or infrastructure.

But these are just some of the reasons, the most obvious one being that you set a prize that people will pay of course. Arguing different markets is the same thing: it’s not a social system whereby I somehow fund gaming for players in low-income countries. I am the first person to sign up for collective insurance models but asking relative prices for digital games is about profit margins.

So looking at some of the bigger differences for Steam games and the absence thereof in certain cases, I guess I can’t realistically comprehend the whole thing as a wanna-be-informed consumer with a limited attention span. It’s all very complicated which is also business code for “because we can” – only sometimes it’s not but then, how would I know? To clarify, I have no issue with some price differences on games and I certainly am not looking to get everything as cheap as possible; games cost money to make. Like most players however, I would prefer to fund the people doing the actual work and not scores of (unnecessary) middle men. That’s why digital distribution is potentially great and it feels wrong when there are price differences of 25% or more.

I realize this is not exactly a new topic, certainly not for gamers living in Australia, but I should probably look into buying from alternative sources like Greenman Gaming more often and consider gifting opportunities via my Steam friendlist, as most guides looking to thwart the Valve overlord suggest. Who wants to be my Steam gift-pal? Considering where I live, I can’t guarantee you get much out of it though!

Optional reading: The weird economics behind Steam prices around the world

You lost me at [Reasons]!

cesardude

And the answer is NoooOOOOoooope!

Like most players there’s game genres I like more or less depending on mood and a fair few I won’t play at all. For me personally, RTS or stuff like train simulators definitely belong to that last category. I detest micro-management in games and sims better be exciting and set in some fantasy world or I won’t touch them with a pitchfork.

Genres to avoid aside, there’s features within my more prized categories that will instantly make me go “Eww” and 99 out of a 100 times that will be the end of our fleeting relationship. They’re the fly in an otherwise tasty soup, it really doesn’t matter if it’s a great looking RPG or adventure game or open world MMO – some features are make or break, au revoir mon ami! So of course here’s a quick list of my top five intolerable game features as of today:

  • Isometry; I can’t play isometric games. There’s a ton of great looking and no doubt fun online coop games that OH NOES happen to be isometric. I can’t stand it, it’s about the most unimmersive gameplay experience I can imagine. Also, many RTS are isometric, eww!
  • Round-based; I spent over a decade playing round-based JRPGs and am simply over this slow and formulaic type of combat. Give me hack’n slay any day of the week! Next!
  • Roguelike/permadeath; Who has time to lose their progress over and over? What is this, a real-life sim? Permadeath games are fun for about 2.5 seconds and then it all feels like the greatest waste of time ever. I don’t think sooooo.
  • Jumping Puzzles; Oh man, the pain…the cringe that shoots through my body whenever MMO devs talk about adding more jumping puzzles to their game as if that was somehow a great thing. Jumping puzzles will make me swear off a title quicker than tankinis – if I want to jump around like an obsessed monkey am gonna play PLATFORMERS, thank you!
  • Facebook; I don’t have a facebook account and never will. Many mobile games especially require players to log in via facebook or acquire special items exclusively via the devil. Suffice to say, they can burn in hell without me.

I realize this is a beautiful collection of features that should be buried deep, deep in the underbelly of game design never to see the light of day again. Of course, it’s all subjectivebla and we’re bound to disagree and have wonderful arguments about who’s right or wrong! So, why not share some of your personal no-gos in gaming with the rest of the world? I’m sure someone out there is playing a roundbased, isometric RTS with permadeath as we speak, yikes!

2015 Q3: A Busy time for Geeks and Gamers!

2015 has been a great year for MMOs, for me anyway, and I find myself struggling to keep track of all the goodness ahead this Q3 and beyond! Fall tends to be the time for gamers and geeks and some of us may soon find themselves in dire need for holidays to catch up with games, movies and other shenanigans.

Awaiting in Games

FFXIV is about to drop the 3.1 content patch soon which in good old SE fashion means a lot more of everything. Wildstar is transitioning to free-to-play tomorrow and I will be swimming in the new shop currency due to my past CREDD purchases. And anyone burning for raiding and healing in GW2 just got to hear the latest news about druids coming to Tyria.

That’s only as far as MMOs go for me. I am also looking forward to Jotun releasing tomorrow (check out the beautiful trailer!) and The Witcher 3’s first expansion pack coming out October 13th! Fallout 4 is due in November of course and also, ARK is still on my list of things to check out (currently on discount via Humble Bundle). Good times.

Awaiting in Movies

I’ve not been to the movies in a while, mostly because summer is for BBQ and river baths, but am definitely going to see the following new features as soon as they hit cinemas in Switzerland (which tends to be either sooner or much later than elsewhere, it’s odd):

Awaiting in Books

I used to read so much. In recent years, blogging, social media, podcasting and what else have left a mark on my reading schedule. I am still not an e-book person however and now that winter is slowly creeping up on us and it’s time for snuggling up in front of the fireplace again, I got around ordering a few books I’ve been meaning to read:

The other day, the postman also delivered my Chris Riddell illustrated book set of Neil Gaiman tales, so that’s what I’ll be doing over the weekend when I’m not playing Jotun or Wildstar. Which new games, movies or books are you looking forward to this Q3-Q4?

riddel

Running & Screaming in Terror: 7 Days to Die and individual Survival Instincts

I’ve been playing 7 Days to Die again this past week and everytime I return to the game, I find myself thoroughly hooked in that “ooops it’s already past midnight??”-kind of frenzy for a time. Really, survival games are the worst for time management, one minute you’re planting potatoes on your farm – the next, four hours have passed and you still didn’t take that shower before bedtime.

7 Days to Die is one fine title for anyone into survival and building sims, in fact the zombie apocalypse part is only about one third of that experience. Zombie encounters get more intense after a while but the balance between different activities is what makes this such a fun title. Survival is rough but not too rough, especially not in coop, and the dev team keeps putting great effort into making the game ever more interesting (and smooth looking!), adding more and more features and sites (air drops are fun! army camps are not!) as well as complexity to the already very accomplished crafting system. Whatever you decide to do, progress feels very rewarding.

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Improved graphics, weather effects and much more

Similar to DayZ which I have been duly impressed with in the past, 7 Days to Die is primarily also a game about atmosphere – maybe even more so. The sounds of the wilderness have been improved tenfold since the earliest builds and I get goosebumps regularly sneaking about towns or running from bears in the forest (I need a rifle!). The dynamics of the game change considerably once you got a team of three together for exploratory ventures and like with DayZ too, there’s some intriguing group psychology unfolding once several people start playing a fresh build together. Where DayZ was all about unspoken rules of conduct, 7 Days to Die coop mode is an entertaining experiment in terms of which measures of survival individual players will prioritize. In my own steady group’s case, the same scenario keeps repeating itself (Bee and Tee being my mates here):

  • Tee instantly starts base building: fortification is important, so a forge must be established immediately for things like iron doors and better defensive mechanisms. Also, we need firearms as soon as possible.
  • Bee is all about the farm and mining: we need crops for independent food resources and as many tunnels as possible down to the bottom of the world.
  • Syl starts hunting game and cooking: we need food and drink supplies. Also our entire storage unit needs to be organized and labeled, omg chaos!

I feel like such a cliché whenever I fall back to cooking for everyone but on my personal list of survival prios, food/drink are the most immediate. No potential death could be dumber or more embarrassing than dropping dead somewhere out in the wild, pockets bursting with loot, because you ran out of food or water. At least when you keep your character fed, you can run off to wherever and start building a new base there. Dunno, maybe that’s just me. I definitely enjoy how the game inspires everyone to play to their strengths (mine seems to be foresight and organization in this case) and take on different roles for the team.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

7 Days to Die is officially still in alpha which gotta be the most consistently playable alpha development I’ve ever encountered. Build 13 is about to drop soonish and looking incredibly good, so if you ever thought about checking this title out, now is the time! Immersive survival sims don’t get much better than this.

Off-Topic: Musings on losing my Phone and Patience

Last Friday I „lost“ my cellphone somewhere between work and home and was unable to retrieve it until today. I spent a good part of my weekend frantically turning the apartment upside down to my partner’s chagrin, because the potential loss of my phone is the stuff of nightmares. Years of messages, personal notes and photographs from all over the world could’ve ended up in some ditch or worse, a stranger’s pocket. The fact that my car battery also decided to die on me yesterday morning on my way to work didn’t make things better – I have no other phone line beside my cellphone and so I ended up emailing people at work like some maniac (there is the assumption that everyone has a phone and therefore must also be able to use it, no pressure!) while rushing to the local car garage on foot at 8am. And I am not a morning person, mornings are for other people.

