How heroes of the storm taught me self control, and that it's OK to back down occasionally

Back in the 2000s I would sometimes have difficulty moving around in my dreams. The handicap wasn’t your usual “I’m running but not getting anywhere” sort of complaint, but rather I found that to move I had to select myself with the left mouse button, then right click on my destination. Sometimes I would inadvertently attack a neutral character because of a mis-click.

This particular affliction was caused by the many hours of Age of Empires II my brother and I would play. It’s a “real-time strategy” (RTS) game set in the middle-ages, where you command a nation from a birds-eye view and develop your economy, technology and army to wipe out the other players. It’s terribly addictive, to the extent that the one time my mother tried it out to understand what her sons were up to, she stayed up till three trying to guide Joan of Arc to victory over the British. She never touched it again.

Those Franks are going to show the British what for

Fifteen years later, and I still haven’t grown out of the habit. The RTS genre has grown and developed, and spawned a new genre, called, stupidly enough, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena or MOBA. A lot can be written about the torturous path this genre took to existence, and one example of it that I currently find myself playing is Heroes of the Storm. And yes, it has affected my dreams.

In the game you play with four other players online, against another team of five players. Each player controls a hero character, and together with your “minions” you set out to attack the enemy and destroy their buildings. Though each character is relatively simple, usually having only four abilities, the game proffers multiple lessons that as a player you tend to learn the hard way.

Surprisingly, the first lesson that new players might have trouble with is “don’t die”. The reason why, I think, is that when you first set out to do battle on the nexus you tend to focus only on your immediate vicinity, hoping to take down enemy minions and cannons, oblivious to what the rest of your team is up to.

As you play you develop “map-awareness” to avoid surprise group attacks from the enemy team. But sometimes you’re riding high, focused as you are on the destruction of a building that is tantalisingly close to rubble, and you don’t start to retreat until it’s already far too late.

By far the juiciest prize is an enemy hero. Nothing gets the heart pumping like the sight of the enemy player with only a sliver of health left. Must… Get… That… Kill! Not only new players suffer from this tunnel vision. In a relatively recent game I was playing as Muradin, an angry hammer-wielding dwarf, and I succumbed to temptation.

I’ve provided an image of Muradin with my face for clarification:

Evidence if ever any was needed that I should grow a moustache

So for those of you unfamiliar with the game, I'll walk you through what's going on. In this first picture, you see my team, the red team. We're all trying to destroy a large angelic warrior, but don't worry about that for now. The most important character is the little dwarf to the left, played by Awoogamuffin, me!



Now we move to the centre, where we find the enemy's healer, a priest called Uther controlled by a player called Arksad. He's all alone; we'll make quick work of him.



Oh no! We almost killed him but not quite - look at his health! He's at death's door! We must finish him off! My team mate SwankyTiger, playing as the night elf Tyrande, feels the same way



But Uther is a slippery one. He can heal himself and slow us down. What's more, two of his team mates have arrived. One, Ang3lmen, is playing Zeratul, a space alien that can turn invisible and attacks you with blades made out of psionic energy. The other, Dfo, is playing greymane, a werewolf. These are all deeply serious characters with a lot of lore behind them.



At this point, we are dead dwarves/elves walking. They attack my team mate first because his character is weaker and can heal. Farewell SwankyTiger.



And then it is my turn to bite the dust.

Here my team mate offers friendly advice, which I and several of my team mates gleefully ignore. Notice that Uther is doing just fine.

If you can't read the chat at the bottom of the screen, my team mate Viltor is saying "Never chase", to which I reply "but it's so exciting" and two of my team mates are emphatically agreeing.

But what does this have to do with real life? Well in our society we are constantly bombarded with messages along the lines of “never give up”. We all have our Facebook friends who, with a slight whiff of desperation, share images of sunsets or cats or something else stupid captioned with a platitude that tells us to keep on trucking. If it can be a quote from an Important Person even better. Here are some examples (that I may or may not have made up):

The last one in particular is a fine example of somebody who doesn’t understand the concept of a “sunk cost”. The idea is that when you make a decision about whether to continue with a project that isn’t working, you shouldn’t take into account the amount of money, time or energy that you have already invested. Instead, you should be open to the idea that your resources could be put to better use elsewhere, and what has already been spent shouldn’t hold weight.

I’ve often though about situations where I shouldn’t have persisted. Especially in a romantic relationship, it seems that some arguments can’t be won, and its best to back off and avoid unnecessary entrenchment or brow-beating. Instead round and round we go, making the same points and hurting each other. Must… Win… Argument!

Well maybe winners are people who know when to give up. The podcast “Freakonomics” dedicated an entire episode to the idea, called The Upside of Quitting. It explains sunk costs much better than I can.

My favourite example is when you pay a set price for a lunch menu, but come dessert you’re full. The sensible action is to just skip the dessert and leave – you got what you came for, and have already accepted the cost. But many people will force themselves to eat the dessert simply because they'd paid for it. So you feel bloated and probably less satisfied, but at least you got your money’s worth?

Of course, in real life, no situation is exactly as pure as the theoretical “sunk cost”. How do you account for lessons learned (ha! Fat chance) or progress made, however limited? The podcast episode deals with several examples, including the heart-breaking story of the baseball player who never quite made it big.

So should we just give up? Of course not. Sometimes chasing does lead to good results. It’s a question of knowing when to chase, and when to back off.

Maybe I’ll learn that lesson if I just play enough computer games.