Mastering the Margins: The Art of Theorycrafting in Gaming and the Pursuit of Perfection

To be really good at World of Warcraft, or any number of other games, the margins at the top are very, very small. Suddenly it’s not about “this sword is one level better than this”, it’s about “if I bring this sword together with this particular weapon, together with this attack I’ll get if I this very option in my features , I am 0.5 percent more effective against this particular boss. But I have to change my hat, eat some fish and have another drink before the next one.”

These calculations, made with the help of various calculators and endless discussions, with results sometimes set as requirements by people you play with, are necessary to prove yourself at the top in games with these elements.

“Correction Theory”

This increase and calculation of the small margins – in games called “theorycrafting” – are familiar to those who read the self-help book Mikrovaner. Here the example is taken from the premier sport of England’s national cycling team – a team that in the early 2000s was so bad that bike manufacturers refused to sell bikes to them, to avoid bad PR.

A new coach came in: Dave Brailsford, a man with the “total peripheral development” philosophy. He started replacing small things that could improve the bike’s performance by 0.5 percent, changed the fabric of the suits and hired surgeons to teach the riders how to wash their hands properly.

The result was quite surprising. Just five years after Brailsford took over, the English dominated the Beijing Olympics.

But is it the fun and the pursuit of winning in major sports that makes people dig deep into the half percent, or is it also a form of gaming pleasure? Those who see the game mainly as a kind of graphical user interface for their Excel sheet will, after all, have a lot of fun entering things that -into the calculators, calculating interactions and finding perfect versions for direct. the the map. That’s even if they never play professional esports or end up in a top guild in WoW.

People are using Excel plugins for EVE online. Although it is debatable whether EVE online is a game or a part-time job in logistics.

Logistics and prompt

One of the great joys of watching live broadcasts by people who are really, really good at Factorio is seeing what I would call a refined elegance. Assembly lines that effectively merge into a larger unit, without the kind of messy knots that those of us get with a few hundred hours of less use and inevitably.

It’s not just efficiency that’s at the back of your mind. It is a good form. Clearly planned some time in advance. Symmetric properties.

There is something beautiful about such an attempt at propriety. Sometimes people also set their own goals. For example, make special patterns or write a name with the objects.

But the edge and perfection itself is also about big numbers: “Science every minute” and the most effective small growth in small margins with small changes.

City building games with a big aspect of logistics management, traffic management and movement are a bit of the same wool. It also requires good forethought about where to make room for highways and public transport, which supply chains are placed where and the route of travel between them.

The undersigned may have spent the two hours circling Cities: Skylines several times – with add-ons to manipulate signs and files through the ​Roundabout – also clearly puts me in a certain category of perfectionist, even with my stated hatred. for “theory craft”.

This search for beautiful patterns and order that you will get scratched by taking a look inside the PC case and seeing some neat cables. The Reddit channel “r/cableporn” exists for a reason. The only impulse that draws us towards the Tiktok tag is “satisfying organization”, a genre in which it is all too easy to get lost.

But shouldn’t the games tell you how to play? Doesn’t exporting the game parts to calculators or Excel sheets break the magic a bit? You can’t raid if you don’t have this exact set of features. That it is really impossible to win the game without looking behind the curtain? That there are people not only making calculators but making their own plugins so you can see more statistics or control factors at a more granular level? One could accuse this style of play of spoiling the sport itself.

Digital advantages

On the other hand, this is part of the joy of playing games on a digital surface. The advantage of a digital format over a physical one, such as Dungeons and Dragons or Magic the Gathering, is that you can have more factors. There is no shortage of space on the page. You have a choice of more decimals and a wider range of interactions because you don’t have to sit and do the math on a dice roll with d20 or 580 d6 – from Dungeons and Dragons and Shadowrun respectively.

It is a “feature” and not a “bug” that the main players should have an option for these optimizations. After a certain point, the skills have to go beyond just being the best at pressing buttons and getting the biggest sword from the previous boss enemy.

It also allows the player to customize their own goals. You don’t HAVE to have perfect traffic flow if you just want to create an aesthetically pleasing city. You don’t need to raid in WoW if you’d rather fish or get hats in the game because stamp collecting is your thing.

If you play League of Legends to hang out with friends after the kids go to bed one day a week, maybe the goal isn’t optimization, but playing something that’s fun. With features you chose yourself because the effect looks good and can be used to recruit the rest of the team to do something funny.

Or you can make the music video for Darude’s Sandstorm in Factorio by building a virtual computer with a display instead of building a factory: