[CQ-Contest] Observations of a young ham

[W0MU Mike Fatchett]

On 12/18/2016 6:27 PM, David Gilbert wrote:
>
> I'm far from being young (I hit 70 this March), but as both a 
> contester and a gamer I think I could add a couple of things to your 
> list.
>
> 1.  Online gaming is extensive.  At any point in time you typically 
> use more immediate skills than you do in contesting. I'm not at all 
> saying that upper tier contesting doesn't require amazing skills, or 
> that overall they aren't similar, but I think the breadth required 
> every minute in gaming exceeds that of contesting.  Just my opinion, 
> of course.
>
Different skill set.  I think you need to know quite a bit to be a very 
good contester.  My son cannot sit down and run 300 an hour on SSB if I 
handed him the mic yet.  He can learn to do it.

> 2.  Gaming generates far more participation than contesting.  The 
> major competitive games count their active players in the millions 
> instead of the few thousands for contesting.  That means people have 
> more opportunity to enjoy the activity every single minute of the 
> day.  No waiting for the weekend, no dependency on propagation, no 
> disrupting sleep patterns to hit prime time.

No doubt there are more online players.  Instant gratification is 
important to them.  DR DX and now some other programs are closer to the 
online game but it is still not the same.

>
> 3.  (Embellishment of your #6) Gaming is totally real time.  You know 
> exactly where you stand every minute of the battle/quest/whatever.
Agree
>
> 4.  This one may be the most relevant, in my opinion.  Gaming involves 
> direct action/reaction against your opponent.  It's constant 
> move-countermove the entire activity, sometimes with literally dozens 
> of overlapping actions/reactions directly against your opponent in 
> real time.  I can't think of any aspect of contesting that approaches 
> this ... and trust me, I've tried to think up a format that would 
> provide it.  Somebody smarter than me needs to work on this.  I'm 
> pretty sure nobody would be doing online gaming either if they had to 
> spend several hours playing more or less in isolation relative to 
> their direct competition and then wait a few days before early results 
> showed where they stood.
>
I agree with this as does K8MR.  You are really competing against 
yourself and hoping you beat everyone else by making the proper 
decisions to change bands, not about special possible openings etc.

> I certainly agree with your comment about the visual aspect. There's 
> really no comparison.
I don't know how to make this different.  You work F6 and a picture of 
his house pops up?  That might be creepy but I don't know how to make 
the interface more interesting.  Drawing a line from here to there on a 
map might be cool the first few times.  Live scoreboard helps but is 
still not pretty.

One thing online gaming does is flash stuff across your screen about 
what your competitor has done, X  monster died, Bill made a +10 sword of 
death.

Maybe we need to see the N2IC just worked a double mult!  or K5ZD just 
completed a 150/hr run?    W0MU just got his sweep!

Thanks for the feedback.

W0MU