Back to the Land of the Living - Sort Of

Geez! Over 52,000 words. I'm quite proud of this mangled little First Draft That Could.

Unfortunately, it's not back to normal life for me just yet. My promotion at work means that I'll have a lot less time to game and blog - but perversely, a lot more money to buy games with. As they say, youth is wasted on the young . . .

In my mad sprint for the finish, I fell behind at work, so I'll be spending the next week or two catching back up. Posting will be slow for the rest of the month, but I'm looking forward to a fresh start in the New Year.

Special thanks to Syp over at Bio Break for bringing this program to my attention. It ended up meaning a lot to me.


PS: Ixo, I'll get on Wave [OF THE FUTURE!] this weekend.

NaNoWriMo

Blogging will be a little sparse this month, since I am participating in National Novel Writing Month throughout November. The goal is to complete a work of fiction totalling at least 50,000 words, which means about 1,700 a day (if you don't skip any days). It's a daunting task, and I embark on it with a mixture of excitement and EXTREME FEAR. But so far it's going OK. I'm finally fleshing out an idea I've had knocking around in my head for about two years, but never took the time to get started. I don't really have high expectations for my work, but hopefully it won't suck too royally. I'm hoping this will be a transformative trial for me, kind of like what I hear training for a marathon is like, or what the last few weeks leading up to my black belt test was like, or what finishing my master's thesis under a tight deadline was like. I'm psyched.

Thanks to Syp over at Bio Break for bringing this event to my attention!

You can follow my progress here, if you are so inclined. Right now, I'm ahead of the basic wordcount requirement, but I seriously doubt I'll be able to keep a lead.

Tobold and the "Fun" Fallacy

Let me start out by saying I love Tobold's blog. I've been reading it daily for years now. It's one of the things that inspired me to start blogging in the first place. I find his analysis to be intelligent and well-thought-out in general, even when I disagree with him.

But wow, do I disagree with what he posted today. And I don't think he's really thought his opinion out to it's ultimate conclusion.


In short (and I can't do it justice here, just go read it), he posits that reading raid strategies, watching raid videos, and learning about your class outside of game on sites like Elitist Jerks and reading guides on how to play: those things are not "fun". He cites Raph Koster's Theory of Fun to support his statement, noting that "the fun of playing a game comes from the learning experience you have while experimenting with the game." According to Tobold, people who do this outside research are "optimizing the fun out" of the game and "games aren't meant to be played this way" [emphasis mine]


I think Tobold is misapplying the concept from Koster's book, and more to the point has a bit of tunnel vision on this subject.

In essence: just because Tobold finds one style of play "fun" doesn't meant that other people aren't having "fun" by playing a different way, nor does it meant they are playing wrong (against the way things are "meant" to be played). Just because they come to a game with a wealth of outside knowledge does not mean that there is not more "fun learning" to be had from the game.

I'm guessing that Tobold has encountered some rude, arrogant people in his raiding experience lately, because he likens "expecting the rest of the raid to study up on how to play their character and watch raid videos" to "trying to avoid talking to other players". Every member of my guild comes prepared and yet one of our chief joys is all of the interaction we have with each other, talking to each other on vent and in-game chat. We just spend that time having fun and talking about advanced strategy and our personal lives (I'd argue these are much richer topics than basics on how to play your class or guesses on how to deal with basic bosses), rather than spending all of that time playing teacher to people who don't feel like looking things up for themselves. Tobold doesn't seem to realize that teaching other people the basics of how to play is work. And we don't log in so that we can do a job to benefit someone else who, again, isn't putting out the effort themselves. Believe it or not, we can interact with each other about things other than the basics that one can look up on EJ or stratfu. And for the record, myself and my guildies do often help each other improve our basic games, and we have members who have been tutored instead of being kicked.

In fact, those sites are simply tools. They can't make you good. You still have to execute the plans and the guides, and tailor them to your own situation. You still have to notice and avoid the void zones and lava waves, you still have to be able to control your aggro once you know how to do it, and you still have to adapt your rotation to different situations even after you've used the basic EJ class guide as a starting point. It's not like anyone expects anyone else to just mechanically copy a guide, and in fact rote repetition doesn't work. How can I read the same EJ guide as everyone else, and then do 1k more dps than them in similar gear? It must be because I'm mindlessly copying what I read, I guess?

