Off Topic and Then Some!

Welcome back to the mad ramblings of a madman. Today is another two-fer in topics today. First, I am going to tackle the topic of mind games in various gaming, then follow it up with time travel, reality bending, and how it can make authors all sorts of angry.

So whether your blasting people in Modern Warfare 3 or putting up $50,000 on the line at Poker, these games all have an underlying mental game you could and should be playing, If your hoping to win it all. The mental game has always existed in one form or another. Most people are accustomed to see it played in the game of Chess. Today, I am going to walk through some of the common aspects of the mental game. Starting from the simple and working to the advanced, hopefully you guys pick up something to dominate other gamers with.

The most common aspect of the mental game is the art of the bluff. Bluffing is a simple technique that makes opponents think you have a particular strategy, card, move set up for them, when in reality, you have no such thing. This concept, while simple to use, is difficult to master. It involves tricking an opponent into thinking a certain way and utilizing that new way of thinking to win in an awful situation. The most common set up is in poker. Imagine this: your dealt a hand that is pretty awful, whether it be off suit, or a low pair. Your opponent looks promising at his hand and ups the bet. You have two decisions here: One, you can fold letting your opponent take the hand and hope to rebound later or Two, you can match the bet and make your opponent think you have a good, if not better, hand. While this example is pretty loose, it is the idea I want you guys to focus on. Making your opponent second guess themselves is a sure fire way to win in many situations

Continuing on the idea of making your opponent second guess themselves, here is an idea: play badly. The premise sounds stupid but it can lead to you winning more games in the long run. It is very similar to the idea of losing a battle, in order to win a war. A general may think that because they bashed your brains in on an earlier engagement that all the subsequent battles will be as easy as pie. In truth, you let them win in order to build overconfidence in your opponent. That overconfidence will cause your opponent to make stupid mistakes or over-sites simply because they feel that an opponent who has lost will never notice the over-sites. This technique only tends to work on people who already have a chip on their shoulder. As such, using this technique is a judgment call based on the person you play.

The last aspect of the mental game I will touch on is the tilt. The tilt is one of the most damaging mental attitudes a player can get. This behavior tends to lead to a player playing badly and spiraling further into the losing side of the game. Tilt tends to occur when a play or game ends badly for one player. It can be as simple as an opponent getting a lucky card off the flop, or as difficult as digging oneself out of a bad situation and winning the game. Either way, the method of winning in a losing situation from an opponents perspective makes them think that they did something wrong. This leads to them further questioning lines of play and overall makes them over think every possible scenario for fear of being blown out yet again.

Time Travel and Altering Reality: Author No-Nos?

This next bit is more of an observation Placido Galvin and I had the other night. Is it not odd that not many characters from fiction have time or reality bending powers? I mean sit down and think about it. Most characters who tend to have the ability are in one of two camps. The first camp is the outside observer. This camp tends to utilize this ability only to observe and record data about the possibilities. They very rarely get involved in the time stream or other realities for fear of what their involvement could do to said time line or reality. The second camp is the goodie-good. These characters are generally considered in all aspects of their character. As such, giving them an ability like time travel or reality warping poses a moral quandary on them. This makes them use the ability sparingly or not at all, for fear of the unknown effects that warping reality or mucking through realities can bring.

This premise of character types led me to think about why more character do not possess this ability. Which led to the following line of thought: Giving villains or other not purely good character would cause massive headaches for the author and fan base. If a major villain had the ability to control time, could they not just avoid their own destruction, or better yet go back to a point in time and eliminate the protagonist without any worry. Villains tend not see the full consequences of their action, only the short term ratification of their desires fulfilled. This line of thought also tends to attach itself to not-so-good character types. As such, it does make some sense, that only characters outside of the immediate story and pure hearted characters have this ability. They think of the long-term, not the short term use of powers.

That is about all for today guys. Next time: Regrets. A sour subject, but one that makes us grow as individuals.