And what did we learn about saving the game....?

Save often. Save before every battle. Save now.

"I know this before."

Sometimes all the theory in the world won't save me from myself. I learned that (again) the hard way last Sunday when I completely bombed in Witcher, making mistakes that I know not to make. The worst? I played for a little over 2 hours without saving and then died in a crypt I entered knowingly underprepared. Of course none of this was helped by the fact that my entire plan for playing through the games was basically doomed from the get-go, but more on that after that break. In the meantime, here's some eye-candy to make everyone feel better.

"It's COVID-19." This is my roommate's answer to everything that goes wrong these days. On one hand it feels a bit like an excuse, but at the same time it really doesn't. My ability to focus has greatly declined recently and time seems to exist within a fog. I have literally forgotten what day it is within moments of discussing scheduling. I bring this up because this phenomenon must have been impacting me when I originally made my streaming schedule.

As I mentioned in the introductory Witcher post, my plan was to play through the entire Witcher series on Sunday afternoons, but this was a terrible idea. Why? Because it is an inefficient way to learn, and I know better. What does learning have to do with playing?

Everything.

People are not born knowing how to play video games. This is learned behavior. The longer one games, the less this may be obvious, but it is still true. To be a player one must learn basics such as control schemes, strategies, and how to read and use the UI. As they play they also start to recognize deeper patterns such as the design logic of the game, AI behavior, cultural practices (in the case of MMOs), and more depending on the genre of game. I say genre here because there are common traits across games that one can come to expect and this is even more true within genres. This is why gamers don't always realize when they are learning new ways of playing and why they sometimes seem like "naturals" like they can just sit down and play anything. Actually, it is because they are experts and this expertise transfers between games.

I am a gamer. I am not an expert player, but I am an expert in theories of games and gaming culture. One might think that this would make me an expert player, but alas, that is not how I work. One of the things I know is that the timeliness of information within a game will make all the difference in how easily a new player can learn the game. This is Gee's idea of "information on demand" or "just in time." Basically the idea here is that a player will learn new information (skills, controls, strategy, etc) best if they get the information right when they need it. A good example of this was the Witcher tutorial from my first stream 2 weeks ago when the game taught me how to attack when the castle I was in got infiltrated - ie right when I had an enemy in front of me. I quickly learned how to attack and then all the other controls as I made my way through the tutorial. By the end of that play session I felt confident in my ability to play, but then I didn't return to the game for a week - just enough time to forget how to play. Sound familiar? It will to anyone that has tried to pick up anything - an instrument or a language for example - because everyone and everywhere will be talking about practicing multiple times a week, if not daily. This is crucial not only to getting in practice time and creating beneficial habits but also to making practice more efficient. If one waits too long in between practices they will have to review more because they will have forgotten more since their last session.

OK playing Witcher is not the same as learning a language or instrument (I use these as examples because I am currently doing both) but I still have to learn to play if I want to play and relearning what button does what is not the fun part. If I really want to do this and have the game remain as engaging as it was that first day then I will have to play more than once a week. Therefore, going forward I will now be streaming Witcher on Sundays from 12 - 4 PM and Wednesdays 5:30 - 9:30 PM as GamerAnthro. (Blogs will now cover play from the Wednesday and Sunday before the "Witcher Wednesday" post.)

It will also help of course if I remember to save and not cockily enter areas before me-as-Geralt is ready.  So feel free to remind me to save if you stop in.