The main thing I get out of EJ is that someone else better at math than me did all the math for me. When I sit at the talent select window, I submit it's more fun to make the decision "I want to take the talent that gives me the most return in my single-target dps over my aoe" or something like that, and less fun to sit there doing the math to figure out which talent is mathematically better than another all on my own. Then I use that as a starting point to freestyle and improvise my own decisions in new situations, and to enjoy optimizing in bread and butter situations: making my execution better.

Because for me, the main fun of this game is excelling. I don't mean just "beating bosses". I mean being the best at my job that I possibly can. At getting my rotation tighter or my threat higher every single attempt. Getting hit by fewer lava waves every attempt. Pushing myself to the limit of what I can do, and not just on my own in my insular world, but doing the best I can as part of a team. Optimizing how we work together, and getting our communication to its most efficient and effective point. This is fun and social at the same time, even though we look up boss videos and EJ guides! Tobold doesn't seem to think that's possible, because his way to have fun, his type of learning (the basics) is the only type of fun learning their is in the game. The type of learning we do either doesn't exist in Tobold's head, or I guess isn't "fun" for some reason.

Raid videos are a slightly different story. We plan to go into Ulduar cold, but that doesn't mean we think going in there having already researched the strategies is morally reprehensible. We just all agreed that that is what we would all find more fun. If the people Tobold plays with don't find the same things fun as he does, THEN WHY IS HE PLAYING WITH THEM? In my opinion, he should find some other people who like going in without strategies, and raid with those people instead of complaining about how unfair it is that everyone else doesn't want to play the game exactly the way he wants to.

In the end, WoW is not a terribly deep game. If the "fun" for you is figuring out the basic class and boss strategies by trial-and-error, it might take you a long time to attempt everything, but you actually gain very little in the end, because there frankly isn't that much substance there to begin with. If that's what the game is for you, you might as well quit as soon as you know your class well enough to beat every boss once, even if it's just barely. However, the game has unprecedented breadth, and that means there is room for everyone to play the way they want to. The fun for me is challenging myself to beat the boss faster and better, and there is room for both of us, just probably not in the same raid group. :)

There's also the matter of information disparity and the conflict inherent in that. Your guild is asking for trouble if every new member must use trial-and-error to figure out everything for themselves. That means that no matter how good you get, you'd always have to drag people who don't even have a basic clue. And you'd have to pay your repair bills for the wipes incurred while they try to figure out the boss.

In fact, how is such a system sustainable? Once your first group of raiders learns a boss, are they allowed to give the strategy to others in the guild? Or does every new member have to figure it out themselves? If you give them the strat, then guess what? All you are doing is shifting the burden of explaining the fight to the raid leader. When the player could just as easily go learn it themselves rather than burdening someone else, or making 24 others wait for him or her. It doesn't make sense to me.

Being willing to read EJ and watch videos on your own also has the benefit of proving to the raid group that you are willing to put in effort yourself instead of being dragged as a leech. You are taking responsibility for yourself instead of insisting that the more experienced raiders carry the burden for you. And you are showing respect for the fact that 24 other people are taking some of their few leisure gaming hours to do this activity with you. Don't waste their time. Just leave the guild and find a guild that has the same standards you do.


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Tobold also seems confused about what people mean when they say "WoW is too easy", since he sees that statement as a paradox to the claim that players "need to study hard to succeed," which he sees as implied whenever a raid leader demands EJ research or encounter videos. I don't think it is necessarily implied. I also would replace "succeed" with "excel", which are two very different things. By "succeed", Tobold seems to mean "down the boss at all, no matter how sloppy" (making that assumption is the only way I can see the paradox he sees)

When I say WoW is "easy", I mean the bosses are easy to beat, and it is too easy to get the absolute best gear (i.e. when you see someone in Best-in-Slot gear, it's equally likely that they are a terribad leaching scrub as it is that they are an elite expert player). But optimizing my own play and my teamwork with my guild is not "easy" - it's the primary fun challenge in the game for me. Making the bosses harder would simply add another layer of challenge on there for me beyond what I have already, and I would like to have that.

