Today is our 300th episode
so we're gonna do something James has wanted to do for a long time.
I have here a letter addressed to his nephews
and he has asked me to read it:
Dear Max and Dave,
I know that you are too young to read this yet,
and I know that if I send it to you on paper, it'll get lost or thrown away
long before it’s what you need to hear,
but I know that if I inscribe it on internet, when the time comes, you’ll find it.
No matter where I am, or what I’m doing.
This video is the first of several letters I’m leaving you,
and I hope that - by the time these are valuable to you -
I’ll be able to sit down with you and talk to you about them myself,
but if not, they’ll always be here for you.
These letters contain all that I have learned from playing games.
All the things that have carried me through life thus far;
all the things that have helped me along the way.
I don’t know which you’ll need most, but I know that you love games,
so I hope this resonates with you and helps you to see all the value in your passion.
If anybody ever gives you a hard time and says that there is nothing to learn from playing games
show them these.
The first and perhaps most important thing that games ever taught me was to never give up.
This sounds trite: it’s something that every storybook and every parent says,
but the whole reason it sounds trite is because - in all of those forms -
it’s a very easy thing to say but in real life it is often very hard to do.
Only games ever hammered this lesson home for me.
I was in my teens, playing at a Magic tournament.
We were fairly far in, to the point where every win meant greater prizes.
We were on the third of a best of three.
Things had been close all game but I had finally started to pull ahead on the board.
So I’m looking at what I’ve got, I'm pondering my turn…
when my opponent suddenly throws down his hand and starts sweeping up his cards.
He’d given up.
And I was baffled. Between rounds, I sat there trying to figure out exactly what had happened.
Sure, I had been winning that match, but not by that much... Then I saw it.
My opponent had been right. I actually did have a play that would have won the game that turn...
but the thing is: I don’t know if I would have seen it.
It had just taken me minutes of pondering to find, and only when I had known there was a move to find.
I might have thrown the game by accident if my opponent had just stayed in.
And then it hit me. Giving up is a zero EV play.
There is no percent of the time where giving up is more likely to get you what you want than not giving up.
The only thing to weigh is the cost of continuing, so if it’s something that really, really matters to you,
there is just zero reason to give up.
So long as you’re in it, there is always some small percent.
Some answer, some way that you might be able to claw your way back.
Nothing is ever over until the very end.
And I’ve tried to live my life that way ever since.
And it’s been hard.
There are all sorts of times where you’re too exhausted, or too embarrassed, or just too afraid to keep fighting,
But unlike a parable or a fable, games didn’t just teach me this;
they force me to practice it constantly.
Every time I know I’m beat, every time I want to throw in the towel,
they give me an opportunity not to, and I know it’s the right play.
I started keeping score.
And it didn’t happen often, but I would say that, in one out of every hundred games I was just about to lose,
my opponent would misplay and I would claw back in it.
One out of every few hundred, they would just disconnect and I would win by default.
And then there are the times when I would just get lucky
and - simply by sticking around and giving luck the time it needs – it would win me the game.
Overall, I would say that my win percentage on the games I play seriously
is probably 1-2% higher simply because I never hit that concede button.
And while 1-2% may not seem like much,
you would be surprised at the work you have to put in
to increase your win rate by an extra 1-2% in most of these games.
And in life, where choosing to not give up isn’t simply committing yourself to the length of a match,
but a matter of years, or perhaps decades,
and where there are so many strange opportunities for luck to kick in,
or for whatever’s keeping you from what you want to stumble,
I think I’ve gotten a lot more out of life simply because every time I’m about to give up,
I remember that match.
Now there will be times where the cost of not giving up is too great, for you or those around you,
but games have taught me that those times are far, far fewer than they seem.
Thank you for watching, and for sticking with us for these 300 episodes.
It is a joy.
We’ll see you next week.
[Music: “Hang in There” by YoshiBlade]