Digital Initiative

In one of the very early computer science courses I took, the concept of a “depth-first search” vs a “breadth-first search” came up. It’s something that stuck with me, not because I’m deeply invested into search functions, but because it struck me as a good metaphor for how to approach life.

I am not highly skilled at terribly many of the things I do. I’ve very frequently been second- or third-best in competitions I’m serious about, rarely cracking the top of the charts despite the effort I put in. In my FFXIV raid, I am not the best healer, or the best DPS, and certainly not hte best tank; there are people who are far more focused than I am in all of those categories. I can, however, competently do all three. I have regularly swapped between the healing and DPS roles so much that I’ve lagged behind in gear quality compared to others, simply because I’m splitting my focus. Despite apparent evidence to the contrary, I’ve tanked Coil raid content and extreme-mode primals; my avoidance of the tank role is more an affectation at this point than anything. I’m not the best at any of these roles, or even necessarily great, but I can do all of them and I lean on my breadth of knowledge to give me shortcuts.

Kodra sometimes likes to talk about his experience trying to surpass me as a rogue in World of Warcraft, while we were raiding. I was able to regularly and easily put out the most damage of the group at very low risk. This has (not incorrectly) been attributed to my weapon choice– having done some testing, I used a dagger in my off hand as part of a sword-based specialization; counterintuitive at best, suboptimal at worst. It was a specific dagger I used, that essentially let me exploit a particular effect that was rather redundant if the dagger was the primary weapon, but unlocked some obscenely powerful chains if it wasn’t. Where I got the idea from was a discussion I’d read about warriors, a class I didn’t even play, that was talking about the value of accuracy (+hit%) for generating their combat resource. If I could hit more often, I could deal significantly more damage, and one of the special properties of the dagger is that it could, on occasion, cause me to hit perfectly for a very brief window. I focused on my accuracy, getting more of those hits to land and getting the dagger to work its magic more often, and I skyrocketed to the top of the charts, not by becoming a better rogue, but by becoming a better warrior.

Kodra is nodding right about now, but there’s a second half of this story. One of our other rogues spent months trying to imitate my playstyle and finally got the (admittedly extraordinarily rare) dagger to drop. For him, it was a disaster. His damage spiked, but it was unreliable and he would do too much damage, pull the attention of whatever enemy we were fighting, and wind up in the dirt… or the dagger wouldn’t trigger often enough to be worthwhile. He found it very frustrating, and fairly quickly shoved the dagger in the bank and never looked back. What he wasn’t doing was the other half of my strategy. Even though I didn’t play other classes, I made an effort to understand what they were all doing in various fights. I knew when our tanks had plenty of control over the fight and when they had less, I knew when our healers had spare cycles for raid healing and when they didn’t, and I knew which transitions were touchy and which weren’t. I ruthlessly exploited these, often taking unnecessary damage or stacking a debuff further than I should have, pushing harder when I knew it was safe and pulling back (and often, slightly to the side if there were other overzealous rogues around) when it wasn’t. A statistic that was frequently brought up was the number of deaths in the raid– how many times someone had pushed a little bit too hard and failed. What was much less frequently checked on was the amount of damage taken per death. I very rarely died, but I took enormous amounts of damage: far more than almost any other rogue in the group. I knew when healers could afford to heal me and when they couldn’t, and when they could I put myself in harm’s way to keep on the enemy.

I never mastered rogue rotations or timings or specific boss strategies. I relied in instinct and a wide breadth of knowledge about when and how to run risks. Often, this breadth of knowledge acts as a surrogate for depth of experience, letting me pull ideas from many unrelated places to solve a particular problem.

One of my favorite games is Infinity, which makes it easy for me to amass a wide breadth of experience. I’ve rarely if ever played the same list twice, never spending the time and effort to master a particular build, but being able to draw upon a very broad knowledge of the game has given me the ability to take almost any list I run and perform fairly well with it. I still fall short when I face players who are highly skilled and focus and refine a single list to a honed edge, but I’m not so far behind them that I can’t acquit myself respectably.

It’s a large part of the reason I don’t have a lot of patience for bullet hell shooters. They demand a tight, specific focus, that you memorize patterns and execute them. There’s no room for instinct, no room for ad-libbing, and no way for me to draw a breadth of skills in. They’re the antithesis of how I learn and operate, and I have a huge amount of difficulty with them. Fighting games are similar, asking for a very specific focus and a certain amount of depth in specific skills.