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Tobold is such a reasoned and thoughtful individual that I would ascribe an oversight like this to something getting in the way of his intellect. In my experience, when a smart person says something that ignores certain aspects of the issue, it's because they have an emotional investment in reaching a certain conclusion, and are trying to shoehorn a rational argument into supporting the thesis they have already decided on. God knows I've been there.

It sounds like Tobold resents (probably rightfully) when people tell him and his friends they aren't performing well enough, and he personally doesn't enjoy reading strats ahead of time or having to learn about his class outside the game. He doesn't like that these things have become the social norm in his social ingroup. Other people are forcing the bar to be raised to a place he doesn't want to go; it's a lot like trying to compete for the home-run record without using steroids: everyone else is using them, so now you have to use them to keep up even if you don't want to. This example isn't perfect, because steroids break the agreed-upon rules of the game, and WoW strategy videos don't. But you get what I'm going for: being forced by those around you to escalate to places you don't want to go.

It reminds me of Sirlin's ideas about how in competitive gaming, winners play the actual game by its actual rules, and scrubs are limited by their own made-up rules about what is "fair" and what is "cheap". They try to reshape the game into what is most fun for them, and you simply can't do that in a multiplayer game, as much as you might insist that other people play the way you think is fun. Tobold isn't a scrub, because this isn't a competitive game. He just has a completely valid alternative preference for what is "fun" to him. But the part of the analogy that holds is that people who limit themselves to their own made-up rules don't get to experience the higher-level fun of the "true" game. Expert chess players or Street Fighters or Starcraft players are playing the game on a different level than the guy who picked up the box at Wal-Mart an hour ago. But that guy is going to reach that higher-level, "actual" game much more quickly by reading a strategy guide and then practicing with the added knowledge than he is by playing thousands of games to try to work out what units to make. Again, this analogy isn't perfect, but I'm not an analogyologist, so give me a break.

What I'm trying to get across here is that Tobold and I are choosing to play a different game. We each have our own set of made-up structures based around what we find fun. I think we both have equally valid opinions. I don't think either of us should be acting like we have moral superiority for which one we choose. I don't think my game is "higher-level" (despite my strained analogy above), nor that Tobold is a "scrub". He just enjoys different things than I do, and that's fine.

Basically, he seems to be mistaking his own feeling-based opinion for a Categorical Imperative. He doesn't find the pre-research fun, he prefers the social aspects of raids, and for him the game is figuring out the boss and figuring out the class on your own, through experimenting and group discussion. I don't see anything wrong with this, it's just not the way I enjoy playing. But more power to him to enjoy this himself. I just find it . . . inconsistent when he condemns others ("this is really a poor attitude") for finding fun in a different way than him, as though they are perpetrating some ethical failing. This is not an issue of ethics, or Right and Wrong. In the case of "what do you find fun", there is no "poor attitude" and "good attitude". Just because Tobold thinks this is the right way to have fun doesn't make other ways to have fun morally inferior, and I think in his intellect, he realizes this.

I'd like to close by pointing out something good from Tobold: I think he makes an excellent point in the comments section when he says,

"I think a good raid leader and the officers of a guild should discuss with players that don't perform well, and give them individual pointers on how to improve performance, based on Recount stats, not just "go and read up somewhere and come back when you do 3K dps". I think a raid should spend some time discussing strategy before a new boss fight, should spend some time discussing what exactly went wrong after a wipe, and should discuss how to do better, not just send people to some boss strategy site or to YouTube."

I still think you are awesome even though I disagree with you Tobold, keep up the great work on your blog!

I've decided to quit WoW

Instead of WoW, I'm going to play Darkfall exclusively. I just felt that my leisure time wasn't filled with enough real consequences.

