Hearthstone and real life

As I've mentioned in a couple of posts before this, I've been spending some serious time on hearthstone. I've definitely spent several hundred (and possibly 1000+ ?) hours on the game itself as well as on youtube videos, livestreams on twitch etc. Videos I follow are either those of players just casually playing the game, rantings about the game, ideas about the game or tournaments and such.

For the uninitiated, Hearthstone is  free to play Collectible Card Game (CCG) which has cards borrowed from Warcraft lore. This means that cards are basically creatures from warcraft such as murlocs or ghouls or warleaders or whatever and have different characteristics and strengths. Each player plays a card per turn and waits for the other player to play after that. The game ends when these cards eventually kill the opponent (represented by a hero- there are 9 heroes to choose from). This is a very simplified version of a game with infinite complexity.

In a card game you wouldn't expect players to be consistently better at the game than others. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, unlike and FPS of a real time strategy game there is a lot more luck involved in a card game. There's the fact that you may not draw the right cards at the right time in a game. On top of that, there's a certain degree of randomness in the cards themselves. For example a card called the 'Mad bomber' deals 3 points of damage split between ALL characters and this include your own minions which were played previously and your own hero- and thus can be in certain situations very bad or very good. Several other cards have such random effects. On top of that, there's the fact that your opponent may have the exact counter to your own cards at times and at times they may not have it.

It has its advantages and disadvantages- a game like DotA or LoL requires a great level of skill and experience to eventually learn. This naturally reduces the number of newcomers, since they may not want to dedicate a major part of their lives learning to play a game. Of course, they may not all want to beat professionals, but a game in which the better player wins a high % of the time (like say chess) stops being fun after a certain point. It is absolutely impossible for a newcomer to beat a professional at DotA, Counterstrike, FIFA or any such competitive game. However in the case of hearthstone- while the odds may be remote, it is very much possible because of the randomness. Hearthstone is VERY easy to learn and even more difficult to master. It is worth mentioning however, that Hearthstone does have a very vibrant competitive scene in spite of all this with several dozens of dedicated professional gaming teams forming teams for Hearthstone. Prizes for tourneys range from a few thousand dollars at small tourneys to quarter a million dollars at the annual tourney at Blizzcon.

So why exactly is it more difficult to master? In a game like counterstrike, experience of playing the game even against the AI  bots (computer) is good enough to make you a half decent player. A large part of the skill in the game is the reflexes and knowing the map properly. To become competent at the next level, you would need to play with human beings a lot. This allows you to know what kind of strategies human players generally use, so that you can predict and counter such play. And of course to reach the next level, you will have to play with the best. In hearthstone, you would think that knowing all the cards in the game and knowing all the rules of the game etc. in a detailed way would take you a long way. After all, there are no reflexes involved in a card game, since it's turn based anyway. However, that is not the case at all.

In a game such as hearthstone, knowing the cards(there are a few hundred cards and many of them are specific to classes- knowing a card means knowing the mana cost to play it, the stats of the card/the effects etc.) in the game and the rules of the game is a very basic requirement. A more advanced requirement is to know which cards are good and which cards are bad. Which classes of characters are good and which classes of characters are bad.But then since the game is mostly balanced with respect to classes, how can there be good cards or bad cards or good classes or bad classes? Since this whole piece I've written so far sounds more like a rant than anything else, let me try and bulletise stuff from now. So, the reasons why Hearthstone is easy to learn but difficult to master - much like life is for human beings (it's easy to live a life, but to be really good at it is somewhat difficult and requires similar skills as Hearthstone does- which might be the reason why this game is so popular in spite of being this online card game. And while there is a developer in Hearthstone who balances different card powers and hero skills and so on to ensure that the game is fair, in real life there are markets who do the same)-

1.  The skilled do not always prevail (as already explained). This happens a lot in real life where dumb luck can at times make you or break you. But overall, life and Hearthstone are both somewhat fair.
2.  Knowing theories does not make you good. You have to have a lot of practice and experience. In real life, older men tend to be wiser and work experience counts for a lot in the corporate world. This highlights the difference between knowing and doing. This applies to other competitive games as well, equally.
3. Having experience and knowing theories still wont make you the best in the world. You have to interact with the best in the world on a regular basis if you are to have a chance of remaining as among the best. In Hearthstone, the top players- almost all of them have clans which meet everyday and dicuss strategies. They discuss about the latest changes to the game, the most common classes and cards being played (so as to play cards and classses which counter the popular trend) and to ideate new strategies in general. The same can be seen in almost all industries where the top corporates need to interact with each other to remain relevant. This factor isn't as relevant in other competitive games. The point highlights the importance of BEING and not just knowing and doing.
4. Intelligence is extremely important for you to be good at it. The most important thing about intelligence is that it is required for better assimilation of experience. What this means is that a player with 1 year experience but higher intelligence can be better than a player with 2 years experience. But a player with 1 month experience cannot be better than either of them. This is kind of similar to real life and the corporate world. After a certain period of experience, it stops mattering of course. When you start off, it isn't very relevant and just copying others and practicing a lot will do, but if you've to be one of the best, it is impossible unless you are extremely intelligent. Of course there might be a subjectivity when it comes to deciding who really is the best- in Hearthstone, the best players in my opinion do extremely well in tournaments and in addition to this create their own decks and strategies. In real life, this would be a successful entrepreneur who would be an innovator as well and not just a guy who is good at implementing an idea.