When I’m in charge of a group, I tend to surround myself with people who focus on depth. They’re almost always better at me at the things they choose to do, and it gives me opportunities to learn from them. I benefit both from the depth of their skill and the shortcuts I learn that add to my breadth of experience. Little things fascinate me: how gestures in other countries differ from the ones I’m used to; which turns of phrase in English have analogues in other languages, and how the meanings change; how a tank builds threat and when; where healers prefer to stand relative to everyone else. These little things all give me perspective, so that no matter what I’m doing I can pull in *something* to build on whatever I’m working on and imitate depth.

This habit is something that’s bothered me a lot in the past. I would look at any individual thing I did and be frustrated that I wasn’t better at it. I could be good– good enough that people would respect my abilities, but rarely the best. It took me years to see the bigger picture, that I was good at a lot of things, and that even if I wasn’t the best in any single one, in aggregate I had a very broad skillset and knowledge base. I’ve never been a depth-first person; until something hooks my interest or makes its value apparent, I don’t drill down and focus on something (though on occasion I have done this).

I’ve caught myself thinking this.

I don’t have a particular conclusion to draw from here, just a meditation on how I think and the kinds of things I focus on. I think a source of frustration for me lately has been that I’ve had few opportunities to expand the breadth of my knowledge, partly due to a lack of resources and partly due to a lack of opportunity. I have a new appreciation for the classwork I’m doing and the perspectives it exposes me to; it’s an opportunity that I relish, and in this lull between quarters I quickly find that I miss it.

Source: Digital Initiative
Depth vs Breadth

A friend of mine made a comment recently that really resonated with me. She commented how she found it frustrating that J.K. Rowling was being asked to “clarify” things about the Harry Potter world, and how asking for that kind of clarity devalued imagination.

It’s a thought that’s stuck with me. I think about the stories I’ve gotten deeply invested in, and I realize that so many of them leave questions unanswered, little details left up to the imagination. If the story and setting are rich enough and robust enough, the actual story told feels like a snapshot, a thin line cutting through a much larger unwoven tapestry. All of this blank space leaves room for the imagination to play, where you can tell stories to yourself or other people about what’s going on in that unseen space. Sometimes this is just your own thoughts on what’s happening over there, or a conversation with a friend. Sometimes it’s more involved: some fanfiction, a fan film, Knights of the Old Republic.

I’ve thought a lot about the settings that really hook me, and they’re often ones where I can feel the story spiraling outwards, beyond the bounds of the actual narrative. In media studies, we refer to that ‘actual narrative’ as the text of the work, the actual, literal words and scenes that are happening on the page, or on the screen, or through whatever medium. That uncharted territory that gets filled in by your imagination is whitespace, a blank canvas for you to fill in your mind, based on the snippets given in the text.

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I’ve been watching a lot of anime lately, and it’s striking to me how much whitespace most anime leaves in its worlds. Even very simple worlds are explicit about the scope of their stories, and generate lots of little questions and curiosities that go unanswered– by design. It’s a stark contrast to the way western media does things. We want to know the answers, we want those answers to be the right ones. An offhanded comment by an author about what she thinks might happen off-camera sparks a searing argument, and can drive people from a formerly beloved property. I know many people who were driven away from Star Wars by the prequels. Too much was explained in unsatisfactory ways, and it tainted what had come before; it filled the whitespace when it didn’t need filling.

I think a lot of this was the appeal of early MMOs, and some of what drove that deep attachment I and many others formed. The low fidelity of the storytelling and the world itself left a lot of whitespace for us to fill in our minds, that we could directly play a part in. Even before I started seriously roleplaying, I had an image in my mind of my character– one-dimensional and not fleshed out, but there was a faint persona there that was me filling that whitespace in a small way. In Vanilla WoW, the storytelling was a little more explicit, enough to give me hooks around which to build a fully realized character, and the things I did weaved in and out of the narrative I’d come up with. I felt attached to those characters, enough that I can still tell stories about them, rather than stories about myself as a player.

I find myself sometimes wanting to know too much about a setting, wanting to fill in that whitespace until I’m satisfied that it’s full and “correct”. Sometimes I’m able to do this, and my interest in that setting drops off dramatically. There’s no more room for my imagination to play, and the world seems small. With MMOs, I’ve often felt constrained by the story being told. Rift is a really good example in my case– the introduction of the game establishes a very specific, narrow path that says a lot about my character and his or her background, and separates me from the world. I’m important to the game’s story, but only in the context of me performing heroics and stopping threats; I don’t really belong in that world. As our fidelity in MMO storytelling has risen, we’ve gotten more specific and more personal with our stories, and in so doing we reduce the whitespace we have to play in, and lose that hook that keeps us invested and attached.

