Yes, you are probably also mid (ever seen one of these bad boys?), and that's totally fine. The concept of Depth vs Complexity in game design has been well and tirelessly explained on various corners of the internet and in game design literature, but still it seems quite misunderstood in the public realm (to me). This Extra Credits video is nice & concise: "It is the designer's job to get the maximum amount of depth out of the minimum amount of complexity". This obviously applies to games, but I think also many other activities, playful or not. Complexity is the initial overhead of information you have to store and process to do the activity, and depth is about the amount of unique choices and significantly different outcomes they create. ~A year ago, I started speedcubing: solving Rubik's-style twisty puzzles, though Rubik's brand cubes turn notoriously bad & slow, so they're not much fun to use. I'd say a 3x3 twisty puzzle has a sort of middling complexity (compared to the range of activities 99.9% of people would do): there aren't many ways to turn it, it's pretty easy to see what each turn does, and solving it can be done in an afternoon with relatively little memorization or serious brainwork, just following a guide and repeating steps to practice. This graph is a rough approximation of the time and effort it takes to explore the depth of 3x3 solving, and what enjoyment one could get out of it. You do need a sort of minimum time and effort to enjoy it (I don't think playing without solving it once is very fulfilling) to get a baseline enjoyment. It's okay, but you can look ahead and think "ah, if I give this more practice, I'll learn more, opportunities will open up, I'll be able to go faster and more efficiently. I can try bigger cubes and other types of puzzles." There's a section toward the middle where I think the average person could put in decent time and effort to experience an enjoyable progress- though that's of course dependent on the person, this just illustrates what is possible. You see the graph kick up here where you can make a ton of improvement with moderate effort: down from an hour to a few minutes, to < 1 minute, to < 30 seconds, etc.
This starts plateau-ing, though, as you have to learn and practice a lot more to experience more gains in understanding, solve speed, etc. Thankfully, it's a pretty long tail: I've been cubing casually for a year and I can still feel noticeable results after really focusing on efficiency for an hour or so a day. Eventually, I could hit a point where I'd have to memorize way more algorithms, practice finger tricks and weird cases for hours to make much improvement on my time. And here's the thesis coming back to bite us: I probably won't do that. I think the type of motivation here also plays a big role in one's desire to continue: the sense of progression with cubing is in one's solve times, and ability to solve other types of puzzles. I do find this quite motivating, and cubing in general is stimulating and relaxing for me, so why not practice going faster while I'm at it? But if I elevated to a high enough level, and tried to push further, it would probably, eventually, stop feeling relaxing and fun for me. It would feel like an impossible competition to get a little bit faster, a little better. I'll take another of my loves, playing guitar, as an expansive example: there's a massive wealth of skills to improve upon, and different utilities for them. Faster picking lets you cover faster music, and write and perform faster music for yourself, though that music isn't necessarily more expressive or "good". Having a good memory and understanding of chords and scales can make improvising and writing easier, but isn't really necessary just to learn more songs. When I started with guitar, as I think many people are, I wasn't interested in pushing my theory knowledge or writing stuff, I just wanted to play the songs I liked. I didn't practice picking drills to be generally faster and better, instead I practiced playing particular sections so I could finish a whole song. I got older, my interests changed, and while I became a lot more skilled, I'm not the same kid that envisioned having insane control and speed and a catalog of Soundgarden songs (including solos) perfected. Now I could probably play all that stuff, but I don't care anymore: I want to improvise, and without needing a ton of structure ("hey, what key are we in again?"). I want to feel the music, I want to have fun on my instruments, and to play enough of them to compose and produce music on my own, as well as (maybe) in a group. I don't have the time now to sit down and practice tons of picking exercises or memorize theory so I know exactly which chords I can play in sequence during a jam session. But I do want enough experience to feel in the moment what will sound interesting- what will make for a good social playing experience. There are a million other things I had in mind with fascinating complexity to depth relations that I've wound myself up in over the years: Warframe, Team Fortress 2, From Software games, butterfly knife flipping, skating: tons of things with a good mid-curve where you can put in an amount of work reasonable for a time-constrained adult and experience some progress. At some point, usually further than the average person, but still far behind an ultra-user, I top out. I am trying to rationalize and accept that it is okay to be mid. There are only a small percentage of people who are motivated and have the time and energy to surpass into the top 1, 0.1, 0.01% of a given activity, and that kind of motivation has never really been present for me. I'm trying to set goals that I think will be fulfilling, and that I will have fun reaching along the way. I'm enjoying working towards an average < 20s 3x3 solve time, but 10s? I don't know how fun that last, enormous stretch of effort would be for me, and I won't sweat capping out before then, if that's what it comes to.
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I may become a woman at some point, but I think I play with too much LEGO (Bionicle kid), videogames, puzzles etc. to be categorized as an adult yet.
