{"id":3629,"date":"2012-01-09T17:31:12","date_gmt":"2012-01-09T22:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=3629"},"modified":"2012-01-09T17:31:12","modified_gmt":"2012-01-09T22:31:12","slug":"holiday-guest-blog-6-alan-au-home-field-advantage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2012\/01\/09\/holiday-guest-blog-6-alan-au-home-field-advantage\/","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Guest Blog 6: Alan Au – “Home Field Advantage”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In what is probably the final guest blog of the season (so many shirkers), my old friend Alan Au steps up to write about the comforts and meaning of “home” in gaming. Alan and I have known each other for a long time and try to make the effort to connect in person on those rare occasions we’re in the same city. He’s a freelancer and authority on health games (whatever those are) and has written guest blogs before. Well, he’s back. Later this week, I have a lot to say.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Ah, home for the holidays. A home is a wonderful thing, a haven from the stresses and worries of the outside world. And of course, a home base is the foundation of every great expedition, adventure, and campaign. It is a place that provides comfort and familiarity, providing a unique advantage for the strategy-game player. Professional sports teams are intimately familiar with the concept of the home-field advantage, but what exactly is that advantage? It turns out that history is littered with examples of how being at home can be advantageous, whether in a war against nations, at the local stadium, or in a good-natured contest around the dining room table.<\/p>\n

At its core, home-field advantage is really all about familiarity. The Romans were well aware of the value of familiarity; they trained their legions to construct camps in a standardized layout, ensuring that any soldier could enter any encampment and instantly know where things were. Familiarity is how we get through life without having to re-think everything all of the time. This is why we memorize chess openings and StarCraft build orders, why we customize our controls and put our game pieces in certain places. We are creatures of habit, and the advantage of familiarity is that we can spend more time on the intricacies of strategy instead of worrying about the routine stuff.<\/p>\n

The home-field advantage is also about comfort. For one thing, you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to go anywhere, which means that the time and energy spent on travel can instead be spent on something else, even if that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something as simple as a chance to sleep in. When you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re at home, you can also eat foods that you like, and more importantly foods that won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t upset your stomach. Games don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always model this, but the home-field advantage isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so much about the game as it is about the player. Pretty much everyone performs better with a good night\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sleep and a happy tummy.<\/p>\n

There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also a geographical component to the home-field advantage. It may not be quite as critical in chess or football where the playing field is intentionally symmetric, but it can make all the difference in a complex strategy game where terrain comes into play. Modern maps and GPS systems are great, but as anyone who has ever gotten online directions knows, map knowledge will only get you so far. The home-field advantage is about knowing the quirky situationally-dependent ways you can defy the normal assumptions, whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s navigating an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153impassable\u00e2\u20ac\u009d mountain range or knowing which backroads to take on the way to grandma\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s house. Home is the place where you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get lost.<\/p>\n

Of course, the home-field advantage isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just about a place; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about the people living there and the support that they provide. This is a mainstay of guerrilla warfare and every successful political revolution in the history of mankind. At the stadium, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about having friendly referees and crowds who cheer louder when your sports team is ahead. A large part of the home-field advantage is the boost to morale that comes from knowing you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re among friends, and that you are where you belong. However, competing at home also carries some risks. With all of the bonuses stacked in your favor, a loss at home can be tremendously demoralizing. Whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the Visigoths sacking Rome or it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s aliens threatening to invade the Earth, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing quite as discouraging as discovering that your home is no longer a safe place. Home represents your cultural foundation and final refuge, the one place you know you will always belong. That is, unless you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re somehow kicked out. You can adopt a scorched-earth strategy and try and make things worse for the other guy, but at the end of it all, you need somewhere to go.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the home-field advantage is a meta-strategy that takes effect before you even make your first in-game move. It isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really any one thing that gives you an edge; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s everything all together. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arranging all of your stuff just the way you like it and knowing the best way to get from point A to point B. It comes from feeling comfortable with your tools and your surroundings, and the confidence that comes from being among friends. So how do you make the home-field advantage work for you? When you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re at home, it already does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In what is probably the final guest blog of the season (so many shirkers), my old friend Alan Au steps up to write about the comforts and meaning of “home” in gaming. Alan and I have known each other for a long time and try to make the effort to connect in person on those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-Wx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3629"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3629"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3631,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3629\/revisions\/3631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}