Translated roughly to non-player's words, playing Starcraft is not about winning but about optimizing your action and reaction to the quickest and most efficient. I don't wake up everyday thinking that the project is going to give me a hard time, I already have a builder order to efficiently tackle the problem, e.g., lower expectations for stakeholders early on, debugging the code step-by-step to get a handle, browse reddit for diversions etc.
I will not get frustrated if I can't win against CPU or debug the code, because winning is outside of my control depending on the skill of my opponents, allies and luck etc; I will only evaluate myself on how much I optimized on my build order. And if my build order sucks, I watch my replays and search online for a better one.
It's only I have my build-order deeply ingraned in my mind, that I work on my APM; so I can act/react faster and it comes second nature like driving but doing it faster. The same thing IMO applies to poker, trading and sports. You can't focus on binary outcome of winning or losing because so much variables are outside of your control; it's about focusing on your build order. You are willing to lose the right way over the temptation of winning the wrong way.
A much better expression of this: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=142...
All that matters is you mine exponentially by always building a worker when you can, and never getting supply capped, and spending your money.
A grandmaster can beat a platinum simply by building 10X more primary units than their opponent. There have been demos of this online.
It's true you can "perch" yourself in Diamonds or Masters with a single cheesy build, but if you want your rank to withstand patches and new releases, then you have to master the fundamentals - probes and pylons.
EAPM (Effective APM) is more pertinent than raw APM. APM arguments have raged on for more than a decade (since Broodware at the very least), and there have been many top players with low apm (300 vs 100).
For HNers, an appropriate analogy would be typing speed for coding. We have ongoing (pointless) arguments about the importance of typing speed for programmers. Whatever one's opinion/preference for this subject may be, we've seen plenty of programmers be successful with high typing speeds but many mistypes, and other with relatively low typing speeds but very accurate. There's a pretty wide range in which one can be successful.
>The Starcraft equivalent of a boilerplate template is a build order, which informs which buildings to construct in the beginning of the game.
Build orders need to be informed by the map choice and opponent. I think similar considerations would apply in the template selection in photoshop as well, though not covered in OP. I wonder what the equivalent of such meta considerations would be in design.
>Rush / Macro
Is this the common terminology in SC2 these days? It's strange since the standard counterpoint to "Macro" (economy and production) has been "Micro" (unit control).
He's talking about a style of play. Generally, "macro" play is going to for the long-game with many bases and huge armies. He calls the opposite of this as "rush." Other synonyms for "rush" are something like "timing attack" or "all-in."
Also, I don't think "timing attack" is an appropriate synonym for "rush", since timing attacks tend to occur in the early-mid game (typically off of two bases) whereas "rushes" happen within the first few minutes of the game: 7-pool, 2-rax proxy, etc.
In that vain, "all-ins" can occur at any stage in the game (though typically when a cheesy rush or committed early mid-game timing attack occurs at a heavy expense on economy) so it's not an appropriate counter-term either.
Mobile apps are video games. The moment someone (apple) designed an app-centric fullscreen OS, the stage was set for the generation of UIs that can become as immersive as good adventure games.
Mailbox is the example that sticks out in my mind currently. Can't really get much more boring than e-mail, but they figured out how to gamify it in a way that mimics the internal consistency of a cult classic title. The 'tutorial' mode of this and other apps gives me a phantom pavlovian feeling of opening the shrink-wrap on old cereal-box-sized CD-ROM packaging.
I think the if we look to video games for inspiration we can produce even more engaging environments in applications designed for productive use. Upon reading the article it looks like games have lessons for designers on both sides of the equation: the design itself, and the design process.
You can write an article about Starcraft if you love Starcraft, but juxtaposing against Photoshop workflow is disingenuous at best, misleading and confusing at the worst.
Photoshop isn't perfect, but it knocks Fireworks' socks off in every aspect: automation, formats, shortcuts, UI, precision, etc.
