Star... MineCraft has to come off the CV

[retina]

Originally Posted by TheMawn

Oh and by the way, to whoever changed the thread title, quite clever, and hopefully nobody makes the mistake of putting Minecraft on the CV.

For a non-gamer like myself whatever difference there is between starcraft and minecraft is lost on me. I would have just assumed they were mostly the same thing while reading your CV when you apply to be a minion.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by TheMawn

and hopefully nobody makes the mistake of putting Minecraft on the CV.

Why? I would argue to that! Beside of the fact that I fully agree with what retina and cheesehead said above (yes, none of those games have a place in a CV, except for very particular cases), if I would be in the situation to chose between a "Starcraft player" employee and a "Minecraft player" employee, I would have no doubt and close the last. It is "strategy" against "ingenuity", and "ability to plan ahead" against "thinking out of the box". It is the ability to command an army (in Starcraft you spawn a lot of minions and put them to do things for you), against the persistence and intelligence (in Minecraft you are wondering around alone "inventing" cute/useful things). Of course, for a management position I might reconsider. I like strategy games, but in my company, is not a strategist what I need, but an intelligent worker with a good attitude. For the records, I didn't play Starcraft since the "Brood War" generation (was it 18 years ago?), it is still one of my favorite games, together with the (classical) Warcraft from which was derived, and I never played Minecraft, except for watching my girl playing it (and kibitzing) before she discovered smartphones, but if I would be an employer, from the two guys (the Starcraft player and the Minecraft player) I would prefer the guy who plays Minecraft. There is a long motivation of "why", let's say for a start that in my company I would prefer to do the strategy myself and let the minions, as retina said, to find solutions. But not only.

[jasonp]

There's a delicate balance with the application process for a job. Joel Spolsky has a popular software engineer blog, which has posts on resumes and interviews that are also applicable to engineering jobs.

TheMawn, this will not be the last time that getting along will require some kind of compromise on your part. If proficiency with games becomes more acceptable to employers, you may just have to be satisfied with being right.

As a coworker and friend once asked me, 'is this the hill you want to die on?'

[chappy]

Originally Posted by jasonp

TheMawn, this will not be the last time that getting along will require some kind of compromise on your part. If proficiency with games becomes more acceptable to employers, you may just have to be satisfied with being right.

As a coworker and friend once asked me, 'is this the hill you want to die on?'

This, yes, a thousand times, yes.

Of course, this is problem with HR depts in general. The science is pretty clear that video game players develop better resource and time management skills than non-gamers. There are other less proven benefits as well, that may include spatial reasoning and memory.

There are also people with addictive personalities who waste a lot of time gaming, so it's not all Shangril-La.

If you were applying for a job at a young tech company putting gaming as a hobby might be viewed positively. If you were applying for a job in South Korea, Starcraft might be a necessity.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by chappy

The science is pretty clear that video game players develop better resource and time management skills than non-gamers.

Links? And the multi-day binges that appear to be common amongst the gamers at my local WiFI cafe argue against "better time management skills".

There are other less proven benefits as well, that may include spatial reasoning and memory.

Because less-designed-to-be-addictive activities like mechanical tinkering and playing chess or bridge don't have those aspects?

Most of the alleged "benefits" of video gaming I've seen strike me as self-referential ... "playing X is shown to lead to improved skils at playing X."

Now if one is applying for a job at a game-SW outfit, fine. Otherwise you might just as well put "my adult fetish and bondage hobby helps me develop better time management and interpersonal skills ... I have to accept that I'm not always in charge and learn to cooperate..."

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Because less-designed-to-be-addictive activities like mechanical tinkering and playing chess or bridge don't have those aspects?

Would you like to have a game of Go sometime?

I'm actually quite shitty at it, but I appreciate that Go is to Chess as Chess is to Checkers.

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Otherwise you might just as well put "my adult fetish and bondage hobby helps me develop better time management and interpersonal skills ... I have to accept that I'm not always in charge and learn to cooperate..."

Interesting that you assume you'd be in the submissive situation....

[chappy]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Links? And the multi-day binges that appear to be common amongst the gamers at my local WiFI cafe argue against "better time management skills".

Don't confuse time management in a project setting with life management. Would you apply the same criteria to the lawyer who spends 90 hours a week at work?

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Because less-designed-to-be-addictive activities like mechanical tinkering and playing chess or bridge don't have those aspects?

strawman. Nowhere did I or anyone else in this thread imply that these benefits only occured with video games. You made that up in your head.

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Most of the alleged "benefits" of video gaming I've seen strike me as self-referential ... "playing X is shown to lead to improved skils at playing X."

Congratulations, those are none of the benefits we are talking about and so I don't see how they can be referred to as 'the alleged "benefits"' in this context.

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Now if one is applying for a job at a game-SW outfit, fine. Otherwise you might just as well put "my adult fetish and bondage hobby helps me develop better time management and interpersonal skills ... I have to accept that I'm not always in charge and learn to cooperate..."

Thanks for proving my point that HR at traditional corps don't get it. And for implying that you don't understand the nature of gaming culture or games.


As for links? Let me google that for you:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24295515

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_4164723.html

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-of-education/

If I had two equally qualified candidates and one played certain games (a set of which Starcraft would certainly be a member) and the other did not, that would be enough for me to give them the advantage. Although I wouldn't rule out the person with the adult bondage fetish/hobby.

[chappy]

Originally Posted by chappy

strawman. Nowhere did I or anyone else in this thread imply that these benefits only occured with video games. You made that up in your head.

Hmm. re-reading my previous post (the one before the quoted one) I used language that implied video gamers were better than non-gamers without the understanding that these tests compared the same students before and after video games. not two separate classes.

If that's the way you read it, I apologize. Perhaps I should play some text based games to improve my writing skills.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Interesting that you assume you'd be in the submissive situation....

I didn't want to come off as an elitist...

[TheMawn]

My parents hosted an evening to celebrate my graduation tonight, with a larger group consisting of family and friends (the one we did a week and a bit ago was with just my friend's family). Among the guests was a guy who works in sales consulting and has done a LOT of interviews and looked at a LOT of resumes and his reaction was "Some 'professional' told you that it would be a good idea, right?" right before I was able to add that "some 'professional' told me it would be a good idea."

The discussion has shifted to whether or not video games (certain ones) can be an asset and I will for the rest of my days assert that yes, but I've understood that I've been mislead into believing that, among other things, employers give a shit about my passtimes outside of work. The guy I was speaking with said that they probably do care, but that's what an interview is for.

If someone asks in my interview what my hobbies are, I'll talk about the outdoorsy stuff first like biking and swimming, and second will certainly be the strategic thinking games, among which sits Starcraft and I'll have a much better idea to explain why I like it and how I credit it with keeping me sharp. He completely agrees with that approach.


LaurV has experience with both Starcraft and Minecraft, and I have (extensively ) played both.

Starcraft is real-time strategy. I like to start with Chess in my explanation, because most people have an idea of what that is. The key differences are:

• Real-time strategy as opposed to turn-based strategy. Your pieces move as fast as you can issue orders
• Starcraft has an economy. You have limited resources which you can devote to gathering more resources, building a larger military (you start with zero fighting units) or upgrading and specializing your infrastructure. An early military cripples your economic progress but punishes an opponent focusing too much on economy. Which path do you choose?
• Chess players start with a limited number of pieces and they are identical. Starcraft has three separate races, each of which plays radically differently. To keep the Chess analogy going, invent new movement rules for Black's pieces and play the game again. Perhaps Black gets four extra rooks and bishops, but they kill themselves when they capture an enemy piece, and can only move four spaces in any direction instead of eight? Or perhaps Black gets no pawns but any piece can move a second time in one turn if they capture a piece?
• Chess has six types of units and 16 units total per side. Starcraft has about 16 unit types per race and as many as four hundred on the map at any time, and they constantly die and are constantly replaced with what you think is a better choice, assuming your economy is strong enough to afford to rebuild your army.
• Typical chess rules allow for one minute per move, plus 40 minutes. Starcraft is "as fast as you can"; the pros make 400-600 button presses or mouse clicks per minute, and each one either selects a unit or group of units, or issues a command to the selection.