I especially love to play the Corpse Run Minigame that shipped with Darkfall as an added bonus. At first, I just logged in, got killed on purpose, then spent the rest of my night in enjoying the cerebral challenge of traveling unarmed back to my corpse while trying not to get re-killed by other people who hadn't lost all of their armor or weapons. No wussy "rematches" in this game, no sir!

A few days later, I figured out that I needed to play with other people to reach more advanced corpse-run scenarios, including the 60-man Corpse Run Raids advertised on the game's website. I joined a guild, and now instead of logging in and playing Corpse Run, I log in and play the other exciting mini-game Wait For Rest of Team So I Don't Get Raped By Another Roaming Gang with One More Person In It.

At least in Darkfall, when I get killed, I can be confident that the other person was more skilled than me and I clearly deserved whatever pounding I got for being a noob. One of my favorite parts of the game is how, when I get jumped by 8 other guys and then they repeatedly teabag me as I try to recover my corpse naked and weaponless, I know I really deserved it for being stupid enough to be lower level, or stupid enough to not bring 9 guys with me, or just for being a really bad player. And that's what my leisure time is really about: getting the punishment I deserve for being a noob, or meting out that punishment to others who are bigger noobs than me.

Now excuse me, I need to crouch-walk into this wall to max out both my Crouching and Walking skill while waiting in line for the outhouse, where I'll be able to work on the coveted Shitting and Wiping skills. Oh hey, you dropped a coin. I would pick it up for you, but I haven't worked enough on my Bending Over skill yet. I guess I'd better play some more Corpse Run, huh?

Sure, it's not perfect over here either, but Darkfall has one feature I like that WoW doesn't have, so that makes it automatically better than WoW in every way and you are a stupid genital-less noob cock-wrangler for liking WoW.

What was that? You say you are going to spend the hour I'm Corpse Running tonight running an entire beautiful instance full of cool-looking loot you get to keep, then maybe do some PvP where you get to test your skills over and over against opponents instead of losing once and then being unable to fight for the rest of the evening? And in your game there's a variety of decently-balanced classes, instead of a million identical earth magic and polearm users?

Wow, you are a wuss. Go have fun in your sissy-game for sissies, you big sissy. Talk to me when you grow some balls.

Sixth Screenshot

I've been tagged by Ixo to go into my WoW screenshot folder and post the 6th screenshot in there. A few weeks ago I cleared up some hard drive space by moving my old screenshots to my external drive, so there wasn't much in there. Here's #6 (names edited out to protect the innocent):



That's my female Tauren DK with hunter, mage and warlock guildies downing good 'ole Attunmen in Karazhan for a shot at the mount. We did it with 4 people and no healer. I guess we looked like level skull to him.

That evening was a blast, just messing around and tearing through the old content. We added a druid healer and went and killed Nightbane to clear out someone's quest log. In order to get up there, we had to aoe down Moroes (lol!), who started out as such a cockblock back in the day in our level 70 greens/blues.

Ixo's post on memories from screenshots prompted me to post a few more of my own favorite shots.

In direct response to Ixo's 100 roll on DST:



I swear to god I made those edits in red text back when I first got the screenshot, before I saw Ixo's screenie. This is a shot of the one single Amani War Bear mount my guild earned for completing the ZA timed run. After weeks of practice, we did it at the last possible second: right before patch 3.0 hit and removed the mount reward. This is my proudest moment in TBC because we did it without anyone in the raid wearing a single piece of tier 6 gear that drops from BT or Hyjal. At this point, the only tier 6 our guild had done was 1 kill of the first boss in MH. We barely even had tier 5 gear. Basically just Kara, ZA, and badge gear, and we actually completed the timed run, a feat normally reserved for guilds in full tier 6. It was a great moment for us, made better by "R", our main healer, winning the roll with a 100. Also note: someone else rolled a 99. Ouch.



And this final picture is a more recent memory of the most hilarious achievement I've ever achieved. As you can see below, we downed KT and go the achievement Just Can't Get Enough (kil 18 Aboms during KT fight) with only 3 people (all DPS, btw) left alive at the end of the fight. We could not stop laughing in vent for a good 10 minutes.