- no way to quickly export a layer or group on it's own with a transparent background (FW: click object, cmd+c, cmd+n, cmd+v, export) - can't copy layers with transparency to other applications - no 8-bit PNG export - auto-select sucks - takes minutes to load a 100mb file in an up-to-date computer with loads of RAM and scratch disk space. hangs when you move/resize too many layers at the same time - font rendering doesn't match system type at all
Not to mention that 99% of the time layers are not cut to size (have extra transparent padding) so you can't even get it's dimensions without a pixel ruler. That is, after you finally figure out which magic layer contains the actual objects. Please, make it stop :(
Automation? Not really. The scripting Apis for both are similar. Plus symbols and styles are way more useful for UI design than smart objects. Plus you can find and replace colours. Woot.
Formats? Who cares. Fireworks does the ones that matter for web/app design.
Shortcuts? Subjective. Can customise pretty much anything.
UI I might give you. Fireworks is a bit odd in some ways.
Precision - not a chance..fireworks lets you type in the exact size of stuff you want oh so easily..
You should try fireworks sometime, it's pretty awesome.
As a dev, I love receiving a design in fireworks. It's almost a joy to work with when extracting all the bits I need. Photoshop is a pita (though I have written a bunch of scripts I use there to make it slightly less painful).
"It's skills you use in every business management, so it's just like work!"
Go ahead and list it on your resume if you believe it.
I never played WoW, but I would believe that there are some different managerial aspects to running a guild or organizing raids with 40 other players.
I spend my free time voluntarily putting myself in fast-paced, high-stress situations where I am forced to make critical strategic decisions as quickly as possible in order to succeed.
If that's what I do for fun, imagine what I accomplish when I'm working.
An interviewer at VeryFamousWebCompany(tm) went totally rogue (I am assuming) and we spent a good 30 minutes discussing the most recent patch and how it effects game balance. I'm guessing he was able to justify this was some kind of analysis/critical-thinking question. And I still got an offer. So there's that.
If I were an employer, I'd give you major points for being good at StarCraft 2. It's a tough game. To do well, you need a fast, strategy-oriented mind, and you need to be dedicated. Being good at StarCraft shows that you're passionate about difficult problems and that you're smart and fast enough to solve them well.
Those are good skills for a programmer, IMO.
Using photoshop is like carrying water with a bucket. You've got to decide 'rush' or 'macro'. Maybe it's not important that you get all that water to the destination and losing slop over the side in a poorer quality carry is fine. Other times you'll need that bucket to arrive dry with a higher quality carry - you might be carrying over carpet, for example.
Before you start your carry you go through the starting steps to ensure a clean, empty bucket - checking that there's no holes, that the handle isn't loose or broken, that it's clean and doesn't contain anything from a different carry.
A good water bucket carrier has higher APM than a poor carrier, knowing how best to manipulate the bucket in the well and developing appropriate muscles for filling and carrying. The best water carriers can carry a bucket in each hand!
There is no best bucket - pick one to suit the task at hand. Wood is heavier, but more beautiful, a relic of a bygone era, and is the preferable material for use in specialised cases like saunas. Metal is sturdy and less prone to failure - easier to fill than a plastic if you're using a deep well as it won't float as easily. Plastic is light, cheap, and plentiful, which may be all you need, plus it is more flexible.
And of course, carrying water is a task best suited for collaboration. You get to socialise, and it goes faster if everyone pitches in.
Funnily enough, a lot of designers tend not to bother with the shortcut stuff, arguably as they don't tend to be doing it day-in day-out.
On the other hand, an illustrator colleague knows all the shortcuts as well as I do (related: the one peeve I had with the near-future tech of Charlie Brooker's 'Be Right Back' ep of Black Mirror was this exact scenario, where an illustrator is using a highly gestural interface to do work. Her whole arms would be aching after just a few hours!)
- Taking calculated risks - Understanding Macro vs Micro - Timing vs Economy vs Technology - Opponent psychology - Focus / Intelligence / Hard work
