Ask HN: What are some things you learnt from a game that changed your life?

Watching day9 explain Starcraft 2 build orders opened my eyes to the powers of recognizing and optimizing for constraints you cannot do anything about, as well as the importance of scouting (I.e. experimenting for the sake of learning), as well as how losing teaches you more than winning.

As a livelong gamer and lover of video- and boardgames I might have a point of wisdom to share here.

1. You can learn a lot about other people when you play with them.

I found that especially in cooperative titles like Pandemic a lot of the players personality comes to light. If I will ever be in a position to recruit people a round of pandemic with candidates might be one of the best things you can do to assess the following skills:

Communication Strategic Thinking Decisionmaking under Pressure Leadership Teamwork Shortterm vs Longterm Thinking

Also a person that you got to know as a shy and calm introvert might be the complete opposite in a competitive gaming situation, where he might continuously rage and will not stop complaining about everything, completely dropping a facade.

You will also notice people, that have a tendency to cheat or look for other shortcuts (finding shortcuts or "hacks" within the rules is fine and something that I value in other players). Situations where someone asks to take back a move after new information has been revealed, or tries to get additional information through illegal means, because the game is "too hard" or "it won't hurt" or "I will not change my decision based on that" are likely to do so in other situations as well. Especially if playing alone or feeling unwatched.

How people deal with wins and losses - big and small - obviously will tell you a lot as well.

2. You can have a perfect strategy, everything planned out and still lose.

This has been mentioned below and applies especially to games that have rng involved, e.g. Poker. Making the right decisions and losing shortterm, does not mean that your strategy is flawed.

The law of large numbers is at work.

3. Games are mostly about imposing arbitrary rules on a known situation. That's where a lot of the fun comes from.

You can apply the same mechanism in your daily life to make a chore or repetive tasks "interesting".

- Set a new highscore in doing the dishes with only one hand. - You are only allowed to change the plugs of your vaccum cleaner three times for the whole floor. - When cooking for the next week the temperature of your oven is limited to 100° Celsius. - Answer your emails for a day without using words that start with a vowel. - Try to rhyme every sentence that you speak.

Introducing such limits will improve your creativity and bring joy to mundane things.

4. Playing MtG did more for my vocabulary than all english classes I had in school.

5. Persistence is key to reach a goal.

I grew up with an Amiga 500 and a lot of the games that I loved had no save feature. Okay Boomer! When I finally got to a new boss on level 2 with three lives that's all there was. I had three attempts to learn what he does and depending on how difficult it was to get there I might have to replay the 1st and 2nd level again for some hours to get another shot at him. It was annoying, but it got me better and better and lead me to refine my strategies and value every resource I had.

This is a skill that I unfortunally lost over time. Pursuing goals is really hard for me knowadays and I often ponder if - as I still play a lot - the way that games have changed also changed my approach on other things. I find myself often looking for quick fixes - a youtube video on best strategies for a game, tactics for a specific boss. For me all that available information took away the need to really deeply dig into a game and get to know it inside out. And I think that is true for me on a professional level as well.

Games have cheat codes and bugs/glitches. There are players that choose to take advantage of those and create an unfair contest. There is basically nothing a legitimate player can do to stop it. This is true in real life such as in the justice system, business, etc.

When playing a game, no matter how good you think you are, there is always someone better. Even if you are at the top now, someone will eventually replace you. So too in life.

I think that you stretched the game analogy far beyond what reality allows for. Virtual avatars don't actually "need" anything. Sure, there are things you _want_ in the game. You won't freeze to death without clothing, you won't starve to death if you don't eat, and even if you did, you would just respawn.

I think UBI as a model sucks, for a bunch of reasons.

1. It allows people to do nothing. People who are able should work. People who can't, we can help. But it shouldn't be an abusable system where one can simply say "I can't work" and no questions are asked. Everybody in society can't just say "I don't want to work" -- everything would fall apart if we did that. In the interest of fairness, then, all who are able should contribute.

2. What do you do when someone blows their UBI on drugs or gambles it away? Do you just let them starve to death? Maybe they don't have a drug or gambling problem, but they just suck at managing money and routinely overextend themselves. How do you handle that? If your answer is "just give them more money", then we have a big problem where now anybody can game the system for as much money as they want. If your answer is "tough shit", I think you will miss some nuanced situations.

3. Do people with children get more? Can we put a cap on that, or do people just get to have as many children as they like, and everyone else has to pay? Kids in the US are already fairly heavily subsidized through tax breaks.

4. All the people who are doing the work to make UBI viable get nothing from it (sure they get a check, but that's just going to be some amount less than whatever extra they pay in tax to support the system). There's nobody there to ask questions and keep people honest. And yes, there is administrative overhead for social services you need to qualify for, but I'd argue that has its benefit in encouraging people to be productive members of society and not moochers.

I don't think UBI would result in mass unemployment but I do think we'd have a good number of people at the bottom doing absolutely nothing productive with their lives.

All that said, I do think that social services need an overhaul. I just don't think UBI is the way.

Woah. That one felt like reading Sun Tzu for chess! Know of any more basic theory like this ?