It’s been ages since I’ve played an MMO that I’ve seriously roleplayed in, and it’s telling that my attachment to various MMOs has dropped off dramatically. There are other reasons for it, but in the past few months those reasons have evaporated and yet I haven’t returned to one of my favorite hobbies, despite having both the time and the mental energy to do so.

I understand why, from a business standpoint, a lot of MMOs have stopped giving servers explicit “RP” tags, but it’s something I dearly miss. It gave me a space where I knew I could play and fill in that whitespace with my own thoughts. I made a special effort to roll on the (unofficial) RP server in Archeage, just because I think I want to try to find some like-minded folks. I’m a bit worried that I’m coming into things too late to really take part, but the possibility is there.

I like my worlds large, full of uncharted space with stories that are never “officially” told. It sparks the imagination and keeps me thinking about what might be happening elsewhere in that world. I think that’s a big part of why Harry Potter was such a big hit– it painted a small picture of a world that was much, much larger than what you got to see. There were little hints that there was a lot going on that was never explicitly told, so you could fill in those blanks yourself. It’s a world full of stories, in which Harry Potter himself is a relatively small part. It’s a good world, because it’s big. We don’t need that whitespace filled– in fact, it’s better that it’s not filled.

Pursue the stories untold, paint your own pictures in that blank space. Fight the urge to fill it up and make the world you love small and cramped.

Source: Digital Initiative
Whitespace

I’m a plotter.

This is distinct from being a planner, someone who comes up with an executes a plan. No, I’m a plotter, someone who creates plans within plans, working out unlikely contingencies and thinking about how things might go wrong. It’s not simply enough for me to drive to the store to pick up some food, I need to think about the precise time to optimally make the trip, the routes I’ll take at that time, what other things I can do on the way and while there, and in what order those are best accomplished, and what I’ll do if there’s unexpected difficulties– there’s traffic on my route, they’re out of what I want, and so on.

D.W. Frydendall, “Plotting”

I’ve described the way I think to other people, and I’ve frequently heard the comment that it sounds “exhausting”. I wouldn’t know– I get agitated and stressed when I’m not thinking multiple steps ahead. When I take someone out to dinner, I’m thinking of what I’m going to wear, where we’re going to go, two backup places in case the place I chose is closed / busy / not to taste, I’ve probably looked at the menu and decided what I’m going to order before I go, put gas in my car, look for parking nearby… and if I don’t do one or some of these things, I’ll worry about them. I don’t get excited about things unless I’m watching all of the pieces fall into place, at which point it’s usually already happening and I’m feeling relief.

I’ve had friends call me a mastermind; it’s certainly what my Myers-Briggs profile uses, and it seems apt. I’m most comfortable when I’m making an effort to predict what’s going to come next. When I don’t adequately plan, I find that things don’t go well. If I plan to go out during the weekend, and I don’t have an explicit idea of where I’m going to go and with whom, I often find myself listlessly sipping a drink, bored and often regretting my choices. Even the places I frequent are places where I know ahead of time will have something for me to enjoy. I’ve found that if I don’t plan and make sure things are going to work out right, I’ll spend a lot of time sitting, bored. When I arrive somewhere, my first instinct is to look around to see who I might want to talk to and start thinking about how to approach them; if I don’t, I’ll wind up just sitting and wondering why I bothered. I’m very rarely surprised, partly because I’ve thought about things well in advance, and partly because if I haven’t, things tend not to happen.

As a result, I tend to only get excited when a plan is coming together nicely, when I think something unexpected and good might happen (exceedingly rare), or after I’ve gotten an unexpected, awesome surprise (also very rare). In recent memory, the latter two have only happened once (well, twice, at the same time), and it’s one of my most cherished memories of the past year. As a child, I got so good at guessing my birthday and Christmas presents that my mom simply stopped trying to surprise me, because I could deduce what she was going to get me. My dad has always been able to surprise me; he plays the game better than I do and is able to think further ahead than me, so he’s consistently been able to get me gifts I didn’t realize I wanted. It’s probably where I get it from; he also gets “pleased” that things are going well rather than “excited” that something is happening.

This blog is a conscious attempt for me to break out of my plotting habit. Except for the occasional series, I don’t think ahead to what I might write about before I’m sitting in front of the computer, and even when writing series, I have a vague idea but conscientiously avoid specifics until I’m actually writing. I do one draft and submit, doing only a cursory check for errors (more often editing them out later). It forces me to think on my feet, and write something without mulling over it beforehand.

