What Makes Me An Authority On Winning?

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Not including my real life accomplishments, which won’t be mentioned here — In 7+ games I have reached rank 1-50 in each one’s respective online community, each consisting of 10,000 to 8,000,000 competitors. A few of these include, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3-7 (up to American Wasteland on both PS2 and PC), World of Warcraft (BC and MOP hyper-competitively), Smite, EQ for PS2, C&C Renegade (I loved this game back in the day, third person massively online version of an RTS).

A TINY FRACTION of an example of some of my competitive gaming history can be found within this YouTube playlist I made, consisting 100% of my own stuff (except the first top 4 plays on Smite, i was #5 that week).

Zerkin’s Competitive Gaming History — YouTube Playlist

The Beginnings of a Lifelong Theorycrafter

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My success in many hyper-competitive online games was largely based on:

• My realization that to be normal is to be average is to be mediocre is to be ordinary is to be un-extraordinary. I decided early on that if I was going to be ordinary, it wouldn’t be for a lack of effort; I simply made the decision to do my best starting when I was 13, and was absolutely amazed at how far my competitive spirit and dedication carried me, and this is key for you to understand accurately.

  To elaborate, I do not credit my many successes, both inside and outside the games themselves, to some unique inherent intelligence or attribute (other than a mind without mental handicaps), but instead to my priorities, relentless dedication, and to my Will to be something more than average. Everything else I merely learned along the way, and so will you – all you need is a most-effective foundation upon which to start your journey to the top of whatever it is you want to dominate.

  As for priorities, choose a small amount of things with the end goal of dominating it, instead of lots of things terribly – dedication is not an option if you want to be extra-ordinary, unless you happen to have been born that way.

  Given the fact I only commit myself to games that have depth, complexity, and a high skill cap: If I could dominate an entire community of anything with only 1,000 hours of practice, I would say the Skill and/or Knowledge Cap on that is on the low side, relatively. Just to give you an idea. The first game I dedicated myself to competitively was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, and I put in 3,000 hours in a year, mind you this was before I had accumulated all the Pro Tips I’ve learned from my own experiences or from others.

• My thought that I should not focus on learning specific, static things, but to instead focus on understanding the universally applicable principles of LEARNING itself, as that is the root source that can be used on anything and everything, I will go into some of the principles I’ve learned about learning further down.
• My belief that emulating someone else will only net you the same results it got them, and is ultimately a worthless exercise, as you can take no responsibility for anything you did, other than the act of plagiarizing. It is, however, important to understand what IS working about other peoples’ approaches in order to gain perspective on your future ideas of how to improve your results over everyone else.

One of the most important things to getting ahead of the curve in competitive gaming is understanding all the variables that are relevant to your performance. You should literally make a list of all the aspects of the game that affect output;

in the case of World of Warcraft some examples would be: User Interface(how you display information will change how efficiently you understand the data/peripheral vision isues), macros, keybinds, gaming mouse (more keybinds), internet latency, your response time, framerate, talents, gear, trinkets, artifact points, gems, enchants, strategies, rotations, etc. Many of the current competitive games have a lot of depth, complexity, and support the act of theorycrafting, Once you have your list of variable categories, analyze them and look for improvement. It is simple, but not easy.

Once you understand whatever core mechanics that are required, I typically re-analyze all the tools at my disposal, trying to think OUTSIDE THE BOX to realize ways to use or abuse it’s intended purpose, and find niche opportune times where it excels, which will also increase it’s effective value, netting better results than norms.

What Did I Learn About Learning?

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⦁ I would rather be right than consistent. To be an unbiased learner., you must come to realize that the concept of “understanding” or “knowledge” in a linear existence is inherently fluid. This means accepting that all of us are at different points in this fluid concept of understanding, one in which we are perpetually condemned to suffer yesterday’s ignorance; thus we should not take it too personally when we are wrong, even if it sometimes really sucks for various reasons, haha.. To be biased, willfully ignorant, content, closed-minded, or to otherwise stagnate, is to guarantee your own non-progression, or retarding.
⦁ Take nothing for granted! Do not just space out as you perceive things happen around you within the environment, or within the game engine in the case of gaming. Define everything you notice, literally, articulate your perceptions. These articulated perceptions become the dots that may later be connected in order to form new facts in your benefit. If you don’t do this, your brain will not be able to recall it when it is needed. The single best tip to give someone to improve their own IQ score is this principle. The entire test is based on identifying the difference between a,b, (you predict c, multiple choice), d. You simply identify each thing in the array and discern the difference pattern.
⦁ If you are having trouble choosing between two or more choices on account of subtle differences between them, increase the contrast, using the same principles behind common demoninator fractions side by side, meaning you have to scale them at the same relative rate. You can increase the conrast up until you reach any levels that reduce it’s effective value. For example, comparing 5 mana per 5 seconds to 10 spell power in World of Warcraft. You can multiply them both by 10, and you can choose between 50 mana per 5 vs. 100 spell power. Thresholds for this example would be things like: the max amount of mana you can even spend in 5 seconds (after that it has no value), how much overhealing or overkilling you are doing with more than necessary spell power, etc. You must mind the thresholds or you will royally fuck this up. A real life example of this could be trying to understand aerodynamics on logic alone. You start with a 30* angle and wonder what’s going to make it more aerodynamic. 0* angles produce no resistance, 90* angles produce extreme resistance. Super simple example.
⦁ Where There’s Muck There’s Gold! Do not look for success where others have found it. Meaningful success can only be achieved when it is done by yourself. To do otherwise is to rob yourself of one of the best opportunities to grow intellectually and creatively. Also, I would always rather counter the current #1 standard than be that standard.

The Bottom Line

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“To be normal is to be average is to be mediocre is to be ordinary is to be un-extraordinary. Consequently, to be extraordinary you must be abnormal; so don’t fear the strange and socially unacceptable – embrace them.” — Rj Perkins

Fuck being normal in this world the way it is, as it is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.