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Feeling nostalgic today about UT2004 and the golden age of arena shooters. It’s brought back an amusing anecdote about skill, comparison and persistence 
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When I was 14-17, I played UT2004 online—a lot. I wasn’t great at it: hand eye coordination came late, I was in remedial P.E. (gym class), and it sucked always being last at everything I played.
So I practiced every day, watched videos of professional players, finally got myself to a mediocre average of a 1:1 kill/death ratio.
At this point it was enjoyable to play, but I felt sad. I’d tried so hard and I still got my ass kicked more often than not. Then I went to the USA for a game design summer camp. We played UT during the breaks, locally and online.
To my shock, I was consistently top of the board. There was yelling and focus fire when I entered the room. I had become the Boss Character. This baffled me for weeks. “If I’m so bad at this, why am I so good?”
Go back to New Zealand. Hop on my usual server, and take a closer look at the names of the players.
Turns out: it was the server of one of the top ranked UT clans in the world. I didn’t suck: I’d been in the A leagues the whole time and I *never knew.*
The same lesson showed itself again with my design work. The benchmark was the work I saw posted by my peers in online communities. They were older, more educated, more experienced—but anonymity hid all of that. All I saw was the work, and my work “sucking.”
Same thing: obsessive focus on getting better, posting work online to these communities for feedback, and continual improvement.
Incidentally, I met @jongold online through this phase, reviewing my work in forum threads and on MSN Messenger. When I went to SF a few years back, Jon looped me into the intentional community scene, where I made friends through whom I now get 80% of my work!
Anyway: my first clients were thrilled, they got what felt like premium level work at the bargain basement rates of a hungry 17 year old.
There is something to be said for naively swimming through big ponds. The yardsticks you’re exposed to set your ambition and your sense of quality.
These days, there nothing I value more than being the dumbest person in the room; having my work, my strategy, my decisions held to a standard well beyond what I think is within reach.
The ego likes to be the leader, the expert, the “artist.” But that way lies stagnation—it selects for coasting.
when you’re the biggest fish in the pond, move to a bigger pond.
and there’s a lot of value in simply not knowing that you’re in the deep end: you’re more powerful than you think.