In the past year, I’ve noticed that I’ve gotten better at spontaneity, especially when it comes to collecting my thoughts. I’m less worried about breaking from a plan or going off-script, and can adapt better than I was able to before posting regularly. Since moving to a five-day-a-week schedule, this has only gotten more noticeable. I’m forcing myself to think in the moment rather than having everything planned ahead, and it has simultaneously made me calmer about changing situations and more obsessive about making sure my plans are perfect and executed on point.

At this point, it’s undeniable that regular blogging has significantly changed my behavior, and I’m interested to see where else it goes. I still don’t get excited about things, and I still lean heavily towards planning than not, but it’s not at quite the same incorrigible level it used to be.

Source: Digital Initiative
The Downsides of Being a Mastermind

In FFXIV, the raid group I lead uses an unpopular strategy for part of Turn 9. Rather than an “everyone do this” strategy, requiring everyone in the group to move to a single point and then run around in sync, we use what has affectionately been called the “Benny Hill” strategy, which has everyone running around and more or less panicking through the phase.

I’ve been roundly criticized, both directly and indirectly, about pushing this strategy over the “standard” one. It’s been described as less efficient, more random, and unreliable, not to mention counter to what our players with experience in T9 are used to.

So, why do I insist upon it? Because I know my team. My raid group is contemptuously good at controlled chaos in fights. Put us in a situation where we just need to REACT and handle things as they come up and we absolutely dominate. By comparison, set up a situation in which we need to precisely execute a specific, detailed plan and we’re passable, but not amazing. The group has incredibly good instincts, and so as a result any strategy which focuses on general concepts versus specific solutions is far more successful for us.

It’s a pretty significant departure from how a lot of groups operate. Many raids go by a sort of stimulus/response strategy– “when X happens, do Y”. Very lengthy, detailed plans arise from this sort of thing– “when X happens, do Y if A is also happening, otherwise do Z if B is happening, and if neither A nor B is happening, do nothing”, which everyone needs to just internalize. It works very well for a group that’s focused on following orders and being told what to do. In large part, this was true of LNR– we divided fights up into specific stimuli that people needed to watch for and react specifically to and otherwise ignore. I knew a great many people in LNR who had no idea how certain fights worked, just what to do as their specific class at specific key points.

In FFXIV, the group is very different. Everyone is very active and very involved. Instead of describing stimulus/response strategy, I focus on what the boss is going to actually do, and leave the solutions up to individuals. The only time specific “do this” strategies come up is when we need a coordinated effort in a very specific way, but most of the time I can let the strategy adapt itself as people figure out what they need to do.

Tonight, we went into Shiva Extreme, a fight that a lot of groups break down into very specific, very detailed stimulus/response strategies. All of the guides I’ve read online talk about “when you see X, do Y”, but not what’s actually happening or what you’re avoiding. I find it frustrating, because there are often multiple ways to deal with a particular situation, and boiling it down into a single strategy that works for a single group doesn’t necessarily spread evenly across all groups (in fact, it rarely does). Instead, we quickly described the kinds of things the boss did, and some general concepts for dealing with them, and did extremely well as a result. Rather than proscribing specific behaviors, we described the situation and let people handle it as best they could. We certainly did things “wrong” in a number of ways, but we had a lot of success with the fight as a whole, and will probably beat it with little difficulty next week.

One particularly unsuccessful raid group I ran with focused exclusively on the “right” way to do boss fights, often to the detriment of the group, because deviating from the “correct strategy” was unthinkable, even when the group’s strengths clearly lied elsewhere. In one specific case, after multiple weeks of wipes to a particular chain of mechanics, I suggested we simply take the damage that we were trying to avoid, and have our healers heal through it. The suggestion received widespread derision, but since it was late and people were tired, we tried it anyway… and beat the boss handily on that attempt. The next week, we were… back to the “official” strategy, losing, even though we’d proven we could win a different way.

One of the most important things about raid leading, and I suspect leading teams in general, is paying attention to what your team is good at and can excel at and slightly altering your parameters to play to those strengths. Sometimes this leads to some really bizarre behavior, but however weird your approach might be, if your output is successful, it largely doesn’t matter. Every successful new paradigm started as a weird idea, and not every successful approach is going to be universally successful for everyone who tries it. Paying attention to what’s good about what you have to work with is an important part of a team’s success.

Square peg and a round hole. Metaphor for a misfit or nonconformist.

In a lot of cases, I’ve seen people use the phrase “square peg, round hole”. Most of the time, this is used as critique of the person or team or strategy– the “peg”, and suggests that maybe the peg should change to fit, or that a different peg entirely should be used. Sometimes, I think, it’s worth looking instead at the hole, and changing that.

Source: Digital Initiative
Playing To Your Strengths