(no subject)
I figure I should explain where I was coming from for that poll about skill, since it kind of needs a little more explanation than that. As a child, I believed that everybody had _something_ that they were best in the world at- some talent that made them _them_, regardless of how stupid or useless it might be. If nothing else, they're the best at being _them_, right? Nobody can outdo you being you. But that's a boring kind of qualifier, and measuring ability of less vague things is much more interesting.
One of the things that has fascinated me all my life is my ability to play video games, and particularly my ability to play video games I've never played before. The fact that there is some general skillset or ability that applies across all (or at least a majority) of video games amazes me.
Then I met regisman at college and discovered that other people existed with this sort of ability as well. We'd have lots of fun with the MAME emulator in our dorm lounge- Marty'd put a game on for a week, and regisman would get the first high score, I'd top him, he'd top me, I'd top him, and we'd continue for a few days until we'd both figured out how to play the game and either 1) one of our natural preferences would show up and we'd claim the high score that wouldn't be beaten or 2) some other person in the dorm discovered they were really good at it too. #1 happened more often than not.
We'd also determined that there were specific video games that either of us were better at. regisman has Dr. Mario pretty well claimed, and I had Smash Brothers. I was faster than him during the Super Mario 64 playthrough, but he's easily better than me at original or Lost Levels.
This combined with the retro gaming competitions I played in in Vegas, where I would routinely win tournaments and competitions, made me suspect that I was actually pretty darn good at gaming. I met the world record holders for Pac-man, Tetris (both US and UK), Burgertime... and while they clearly were better than me at that individual game, I was within spitting distince. World record for NES Tetris lines cleared is something along the lines of 220ish- at my peak I was clearing 190s routinely. I was pretty confident that if I wanted to focus on an individual game, I could claim one of those titles. It was just never worth it. Every time there was a tournament that was "Play these five games" - the video game equivalent of the decathalon, where your placings were given a score and totalled- I'd crush the entire group. Every time it was "Play these five games and score individually", I'd place second on most of them and then first on whichever ones didn't have a specific expert around for.
Anyway, this made me wonder just how good I was. And it never really got to the point where it was worth testing, because it's not really a skill that I'd be interested in using in an extremely competitive way- there exist pro video game tournaments, sure, but they involve very specific games, and very specific skills. I might be pretty decent at Starcraft, or Warcraft 3, (I easily know people better than me, though, since they don't play to my strengths), or I might be naturally good at Halo (ask Rick, Roz, or Michelle about me having a tank sometime), but I have no desire to practice as much or focus as much as it would be necessary to match the best at those specific games.
I've never met anybody strictly better than me at learning puzzle games, and regisman was the only person I've met who was even competitive at general gaming (we've never actually determined what our ratio was of who beat who in new games). So where does that put me in the world? I have no idea. I'm certainly world-class at a good chunk of games, but I don't generally top out at any of them- so call it top 1000 for most games? Top 100 for general gaming? That might be giving me too much credit, but I don't know how to judge it any better than that.
But strangely enough, that's not what I consider my best skill to be.
I don't even know how to _explain_ what I consider my best skill to be. It's sort of half the above and half something else. It comes up whenever I'm testing something- I'll get a hunch about something and try something wild and wacky and come up with a bug. Roughly half of the time I file a bug it's not because I used some logical, methodical, check everything sort of test, it's a "Huh, that's weird." and twist the game in a way that something breaks.
I suppose I'd call it intuitive analysis of interactive systems, although that's much broader than it really is. It seems very focused on... you know, I have no idea.
But it's enough that every company I've ever worked at has ended up with me filing bugs that makes everybody I relate them to go "Wait, what? How would you even _find_ that?" It's gotten to the point that at Quicksilver software, if they can't reproduce a bug, they call me in to play it for an hour, and if I can't find it they feel completely justified in closing it out No Repro- I'm the acid test.