We had the worst possible luck with ice blocks. I had brought in my DK alt to tank because our MT kept disconnecting. Just after I picked up the adds, I was ice blocked. Being undergeared and under heavy attack, I died in the ice block. The adds destroyed 2 healers and a dps before they were taunted off by the main tank, who was now tanking all 3 mobs with only one healer remaining. The healer was so taxed that we lost another dps to aoe. Then, the one remaining person in the raid with healing spells got ice blocked and died. The tank held on a few more seconds, buying the remaining 3 dps enough time to finish him off.



So yeah, for me, screenshots from WoW can be just as full of real memories of times with real people as any photograph.

Also, though I assume you don't read my blog (I'll leave a message in your comments), I tag Coriel of Blessing of Kings for being one of my favorite WoW blogs, and for coming from my old server, Skylawl.

Battlestar Galactica's Ending: Get Ready to Be "Soprano'd"

SPOILER ALERT: I'll be discussing herein the finale of the Sopranos (aired 2 years ago) as well as all aired episodes of Battlestar Galactica. However, I have no knowledge of future episodes, so there are no real "spoilers" here if you up-to-date on BSG.

Is it a coincidence that Battlestar Creator Ron Moore's final SciFi Channel blog post praises the (in)famously ambiguous ending of The Sopranos? You know, the one where the screen faded to white just before the climactic moment?

Is it a coincidence that it was posted almost 2 years ago, around the time that the BSG writing staff were likely breaking what would become the final season of the show?

I'm afraid it might not be a coincidence.

But much like recent BSG episodes: before I explain anything, I have to get you up-to-speed.

As of the airing of Friday's episode "Someone to Watch Over Me", there are only 3 episodes (a total of 4 hours of TV with the 2-hour finale) left. And ever since the end of the mutiny and the infodump of Final Five backstory, almost nothing has happened to get us any closer to a discernible resolution of the story. Don't get me wrong, events have occurred. It's just that, rather than approaching some type of stable state that gives closure to the story, we are running out of story time without getting any closer to finding a new home planet or setting up any permanent arrangement for the remaining humans/cylons. The Galactica, one of Bill Adama's two ailing Old Girls, is on the brink of collapse, while his other Old Girl, Rosslyn, has literally collapsed (via Deus Ex Angina). Pretty soon they are going to run out of ships to put the people on, and supplies to feed them with, and there don't seem to be any habitable planets in sight. And we can all agree it would come off as pretty contrived (and a disservice to the previous accomplishments of the show) if Galactica's last desperate jump just so happens to land them in orbit around a pretty green and blue sphere embraced by an oxygen-rich aura.

That's why these last two episodes since the backstory infodump have been so frustrating. They don't seem to be bringing us any closer to the end. This show has earned enough faith from me that I can tolerate having the carrot of the mythology withheld. I believe the writers when they say that these two episodes are basically key set-ups to give emotional resonance to the upcoming action and big reveals. I'm just holding my breath to see the ending, so I can view this season and the show as a whole, and go back and actually try to appreciate them for the character-focused, emotionally-driven pieces of drama that they are clearly meant to be. Right now I can't evaluate them fairly, because I want them all to seem a little more . . . climactic. I mean, we have someone on the ship (Ellen) who knows a lot of stuff that I as a viewer would desperately like to know, and I'd imagine everyone in the fleet would be dying to know. And yet she hasn't explained a thing beyond what was revealed a few episodes back. Her mumness seems contrived, as though it's a failure on the part of the writers to construct the story in such a way that she doesn't need to keep secrets.

But the reason I'm geniunely concerned about the slow pace of recent episodes, and the lack of any new "real answers", is that I'm starting to get the feeling that we aren't going to really get the answers.

As I've said in the past, I suspect that Daniel, the "missing" Cylon model, has been pulling the strings behind the scenes, even beyond Caville's level, from the Final Five's ship The Colony. He's been creating seemingly coincidental and miraculous events and manipulating people via the "Head Chip Angels" (such as the Six Baltar has been hallucinating since the beginning).

