Hey! Amidst our mutual hatred for Win at All Costs players who rob us of fun and ruin the game, we live among them every day.
It is the sad but true reality of every single industry in the world. It is funny to me how we get so bent out of shape if players do it in a game, yet most of us do it in our day-to-day lives.
Medical Profession
One of the beauties of the modern medical field is that everyone involved doesn’t just do what they want. The whole field is fueled by research that is (mostly) shared by the community and the way they do things is changed. These are called Best Practices, and it streamlines a lot of the diagnostic routines. You got a rodent stuck somewhere? They have a process of diagnosis and procedure to take care of that. Got an appendage lodged in a jacuzzi jet? A common mistake and one that they know how to deal with.
They have worked together as a community and figured out how best to deal with things. While this isn’t always 100% useful for every circumstance, it puts everyone on a similar footing and makes the whole thing run better.
Professional Sports
There is a ton, and I mean, A TON of money flowing through professional sports. With so much cash tied up in it, they have to be WAAC players just to be average. From weight training to aerobics, to special diets and techniques, they have to take it seriously. There are Best Practices for everything from stadium maintenance, to ticket handling, to concessions that sell the best.
After being in business for decades, they have collected all the most efficient ways of doing things and they all use those guidelines. From offensive Tweets to gun and domestic abuse charges on athletes, this industry knows how to handle all of them. Ya know why? Best Practices, aka WAAC playing. Gee, some athletes are pretty garbage, huh?
This is just a side point, but giving terrible people disgusting amounts of money to run around once a week has drawbacks. Interesting.
Engineering
Do you ever wonder how people design bridges, or buildings, or any other structure? A dude just walks up and says, “Yeah, so start stacking those blocks over there. How many? Um, let’s go ten stories, I don’t care. Floor plans? I was just gonna wing it. I actually never finished college, I think floor plans were in the last semester.” And Tada! Your next favorite structure is built!
No. It doesn’t happen that way at all. The stress ratings, load-bearing calculations, and homeless urine-prohibiting spikes are all equations not created individually by each engineer. The industry has determined the best/safest way to build things and for good reason. You forget to carry the one and it could have drastic consequences. Suddenly your spring-loaded anti-urination spikes in your lobby go off and kill the UPS guy. That’s a PR nightmare even the professional sports guys don’t want to deal with.
Truth Be Told
So it should be obvious by now that every facet of our life is actually Win-at-all-costs. So why do we take it badly when a player comes at this game with an outlook like this? Shouldn’t we all be choosing only the best models? Or copying and pasting the latest net list? If we are playing this game to win (like all of these corporations are) then we should all be doing every single thing we can to win.
The difference is why you choose to play this game. For the majority of players, it can be about imagination, creativity, and friendship. Dislodging a rodent or winning at all costs is not the reason for playing. We play for FUN, as in mutual fun. In keeping with my previous analogy, let’s give an example. When a WAAC player plays against a FAAC player, it is not unlike the following scenario.
Your local baseball league is scheduled to play against the New York Mets. Your team gets together to play some fun games and drink some beer. You just do it for fun. Meanwhile, you agree to play against the Mets, who are a trained, professional team who plays for keeps.
Guess how much fun that game is going to be for your pathetic “just for fun” team? Not much. By the time you end your game with a score of 300 -5, you’ll agree that both teams did not share the same goals.
Long story short: it seems best to play and be friends with folks with similar goals on the tabletop.
Do you know someone WAAC in real life too?
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