There's no way of measuring how good I really am at that sort of thing. There's no way of competing over it. I have no idea how good I really _am_ at this sort of thing, or whether it's just me making stuff up about it to make me feel better about being lucky.
But that's the thing that I _believe_ I'm nearly best at, compared to everybody else.
One of the things that has fascinated me all my life is my ability to play video games, and particularly my ability to play video games I've never played before. The fact that there is some general skillset or ability that applies across all (or at least a majority) of video games amazes me.
Then I met regisman at college and discovered that other people existed with this sort of ability as well. We'd have lots of fun with the MAME emulator in our dorm lounge- Marty'd put a game on for a week, and regisman would get the first high score, I'd top him, he'd top me, I'd top him, and we'd continue for a few days until we'd both figured out how to play the game and either 1) one of our natural preferences would show up and we'd claim the high score that wouldn't be beaten or 2) some other person in the dorm discovered they were really good at it too. #1 happened more often than not.
We'd also determined that there were specific video games that either of us were better at. regisman has Dr. Mario pretty well claimed, and I had Smash Brothers. I was faster than him during the Super Mario 64 playthrough, but he's easily better than me at original or Lost Levels.
This combined with the retro gaming competitions I played in in Vegas, where I would routinely win tournaments and competitions, made me suspect that I was actually pretty darn good at gaming. I met the world record holders for Pac-man, Tetris (both US and UK), Burgertime... and while they clearly were better than me at that individual game, I was within spitting distince. World record for NES Tetris lines cleared is something along the lines of 220ish- at my peak I was clearing 190s routinely. I was pretty confident that if I wanted to focus on an individual game, I could claim one of those titles. It was just never worth it. Every time there was a tournament that was "Play these five games" - the video game equivalent of the decathalon, where your placings were given a score and totalled- I'd crush the entire group. Every time it was "Play these five games and score individually", I'd place second on most of them and then first on whichever ones didn't have a specific expert around for.
Anyway, this made me wonder just how good I was. And it never really got to the point where it was worth testing, because it's not really a skill that I'd be interested in using in an extremely competitive way- there exist pro video game tournaments, sure, but they involve very specific games, and very specific skills. I might be pretty decent at Starcraft, or Warcraft 3, (I easily know people better than me, though, since they don't play to my strengths), or I might be naturally good at Halo (ask Rick, Roz, or Michelle about me having a tank sometime), but I have no desire to practice as much or focus as much as it would be necessary to match the best at those specific games.
I've never met anybody strictly better than me at learning puzzle games, and regisman was the only person I've met who was even competitive at general gaming (we've never actually determined what our ratio was of who beat who in new games). So where does that put me in the world? I have no idea. I'm certainly world-class at a good chunk of games, but I don't generally top out at any of them- so call it top 1000 for most games? Top 100 for general gaming? That might be giving me too much credit, but I don't know how to judge it any better than that.
But strangely enough, that's not what I consider my best skill to be.
I don't even know how to _explain_ what I consider my best skill to be. It's sort of half the above and half something else. It comes up whenever I'm testing something- I'll get a hunch about something and try something wild and wacky and come up with a bug. Roughly half of the time I file a bug it's not because I used some logical, methodical, check everything sort of test, it's a "Huh, that's weird." and twist the game in a way that something breaks.
I suppose I'd call it intuitive analysis of interactive systems, although that's much broader than it really is. It seems very focused on... you know, I have no idea.
But it's enough that every company I've ever worked at has ended up with me filing bugs that makes everybody I relate them to go "Wait, what? How would you even _find_ that?" It's gotten to the point that at Quicksilver software, if they can't reproduce a bug, they call me in to play it for an hour, and if I can't find it they feel completely justified in closing it out No Repro- I'm the acid test.
There's no way of measuring how good I really am at that sort of thing. There's no way of competing over it. I have no idea how good I really _am_ at this sort of thing, or whether it's just me making stuff up about it to make me feel better about being lucky.
But that's the thing that I _believe_ I'm nearly best at, compared to everybody else.