Having a game based out of Warcraft lore does help in making a game popular, but the similarities to real life are in my opinion what really make the game of Hearthstone. I've tried to summarise my theories about the game here and I've obviously missed out on a few points as well as proofs for justifying the similarities to life. In any case, apart from the huuge number of hours I played the game, I've seen streams of Trump, Kripparian, NoxiousGLHF, Trolden, Hafu, Amaz etc. with around 100+ videos each and in addition to that tournaments from ESGNTV which kind of pioneered competitive Hearthstone,.. to the Blizzcon European Union Qualifiers which got over recently. So I hope that there's enough credibility to all the stuff above!

Selfish is sexy

It's no secret that selfish assholes are considered sexy by the opposite sex. Of course, the phrase 'selfish asshole' has too negative of a connotation for anyone to agree to the previous statement, but the point still stands. It cannot be generalised but in the case of most people, selfishness is considered sexy. Though they may not even know it. People fall in love with more reasonable folks as well since it may not practical to be a relationship with an a selfish prick, but the fantasies are mostly about them.

From an evolutionary point of view, this happens since people who care about themselves can actually provide things for the family. A saint who gives away all his belongings will not have any for his wife and kids. You need a little bit of selfishness to provide for your family. In a way, you are taking from the society and giving to yourself and to the rest of your family. People who are capable of doing this are naturally found attractive by us.

Now I do not imply by this that I'm into selfish females. In fact I cannot stand them at all- though the human instinct inside me tries to make me like them.

Now, you do need the intelligence, personality (good looks help as well) etc. to carry off your selfishness. So don't try to be an asshole from tomorrow and expect to get hitched :P

At the other end of the spectrum, people who are too unselfish are considered weird. This is since others tend to be either uncomfortable with your high level of generosity that makes them feel bad about themselves, or since they may consider such levels of unselfishness as fake. So it's probably safer to try and err on the side of more selfishness than the side of less selfishness.

In addition to all of these reasons to be that little bit more selfish, there's the fact that selfish people who have the adequate capability and intelligence to get things done tend to be happier. By capability and intelligence, I'm talking about a minimum level of common sense and a sense of motivation. Selfish dudes and dudettes tend to be unhappy in the short run since they may tend to get jealous etc. about others, and try to get everything for themselves, but in the long run they do tend to achieve more. And this happiness in the long run (referred to as 'purpose' by me in my previous posts) is much more fulfilling than the short term happiness. It's a little bit like investing your short term happiness for returns (of happiness) in the long run.

Non-monetary costs of being an asshole

Ok so after a long time, another post has come. Since I've started work, there will be much less gaming and a lot more general philosophy-cum-psychology related stuff. Hearthstone is pretty much the only game I play now. And it's kind of sad that there aren't any really any communities for hearthstone in India.

Anyway, since it's been a long time, there are a LOT of philosophies which have come into my weird brain but haven't been spewed out onto this space. This time, I'll write about the experiences I've had with rickshaw-wallas and cab drivers across different cities. While places like Agra and Gurgaon have the worst auto drivers who try to over-change you pretty much 90% of the time, Bombay has a much nicer bunch of cab drivers who overcharge you only around 10% of the time. It's kind of obvious that if the autodriver/cab driver (hereafter referred to as 'driver') asks you for an amount that is greater than what was initially agreed upon/is more than the meter fare/is just unfair given the distance etc., he opens himself to the opportunity to getting more money. Now, are there any dowsides from a driver's perspective to being an asshole and being unreasonable? If you think about it, suppose the meter shows Rs.100 and he asks for 150, there aren't many instances where you would pay him less than 100 just because he asked for more. Even if you did, it's not as if he would settle for it.

The payoff of asking for more is thus unsymmetrical. One one side you may get some extra money, and on the other side you lose nothing. So why don't all drivers do it then?

The answer possibly lies in the fact that maximising monetary gain isn't the objective of the driver. the passenger might engage in a verbal fight with the driver and as a human being, this expected value of emotional cost(probability of passenger yelling*emotional loss due to yelling) might be much higher than the expected monetary gain due to asking (average monetary gain from asking for more*probability of the passenger agreeing to pay more). Now, the probabilities would change of course depending on the passenger type. Probability of the passenger agreeing to pay more would increase if he/she is an outsider and has no clue about the local rates and so on. Expereinced drivers ask for higher rates from these folks.

Now, some people are just plain assholes at heart and thus don't give a shit if the passenger gets into a verbal (or even physical?!) fight with them. These people consistently ask for unreasonable fares and thus earn more. Just another instance where assholes earn more money.

To end, I would like to thank those passengers from Bombay(and other places) who have yelled at the cab drivers for demanding unreasonable fares, and thus increased the drivers' expected cost of asking more. It is mostly because of them that we can travel is peace in these places. Adios, and... keep yelling.