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sixeightsuited · 7 years

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Of Gaming, Maths and Misery

Onward! The second of God knows how many posts on the topic.

People used to dismiss video games as mindless entertainment that created a generation of lazy, disinterested youth who would rather stare at a screen than go outside. Kinda funny how now almost EVERYONE is staring at a screen for long periods of time and it’s totally cool. Well, to a point….I mean, you CAN go outside and do stuff too. But anyways…

I got hooked on the game Destiny and while I loved the campaign side of it, I was TERRIFIED to try the competitive side or PvP as its known. I am really uncomfortable with strangers to begin with and it requires often being on a headset with people you don’t know. So, I went a long time without trying what was one of the most popular parts of the game. You can look for people to play with via LFG sites (Looking for Group) but it’s a painful process for someone like me who is so self-conscious and finds making new friends very difficult let alone approaching strangers on line and asking them to play a game with me lol

I decided to try starting a Clan on the Destiny website but make it for people like me who suffer from anxiety, social awkwardness and have it be a “safe space” where there would be no judgemental shit (gamers can be real assholes) and a spirit of inclusiveness. Age, sex, culture….none of that mattered. You didn’t have to be good at the game either. Just maybe try stepping out of your comfort zone a bit like I was doing.

Well, I had no idea my vision would resonate with so many people. A rep from Bungie, the author of the game, contacted me and asked if I would like to be featured on their website.

https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/44591/7_Unite-the-Clans—Not-Quite-Sonic

Having no idea what that meant, I said “Sure” and filled out the questionnaire they sent me and as soon as it went live on the site, I had a maxed out clan and 1500 members in less than a weekend. Within three months, I went from having 10 members to over 3000 across three platforms. PS4, XBOX, and PS3

Now this post isn’t to brag about that. It’s to talk about how gaming helps people. In this particular instance, with self-confidence, self-esteem, and things like the aforementioned anxiety issues.

When I started gaming it was completely solo. The only interaction you’d have with another player was if they were in the room with you on the other controller. No online, no game lobbies, no clans. It was perfect for me. I had a friend who played and we’d spend hours on stuff like Tomb Raider, all sorts of sports games, and I especially enjoyed puzzlers and platformers.

Problem for me was, problem solving puzzlers triggered a physical reaction in me the way that math and tests in school did. When faced with math, I would have this feeling like someone just grabbed hold of the back of my head and was trying to pull my face off. My stomach would knot up, I’d get anxious, and ultimately flounder miserably. I never made it past grade 9 math to make a long story short.

(BUMMER ALERT: This next part is depressing but integral)

To go along with crippling anxiety, I had an undiagnosed Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) You see, back when I was about 5, a bunch of kids tried to cave my skull in with rocks. I was literally stoned. Not in the fun, “Dave’s not here man!” way…that came later. But in the Biblical, Life of Brian “who threw that” way. Why? Because of the colour of my skin. So that, among other things (including woeful health care that involved just throwing some stitches in me and sending me home where my adopted family ignored the vomiting and accompanying migraines) left me with a TBI that lay undiscovered til an MRI a few years ago that joyfully showed not just scar tissue on what little I have that passes for a brain, but an aneurysm somewhere in the left carotid just to sweeten the deal.

So… if it goes off, my demise will be on the hands of those kids all those years ago and they’ll never know they ultimately succeeded in killing me. Now, I would be lying if I said I didn’t have a lot of anger about it, but I also know that that kind of racism and hate is taught. At home, usually. You’re not born with it. So…while I can’t say I forgive them, I can say I understand that it’s not entirely on them. I’ve made as much peace with it as I can.

Anyways, having this physical reaction to math made learning a bit of an issue. While I was fine with other subjects, anything involving tests or activities that centered me out would cause this most unpleasant of feelings. There’s a ton of other reasons for that but this isn’t really supposed to be about me and my childhood, it’s supposed to be about gaming, games, math etc. and how it helps people.