But putting together the lack of reveals in recent episodes along with Moore's love of ambiguity and shades of grey (which has served this show well in the past), I start to think that we aren't going to find out for sure if Daniel was pulling the strings. I think we'll find out what strings were pulled and when, but I'm becoming increasingly convinced that Moore is going to want to leave it up to us to decide who we think was pulling them. Was it some neatly explanable physical entity? Or was it some omnipotent One True God. I don't think he's going to tell us the answer.

I see further support in the seemingly ham-fisted way that the "reveal" at the end of the most recent episode was handled, when Starbuck realizes that the man she is playing the piano with is nothing but her own imagined/projected representation of her father. Ever since Daniel's existence was revealed in "No Exit" everyone's suspected that he's Starbuck's father. We really didn't need more clues, like that her father's name starts with D or that he apparently wrote (or at least taught her) "All Along the Watchtower", the song that re-awakened the Final Four at the end of last season. It makes me think that such a big deal was made out of these clues because they are the only clues we are ever going to get. Moore and Co. are going to leave us with enough clues to form our own answers, or, if we prefer, we can choose to think that it was all "gods doing" or whatever. We are never going to formally meet Daniel, and never have anyone sit down like they did in "No Exit" and just explain to us what the frak is going on. We'll be expected to infer from this past episode that Daniel is her father (or not) without ever being explicitly told by the show.

That doesn't mean I think we'll be left fully in limbo, or even without a satisfying resolution and completion to the series. I'm 100% positive every character will be given a weighty emotional conclusion to this part of their stories (though the survivors will be left to continue the rest of the story of their lives, this chapter of their lives will at least be wrapped up in an emotionally satisfying way). I think we'll get a good idea of what their futures will look like, whether they be on a new planet, on an integrated Basestar, or with the final destruction of the human race (only living on in the Hera line of hybrids). And we'll get a resolution to the core conflicts of the show, with some sort of decisive confrontation with Caville and his faction of remaining Cylons and some sort of explanation of the unexplained loose ends, such as where the Head Chip Angels come from, etc. But we might not get the full reveal we are looking for, because the writers want to leave the themes open to interpretation by the viewer.

I sincerely hope this is not the case because I'm so eager to get fully fleshed-out explanations of the "lore". But at the same time, maybe I'm the one who's wrong . . . so far the embrace of ambiguity has been key to elevating this show above the Stargates and Treks of the world.

We'll know in just 3 weeks.

No blog post today

I have a RL job, and I care more about it than I care about you. Today I have to concentrate on that, so no content for you.

Expect a flood of fun this week though, as the PTR goes up and we find out exactly what 3.1 is going to look like. I got into the front of the character copy qeue, so if all goes well I'll be giving you a front-road seat for all the action on the PTR.

Friday Laziness: Protector

This Friday's Laziness is brought to you by Protector, the incredibly addictive flash game you can play in your browser. I have now verified that it is entirely possible to spend all of one's regularly scheduled blogging time playing this game. I do this research for you, people!

Play the most updated version, subtitled Reclaiming the Throne, here.

It's a super-addictive, extremely deep tower-defense style game in a fantasy setting. Give it a try, unless you value being productive.

Friday Games That Are Metal: FF7

Fact: Final Fantasy 7 is the most metal game ever made.

Sure, there had been metal games before, and there have been metal games since. But none can compare to this magnum opus of metallity. As Wayne would say, it's intensity in ten cities. It can wail.

While Super Mario 64 brought us into the world of 3-D gameplay, Final Fantasy 7 brought 2-D gameplay into 3-D, and took game appearance and production values into a new, mind-bending realm that we'd never seen before. 3-D full-motion video cutscenes! 3-D battle sequences! WTF is a polygon!?!

The gameplay didn't do anything that couldn't have been pulled off in FF6's 2-D SNES engine. But it just looked so good. And what did Square choose to do with all of that production value? Bring to life the most metal world you've ever seen. Here, in no particular order, is why FF7 is the most metal game ever created:


1) The hero and villain have impossibly large swords. easily twice the size of their own bodies.

