Qxc's life after pro-gaming, Year 1.5

On March 24 2017 20:54 Heyoka wrote:
man you are crushing it with Aeon's End, that's awesome. One of my friends who loves board games was telling me how great it was a few months back too, kind of out of the blue.

I know the kind of issues you wrestle with, there's always a sort of difficulty in making sense of certain areas of your past and realizing you didn't have the knowledge to tackle the challenge, and reconciling the feeling that you do now. In a way though it almost has to play out that way sometimes - because without having that past experience you don't have anything concrete to look at to know what areas you need to work on improving. It becomes an anchor point, and if you had the lessons without it they would float away into space going unlearned. There are certain lessons we just can't learn without experiencing the opposite side, so while it can be hard to deal with seeing unfulfilled goals they are a springboard for future success. It's a needed foundation.

On March 25 2017 04:52 Apom wrote:
Hey qxc, I had an opportunity to play Aeon's End (a gaming buddy of mine bought it).

Deck-building is not really up my alley, and I generally dislike open-knowledge cooperative games, so I thought I'd just try it once and move on to something else... Well, I was surprised to actually enjoy it. Not in my top list of board games, but definitely way better than the rest in its category.

On March 24 2017 09:29 qxc wrote:
It’s been about 1.5 years since I retired from Starcraft. Doesn’t feel like that long ago sometimes. Sometimes it feels like a different life. The most random times I’ll think of my days streaming. We had so much fun trolling ladder, scanning the island, playing Amnesia… just all the random little things that happened. Other days I remember a tournament. I remember being on stage, event after event, often to be met only with disappointment. I did ok overall. I carved out a living and a space in this scene for years, but I never stood atop the mountain like I always dreamed of. Before I ever started playing competitively, I imagined myself as the best player in the world. I imagined going to Korea and being ‘that foreigner’.

While I’ll always remember my GSTL all-kill fondly, I never reached my goal. That all-kill was a drop in the bucket compared to what I really wanted. So, with every memory there is disappointment. There is something like regret, but not quite regret. I don’t wish I had done something else with my time. And I understand why I made the decisions I did. I did the best I could given my understanding of how to practice, how to improve. In the end, that didn’t matter. My best wasn’t good enough. So, I look back on those days and imagine how I could’ve been better. I walk through an event in my mind as if it were a replay and look for all the mistakes I made. I’m not talking about my play. I can barely remember that. I’m talking about my mental and physical preparations.

I just didn’t know how to consistently perform at my best, particularly when I had to travel for an event. I’ve learned so much since retiring. I discovered what sort of food I need to eat and how often. I discovered how to sleep well, consistently. I discovered how to improve more consistently. Everyday, I try to improve my habits and understand the world better.

Now, it feels like it’s too late. I’ve moved on. My board game, Aeon’s End has demanded my full attention since retirement and continues to do so. The same improvements I’ve discovered about myself, the same improvements that tell me there’s a chance I could be a pro-gamer again, are the same improvements that have given me so much success with my game that I don’t know if I’d even want to come back.

We’re onto the second Kickstarter, featuring a whole new set of content that greatly expands the base game. Within 3 days we made almost as much as we made in the entire month-long campaign last year. There’s probably a future for me as a long-term designer of Aeon’s End. I can continue to grow the franchise in new and interesting ways because the initial content has been received so well.

I started playing again a few weeks ago. A RL friend had been complaining for months that he wasn’t able to get GM. Finally, I convinced him to take up coaching. When his ZvT lesson came up, I volunteered to be his practice partner. He’s ~5K so I figured it’d be good enough, but I needed to rinse the rust off a bit. I took to the ladder a few days before and remembered how to play this game. After a few quick losses in TvT, I discovered cyclones were… different. A quick peek online gave me the build order for the 2 rax medivac and I felt ready to be a practice partner at least. You can see this lesson with PiG here.

Turns out, I actually like Starcraft. A lot. After the lesson I kept playing on and off, although I don’t have a lot of free time with all the work I have finishing up Aeon’s End for the kickstarter. Fast forward a few weeks and I’ve been pushing around 5.9/6k. I even got a chance to play against Snute on ladder. Predictably, I got crushed, but the game was pretty back and forth. I felt like I even had opportunities to win.

I don’t know what I’ll do next, but I expect to have a fair amount of free time when the kickstarter ends.