I dropped out of school in the eleventh grade because I hated school and the way it made me feel. The two things that saved me from turning to a life of crime or at least more very poor choices were music and martial arts. I’ve covered this elsewhere so I won’t get into it here.

Now the math thing I realised also stemmed from how I was being taught. Numbers on a page evoked the aforementioned stresses. Practical application of math, like while playing darts, did not. I had a bass player who loved playing darts and his game was 501. You start with a score of 501 and subtract your score per 3 darts til you hit zero. I found I liked playing too but realised I was going to have to do math in my head. It scared me so I just watched for a while until finally I was talked into playing. Strangely, and very surprisingly, I didn’t feel that same stress and anxiety I did when doing math on paper. It made no sense to me but it made me happy that in a short time I could and still do subtraction pretty quickly without having to write it out.

Now, I’m no educator (obviously) so I can’t explain the ins and outs of it but if I did things in a hands on, practical way, I would learn and have learned a lot of stuff nobody that taught me would have ever expected. I was told by a grade 5 teacher that I would “never amount to anything like the rest of my dirty drunken kind” Little did she know I would go on to become proficient at multiple instruments including guitar, drums, bass and keyboards, sing and play in touring club acts and learn how to do front of house sound for live bands and work with some popular at the time Canadian bands like Sloan, I Mother Earth, Tea Party, Moist and a bunch of other alt-rock acts, jazz ensembles and even toured with an awesome Drag ensemble as the live sound engineer.

None of this happened by going to college and learning (Daughter of mine: DO NOT follow my example. Stay in school! I am an anomaly) but by teaching myself as far as the music part goes (I was actually kicked out of my high school music class) and having someone take me on the road as kind of an intern and show me how to set up, run and maintain a large sound system in numerous environments. I found I could troubleshoot, work under tremendous pressure in a live environment, all to my great surprise.

The reason was, for me anyways; because I learned this all in a practical way. I remember we had a college that taught audio engineering that would send students to the production company I worked for and I was charged from time to time with taking them into a live situation and putting them to work. They had no real practical experience but loads of theoretical knowledge.

I figured I’d teach them how I was taught. Throw em in the fire and see which ones think to jump out. I gave this kid total control of the show one time and the entire left bank of speakers went out in the first song and he had this deer in the headlights look as the audience, band members friends and family, all started turning around to look angrily at us. “What do I do????” he asked. I said what were you taught? He had no answer and was genuinely beginning to melt down and I don’t relish in other peoples discomfort so I offered this: follow the signal. Meaning, follow the sound signal from the mixing console back to the speakers and figure out where it’s failed.

Somewhere in that chain, something has failed. We know it’s nothing at the band/stage end of it because it’s the speakers that aren’t working. So start subtracting the stuff that it couldn’t be and find the few things it might be. It sounds like its complicated, but in actual practice, it’s quite simple. Subtraction. One of my old childhood tormentors in math was now a friend.

He, understandably, had no idea what to do under that much pressure so I left the light tech at the board and walked him through the process.

We knew back then that the signal comes to the mixing console via a cable we called the snake containing the signal from all the instruments on stage. That isn’t the problem. The sound is making it to the console. Next, the sound goes from the console into processing units like compressors, equalizers, effects units etc. Well, out of those subtract the ones that aren’t applied to the entire mix. FX units are applied to individual tracks or instruments or groups of instruments, so we know that’s not the problem. Follow the signal.

What things after you leave the mixing area affect the path of sound heading to the left and right side speakers? If its not there in your rack at the console, then follow the cables back to the racks of amplifiers that power the speakers. Have any of them shut down? Has something come unplugged? And so on. In that instance, a poorly wired amp rack was the culprit and simple subtraction (sorta) saved the day

**Of course, it’s more accurately an example of deduction or the process of elimination BUT the point is more importantly that practical application was how I learned the trade and was able to explain it to someone with mostly theoretical knowledge.

“Now what in the holy hell has this got to do with anything?” you may ask.

I’m getting there. Trust me. Now I’m gonna go watch football and eat poorly cuz, well….I deserve to.

Later taters. Stay tooned!

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