Am losing my shit

Losing my shit

When I was finally able to recover my phone at work today, where some fairy must’ve found it and put it in my personal locker, I cried proverbial tears of joy. Dear phone, I MISSED YOU SO MUCH! In this day and age we’ve come to rely on our mobile communication gadgets in a way that frightens me a little. What is all this doing to me?

On the erosion of patience being the erosion of skill

While I was still jubilating my phone’s recovery during coffee break, I came across an interview with Nicholas Carr, bestselling author of “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”, in a weekly feuilleton I like to read and which is literally the last remnant of print media in my life. Carr critically discusses the omnipresence of digital media and our reliance on and obsession with connectivity. So far, not exactly a fresh angle on the internet age. However, the interview became more interesting when he started referencing studies on what the ever increasing speed of information and interaction does to our brains: how we expect faster reactions and feedback from webpages/email/people, how our frustration threshold for wait times is decreasing as we grow more demanding yet less focused, valuing instant gratification while losing our ability for patience.

And unlearning the ability for patience/focus or never exercising it in the first place, is a bigger issue than one might think. It’s not just about dealing with all the extra (peer) pressure created by new media. Carr goes on to explain the skilldrain accompanying this age of technology, where gadgets have stopped enabling or improving personal growth and skill development but rather replace them entirely. Instead of learning from an early age that acquiring and exercising certain skills takes time for practice and repetition, we are tempted to leave such effort to technology altogether, especially if it’s faster. This is the case when kids can’t do mental math anymore but require a calculator to add two-digit numbers together or when we’re incapable of navigating traffic without a GPS device. These are not positive examples of technology improving our lives but instead, examples of them taking over. It creates a dependability that is risky and potentially harmful. Which is not to say that technology doesn’t do an awful lot of wonderful things, too – it should however not make the education of a versatile and well-trained mind obsolete.

This is where I am personally grateful that I grew up before the complete takeover of mobile tech and uber-connectivity. I consider myself a digital native due to my upbringing around video games but I was in my late teens when the internet happened. I am also part of a now bygone generation of “classically trained” college students within the Swiss academic system. That means I was part of a crowd that primarily learned to question, interpret, analyze and debate with strong focus on language learning, literature, art, history and other humanistic disciplines such as philosophy or religion/theology. I spent 7 years studying latin along with three other language majors (plus all the natural sciences and art subjects) before moving on to specialize at university. I sat in archways in the beautiful city of Bern sketching old church towers and got to spend time in museums and dusty city archives. Thanks to all of this, I believe I am a pro at educating myself; I am very fortunate and privileged that my school was still the “we help you to help yourself”-kind and that there was diversity taught for the sake of diversity. Of course I didn’t quite see it that way at the time.

I realize that with growing economic pressures too, schools are less and less allowed that much room for “frivolous subjects”. There’s a plethora of studies and articles out there right now on how the school system is old-fashioned and not in tune with modern times and demands. Apparently productive adulthood can’t start soon enough, which is somewhat ironic given that we only just discovered the importance of childhood in the early 20th century. Where is this going? Without all this time and patience for learning in my curriculum, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I wonder if I’d play games differently too – after all, there’s a very strong parallel here to the more slowed-down and exploratory playstyle I prefer in MMOs, as opposed to bite-sized themeparks full of reward and achievements that require shorter attention spans. Maybe my gameplay preferences too are shaped by my upbringing? I don’t know, I am thinking out loud here.

As an ex-educator, it does concern me that schools offer less time for children to focus on developing their own skillsets from scratch, rather than being productive and job-ready as fast as possible. But maybe this is really the times we live in and there’s no point in fighting the takeover by technological optimization (it’s already happened to manual work). Maybe being impatient is the new green and I am sounding like my grandparents. Or maybe “go with the flow” is some defeatist thinking right there.

I retweeted this image. Yes, I realize the irony.

I retweeted this image. Yes, I realize the irony.

What I do know is that every time  I have willingly unplugged during holidays in the past, it was simply amazing. There are few times a year when I don’t read email and hardly use social media platforms, reducing all social stimuli to a minimum except for the ones of my immediate environment. Once the transition is done and I am sitting at a lake somewhere breathing the sun, it feels great – like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. It’s as if my outward senses are recovering. And yet these are connections I do treasure and maintain around the year, which is the conflicting part. How do these things fit together? What’s more real?

I think I need to get back to answering some emails.