Purely informational: I am still transgender, I've just gone from identifying as non-binary to identifying as a girl, and now I use she/her pronouns (zij/haar in Nederlands). If you're curious as to why this cataclysmic event happened, feel free to read on, otherwise you can depart and I won't take offense (or even know). I feel like it's worth typing about this, if not only for my own records and failing memory, for other people to have a chance to see someone else who's gone through the same shit, had the same thoughts, etc, because I would've really appreciated that before I was ~17 and already through a good chunk of male puberty bulking up my bones forever. Timeline, shall we? ~9-13 y/o: I only crush on girls, a kid on the bus calls me a "lesbigay" (prophetic), and one time I high-five a guy, and interlace our fingers to really solidify the feeling of comraderie, but he instantly pulls back and is disturbed. My probably-autistic-masking is godlike, and I never make a social error like this again (mostly true). ~14-15: I am still attracted to a once-female-presenting, now non-binary person, and have basically no thoughts about what that means about my sexuality / gender. ~16: I realize I have a lot of spicy thoughts about men for a supposedly straight boy, and come out as bisexual. ~16: The dysphoria begins with stuff like my body hair. That's mostly an easy fix, but it doesn't occur to me that I won't maintain that cute, round baby-face much longer. ~16: I join the high school PRISM club, and finally talk with a trans person in a way that I actually understand them and their identity a bit better. I ask him to be my (1st!) boyfriend on my birthday and it lasts ~a month. ~17: My ex's new partner is non-binary and I realize "wow I want to look & be like that, actually" ~17: My name is Felix now: a lot of people don't get it, but over time it sticks. ~18: I start learning C# for game development ~19: A friend in college calls me "they" a couple times and I realize I much prefer that. I am now a they/them. ~19: Another friend in college shows me her HRT. It is in pills and she explains it wasn't super hard to get them. I am immediately intrigued because I thought they were injections (like testosterone). BUT, I am non-binary, she is a real trans girl, and somehow my dysphoria is definitely not the same thing, so I don't need it right now. That's all phase one stuff. Gradually uncovering info about myself, usually a few years after it's really helpful, and rarely pushing my own sexual/gender experimentation unless I felt very bad with myself, or the opportunity presented itself with the subtlety of a wrecking ball (-15% subtlety). The next phase is trickier. My body was getting masculine at a rate I barely noticed (and I gradually felt worse about it), and at some point I internalized this idea that "you're not always your own type". Not a terrible idea in isolation, but blocked me from taking my dysphoria seriously because "hey, someone else out there sees the beauty in me". I learned this the hard way. At ~22, I dated a non-binary person I was very attracted to. I was also extremely self-conscious about not looking feminine enough (and too masc), but they always assured me that they saw femininity in me. After 9 months, they told me they might only be attracted to women, and definitely not me. Fair but upsetting, and the self-consciousness hit back hard, as in "see, you were right all along, you just look like a boy and nobody finds you attractive". After a few days, I talked with my best friend, Connie, about transitioning and my self-image, and she shut down this awful notion I had, (paraphrasing), "You may not be your own type, but it's so good to look at yourself and feel really attractive and sexy". Oh my god. That was enough: I didn't like certain aspects of my appearance (basically everything overtly masculine), and wanted to look different (much more feminine), and I could do that through HRT regardless of my exact pronouns, name, etc. My dysphoria was enough to warrant getting this treatment for myself. I got started within a couple weeks, by the end of September 2021 (missed being a Halloween transfem, tragically). I broke things off with that ex since they were awful for a bunch of other reasons. The best thing I took from that relationship was this semi-tragic self-realization, closely followed by their suggestion to mix ginger into my garlic for stir fries, that was goated advice indeed. I got a job the day after our breakup with a one month break before my start date. Perfect. I wallowed in sadness and played Bloodborne until the time came to get my shit together and (fake) being an adult again. That brings us to the recent past & present. I immediately felt better about my image even while changes were happening gradually, and I fully believe I needed to love myself and have self-confidence to attract other people who would feel the same way about me. I met a European enby climate gamer on Discord and promptly became their Discord kitte- er, partner. No, I could not fake these ultra-stereotyped transfem experiences if I tried. They are wonderful, have always embraced my presentation and appearance, and they've been patient while I sorted this stuff out. I've had uncertainties like, "hey I think I want to go by a different, more fem name, what do you think of Sable?", and "I'm still non-binary but often feel more feminine and I may want to be a girl in the future". In a way, I think I've had a strong sense this would happen since I started HRT, but wanted to change the outward presentation once I felt like it was the right time. To conclude, I want to talk about the mildly-depressing, uncomfortable bit about identity that I think we tend to not want to think about, since that's been the main driver/barrier in my transition. Our gender identities are socially constructed, and we don't exist in a vacuum. One (eg, you) might end up making choices in part due to how you want others to see you, even when their lenses are narrow, warped by weird conceptions about gender, etc. I originally chose to identify as non-binary because I wanted to put out to the world that I'm not a man, and I don't want to comply with normative gender roles and expectations. My feelings are not a choice, but I think that presenting myself as a girl and asking to be called with she/her (of zij/haar) pronouns primes people to see me in a way that is more congruent with how I see myself, and how I want to be seen. I've felt really validated by people guessing on she/her pronouns for me, and a lot of stories from other trans women lately, but I still don't want to be ruled by specific, binary gender norms. I have to make a choice, and I know that nobody who I meet will ever fully understand every complexity about me and how I see myself, but gender expression is often a shortcut to communicate the bulk of that information in a quick way, anyway. This feels right to me now, and I'm gonna go with it. If you're feeling anything about this, feel free to leave a comment or message me personally, and I'm happy to chat with you about it. Take care! |
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