The Empirical Manifesto

I've been on this path lately of nuking paradigms as I come across them - and not just the easy ones. The hard ones. The ones no one questions because they either have to look too deeply into themselves, or they don't care to. But the whole passivity of waiting for something new to come along to challenge has really been dragging me down. I've therefore decided to expand my practice to actively seeking things to challenge!

Courage is not the absence of fear. It is acting in spite of it. ~ Mark Twain

Its interesting what you learn about people by their opinions. Its even more interesting what you learn about them when you ask them why they believe something - anything - to be real, or true, or even why its their opinion. To prepare myself, I've been asking myself these questions too. I don't want to outright reject established paradigms for many of them which exist are in place because they have a high rate of repeatable success. That doesn't mean I won't verify them, however. And I really have been questioning everything. No topic too big, no topic too small!

That's what she said!

Exhausting? Yes. But I do it while I walk; three, one hour walks daily. Mental fitness, physical fitness. I try to separate logic from emotion from biology and then link them back together perhaps in a different order - to sort out which bits are playing a role where. Its fascinating really to look at anything at all and suddenly question why it even exists - why its there, in place. I'm surprised to find most of the answers lie in some sort of socio-econiomic religious tradition.

Tradition = NOT a good reason to do some shit you've always done.

What will be next? I HAVE NO IDEA! Its INSANE to challenge EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME. Unless of course you believe in consistently expiring your baselines to establish new, more effective ones. Constant reevaluation without provocation. That's been my motto for months now, and knowing me and my path, I don't see it changing anytime soon...Though I do plan to challenge its effectiveness from time to time!

Perhaps it requires such depth of oppression to create such heights of character. ~ Nelson Mandela

Wizard101 has probably been the most expensive free game I've ever played. Unless you count the individual copies of Starcraft II we collectively purchased when it was released. I understand companies not wanting someone to pirate their software, but its difficult to explain to a 10-year old that for LAN-disabled play, Blizzard required us to shell out $60 for each computer in the house. Which is, in a way, where Wizard101 shines - family accounts!

But my empirical mindset didn't take the easy path. There are two forms of in-game money, "gold" and "crowns." Gold is gathered via quests and hidden caches while crowns are purchased either online or over-the-counter at brick & morter businesses with real money. Some special items you can buy with only gold and others only crowns. This is perfectly acceptable. Because we were on the free account, we didn't have access to every area in the game - those were for monthly subscription users - or - you could pay for them with crowns. The upswing is that crown-payed areas are open to you FOREVER. Monthly-subscription users only have areas open to them while they're paying.

But after several, several, increasingly-priced closed areas (they started at around 700 crowns or $1.25 and quickly jumped to between 900/1200 or multiple 900/1200-crown purchases nested inside 2000-crown areas) it was quickly becoming untenable. The children had exhausted their savings at multiple crown purchases at $25 a pop - something I was NOT willing to bankroll. We, collectively the children and I as I discussed this with them, decided that perhaps the monthly subscription was the way to go after all - every new world, every new dungeon, is open and accessible and NOT 900+ crowns. Which means we could play and level freely, then later, if we wanted - go back and pay for the areas we thought might be worth it, rather than paying up front and not wanting what we got once there.

To make matters easier, Wizard101 gives a deep discount on family accounts. So instead of the $150 we invested in the game last month, all three of us can play for $20/month and that is something I'm willing to bankroll.

I had this conversation years ago with drax0r when he was paying a subscription to play World of Warcraft and I was unconvinced this paradigm shift was going to be in my favor. I think it was Tim Buckley (I could be mistaken), the author of the web comic CTRL+ALT+DEL who, in his blog compared those bitching about game subscriptions akin to people who buy automobiles and then are aghast that to run them they need to additionally pay for gasoline. I found his example simplistic because we hadn't been getting the gas for free for the past 100 years.

So with the entire world open to us this weekend, we gamed. All weekend we gamed.

And I drank wine while gaming.


Enormous, Obscene & Large