Minecraft is a game set in a world made of cubes, which are, for the sake of reference, a cubic meter in volume. Your character occupies a 1x1x2 space. Dirt "blocks" can be dug up with a shovel, stone "blocks" can be mined with a pickaxe, tree "blocks" can be chopped down with an axe, etc. There are also "ore" blocks which can be processed to make other things. For example, in the "crafting" interface, eight stone blocks placed in a square around an empty middle space can create a furnace (also a 1x1x1 block) which can convert iron ore into an iron ingot, using fuel (wood from a downed tree, or coal also mined from the ground) which is then converted into some sort of tool, for example.

The tools give you different options, many of which are provided by members of the community who have created mods for the game, adding pipes and pumps, electricity and more complex machines, etc. If you're bored of clicking on blocks in a hole in the ground to get enough stone to make your big castle (only clinically insane people don't get bored), then you could build a mining machine which mines for you, so you can spend your time building instead of gathering. (There is a game mode that has no gathering and provides you with all the blocks you want so you can get straight to building if the rags-to-riches adventure does not suit you)


Frankly, I've gotten bored of Minecraft. I've built a scale replica of the main building at Chichen-Itza, a half-scale replica of the great Pyramid, and a ten-floor maze, among other things. I preferred managing the logistics of having two dozen mining machines feeding me more ore than I can process and having to balance the processing power at different stages and the power to feed the entire machine.

I prefer Starcraft and I would bet on the Starcraft player being smarter, more accurate and faster than the Minecraft player, but maybe less creative and slightly less outside-the-box.

While Chris' story is fairly relevant, he also passes judgement on something he hasn't done in twenty years. I would give today's avid Starcraft player much more credit than thirty years ago's avid Pac-Man player. Anyone who says playing Chess is great but playing strategy video games is bad has their head so far up their ass they're choking on their own hair. Alternatively, they're so far in the past that they have hair

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by TheMawn

Starcraft is real-time strategy. I like to start with Chess in my explanation, because most people have an idea of what that is. The key differences are:
[*]Real-time strategy as opposed to turn-based strategy. Your pieces move as fast as you can issue orders

An artificial construct designed to maximize addiction - in the real world and in real military strategy, "haste makes waste" is extremely important, i.e. there is a constantly shifting situational optimum which punishes both excessive slowness and speed.

[*]Starcraft has an economy. You have limited resources which you can devote to gathering more resources, building a larger military (you start with zero fighting units) or upgrading and specializing your infrastructure. An early military cripples your economic progress but punishes an opponent focusing too much on economy. Which path do you choose?

One learns similar lessons cooking a meal, and in the end, if successful, one at least ends up with a meal.

[*]Chess players start with a limited number of pieces and they are identical. Starcraft has three separate races, each of which plays radically differently. To keep the Chess analogy going, invent new movement rules for Black's pieces and play the game again. Perhaps Black gets four extra rooks and bishops, but they kill themselves when they capture an enemy piece, and can only move four spaces in any direction instead of eight? Or perhaps Black gets no pawns but any piece can move a second time in one turn if they capture a piece?
[*]Chess has six types of units and 16 units total per side. Starcraft has about 16 unit types per race and as many as four hundred on the map at any time, and they constantly die and are constantly replaced with what you think is a better choice, assuming your economy is strong enough to afford to rebuild your army.

You confuse piece complexity with strategic complexity. "Calvinball" has complex rules, too.

[*]Typical chess rules allow for one minute per move, plus 40 minutes. Starcraft is "as fast as you can"; the pros make 400-600 button presses or mouse clicks per minute, and each one either selects a unit or group of units, or issues a command to the selection.

...because hyperactive repetitive mouse-clicking teaches useful real-world skills, no doubt. (And chess has tournament and blitz modes, btw).

Again, it's great that you enjoy your viddy games, but I fail to see anything relevant to real-world work, even to gaming software development (as opposed to game testing), except in terms of having an idea of what kinds of game elements best foster addiction.