2) The hair. Many games have tried, but none have succeeded in creating better hair than Cloud's. It was scientifically formulated out of pure Cool Molecules.

3) Sephiroth looks like he's from a hair metal band, only more androgenous

4) Everyone is wearing tight leather outfits with lots of zippers

5) The game takes place in a dystopian steampunk future where the main villain is an evil corporation that is literally sucking the life force out of the earth. Again, a smaller entity doing the right thing and combating a much larger evil has a totally metal, revolutionist slant to it that I can't help but be charmed by.

5a) The entire setting. Swords and guns coexist. A city made of metal plates. It's just metal.

6) That city is actually a giant gun.

7) The protagonist's best friend has a gatling gun for a hand.

8) The hero uses his giant sword to battle hordes of soldiers while riding a motorcyle at top speed down a highway.

9) He follows this up by demonstrating his prowess as a master Xtreme snowboarder

9) One of the hero's other friends can transform into Frankenstein, a Werewolf, and a Demon.

10) At the end of the game, the villain uses an attack that shoots a giant laser beam through every single planet in the entire solar system, obliterating them.

10a) This planet-vaporaizing laser beam barely hurts your party.

11) And finally and most decisively, the music ROCKS. It sounds like it was written on electric guitar. Battles are conducted to headbanging riffs.



And this is just a partial list I came up with off the top of my head in the past ten minutes.

What, you expect me to put actual work into a post for Friday Laziness?

Don't bother talking about politics in game...

...and certainly, under no circumstances, ever talk about politics on your blog, website, or podcast that is not specifically about politics!

I can't think of anything but American politics today (which is why you are getting this post instead of a gaming post), but I certainly am not going to even begin to give you even a tiny peek at what my positions might be.

Do not talk about politics with your guild. In, fact I would go so far as to warn other people to stop talking about politics if they bring it up.

Why? Because despite the fact that last night each presidential candidate encouraged reconciliation and unity in their respective speeches, it is still an incredibly divisive topic in America. It offers no benefit. You will never convince someone else to change their positions because of something you said in trade chat or even your guild's Ventrillo server. Especially if what you say is a talking point your opponents have already heard and dismissed from a more authoritative source than yourself. You will never make a new friend by expressing your political opinions. Anybody you agree strongly with is likely to already be your friend anyway for other reasons. So there is no actual benefit to making political statements in-game or even on your blog of podcast. It will never help you.

But it can and will hurt you. You immediately alienate those who disagree with you. You make it more difficult for even those that liked you before to stomach you now that they know you have such diametrically opposed beliefs. If you blog or podcast, you are willingly throwing away half of your audience.

And for what? So you can feel good about stating your opinions and pretending they matter to others? Deluding yourself into thinking you will sway them, or do anything other than drive them away?

As a quick example: I used to love listening to the podcast Taverncast. For a long while they were a WoW-focused podcast. But the cast all stopped playing the game, and switched over to a new, more free-floating format after a long hiatus. In the first episode of this new format, they somehow came to the topic of Universal Health Care. One of the members of the cast expressed a strong opinion that was the exact opposite of a very strong opinion I held. Hearing this person spout an opinion clearly based on misinformation and obvious biases rather than facts and logic made me angry. I wanted to argue with them, show them how they were wrong, etc. The opinion was, to me, so downright imbecilic that I couldn't respect that person anymore. I used to find them at least mildly entertaining, but I could no longer listen to content from someone who was so wrong about this issue. I could no longer be entertained by this person. I never listened to their podcast again. I know for a fact that I am not the only person who reacted this way.

For another example, look at the reaction to Tobold's recent post urging people to vote. You would have to try really hard to find anything clearly partisan in his statement. But he was eviscerated none the less.

You can express your opinion if you want. I'm not trying to supress anyone's freedom of speech. All I'm saying is that you may want to look at the pros/cons of expressing your political opinion in a non-political context. You may end up making a decision to keep your mouth shut that ends up benefiting you in the end.

Get over yourself. I understand the impulse to talk about politics. But don't do it. You have nothing to gain, and stand to lose a lot.