...or something.

https://www.indiegogo.com/greek-bailout-fund.html

I miss Ins casting and decided to ask him why he hasn't been streaming some games lately. He told me he just doesn't have the hardware (can't even stream QL properly), but has the free time to stream some hours every day, and would like to do it.

I figured that probably there are more people that feel the same as me, and that may also be willing to put up some money to get The Amazing Ins back, so I decided to help him out with this campaign. I am also contributing the first €100.

The target of the campaign is €1000, so he can get a proper rig. It's a fixed campaign, so all donations will be refunded if the target isn't met. If it is, the raised amount will be automatically credited to Ins' PayPal account.

In return for your money, you can choose from several perks we've set up to get privileged access to Ins' deep insights and potentially a huge Elo boost!

If you miss his high-level game analysis and commentary, join us and help bring back to all our lives the awesomeness of The Amazing Ins! :)


Links: IndieGoGo campaign page

The other day I stumbled across this article on Slate that talks about how, in the current scientific view, differences of skill in individuals relate to practice and other factors. It presents some interesting studies and data about the amount of deliberate practice different chess players needed to become masters, shows how not all practice is effective and some other interesting stuff:

For example, the number of hours of deliberate practice to first reach "master" status (a very high level of skill) ranged from 728 hours to 16,120 hours. This means that one player needed 22 times more deliberate practice than another player to become a master.

What's not surprising for me (but apparently is for some people) is that, according to the article, the current scientific consensus is that people do have genetic predispositions that may set them apart from others in terms of abilities (what I'd call natural talent):

There is now an overwhelming scientific consensus that genes contribute to individual differences in abilities.

Then it moves on to the social effects of this realization, that pretty much lead to what Mr. Huxley had predicted in 1933 (but at a much faster pace).

Because Quake requires so many different abilities to play at high level, it could be interesting to have a survey of how the different factors affect players results and how much practice (and of what kind) each one needs to get to top form. :)