Pursuing a university degree vs playing games/boardgames professionally

Kyriakos

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I think it's a nice topic for discussion: would you rather pursue academic learning or strive to be a top player of a game?

In recent times, the most lucrative (non-sport) games to be a pro in are arguably some e-games with global leagues. The best players (a tiny percentage) make considerable money out of it. Such games include rts like Starcraft and AOEIIDE.
But another example would be the boardgame, chess. Again you have a global league and prestige/titled/paid events, with the top players making at least a few tens of thousands of dollars per event (and there are numerous events, apart of course from the candidates and ultimately the championship).
But with chess - and I assume it's analogous with those e-games - a few famous players have spoken about it all being meaningless in the end and "a waste of time". Those include former champions, like Bobby Fischer. Here is a very short clip, Caruana is a famous current player (not a champion, but one of the few who did get rich playing chess)


He was reacting to a comment by the interviewer, that "many talented players are lost because they choose to pursue university studies and abandon chess", a view which he doesn't agree with (thinks it's the other way around).

I agree with his sentiment. While chess requires dedication, you aren't discovering anything outside the very limited world of chess itself - assuming you will even get to discover something new and then add to chess theory. It is a very self-contained endeavor, similar to being a pro-player in sports, just a bit more prestigious (for better or worse). It's not something where your knowledge can translate to fields outside of it, nor a field where your growth is exponential. Last but not least, for decades now the best players are computer engines, and humans merely compete for ceremony.
This is in contrast to fields like math or science, where the room for expansion is vast and (imo equally importantly) so is the room for interconnecting knowledge. So in that respect, assuming we avoid a nihilistic view where nothing matters and all is equally unimportant, it can be said to be more meaningful to pursue.
 
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I agree with his sentiment. While chess requires dedication, you aren't discovering anything outside the very limited world of chess itself - assuming you will even get to discover something new and then add to chess theory. It is a very self-contained endeavor, similar to being a pro-player in sports, just a bit more prestigious (for better or worse). It's not something where your knowledge can translate to fields outside of it, nor a field where your growth is exponential. Last but not least, for decades now the best players are computer engines, and humans merely compete for ceremony.
This is in contrast to fields like math or science, where the room for expansion is vast and (imo equally importantly) so is the room for interconnecting knowledge. So in that respect, assuming we avoid a nihilistic view where nothing matters and all is equally unimportant, it can be said to be more meaningful to pursue
I'd rather be a chess grandmaster.

Who loses at math? No losers, no real winners.

Contribution to society is badly overrated, and I don't think rewarding. If I could consistently triumph over effectively the rest of the world at any game, I'd much rather do that, provided I had the financial ability to sustain myself(I don't care about anyone enough to pay for their things, presently).

Edit: Interestingly, there's an interview with Bobby in which he was asked what he'd like to do after winning the championship. His answer was "I'd really like to play more chess".
 
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In the cosmic scheme of things, a lot of subject matters you might study in college (e.g. history) are also meaningless.
 
It's why I included a "let's for the time being leave nihilism out of it" comment in the OP ^^
Or to phrase it differently: just because all can be deemed as unimportant, it doesn't mean parts of it can't be deemed less important even on a different account.
If you think all numbers below (eg) 10.000 are small, it still doesn't change the fact that 4 is smaller than 9999.
 
Oh I guess I didn't read your whole post.

My real, uncynical answer is the uni education. In the humanities. I'm a bit of an existentialist: one's life has the meaning one brings to it/finds in it. Chess, or any game, wouldn't for me be a wide enough realm to find such meaning.
 
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In the cosmic scheme of things, a lot of subject matters you might study in college (e.g. history) are also meaningless.
This is the sort of thing Sally would say in a Peanuts comic strip.

As for the Erie Canal? I know there was a song written about it. I'm sure it has great significance as far as economics and travel are concerned. But it's on the other side of the continent from me. Might as well ask someone from Newfoundland about the significance of Roger's Pass in the Rockies.

I'm trying to fathom what board game I could play that anyone would pay me to play. I know I'm not good enough at Scrabble (scores are consistently in the 800-point range against other casual players who haven't eaten and digested multiple dictionaries and don't know the Greek alphabet).

The board games I'm good at include Clue and any of the Mayfair rail games.

Maybe I should develop the rest of the rules for Fizzbin. It's frequently dark on Tuesday around here.
 
Oh I guess I didn't read your whole post.

My real, uncynical answer is the uni education. In the humanities. I'm a bit of an existentialist: one's life has the meaning one brings to it/finds in it. Chess, or any game, wouldn't for me be a wide enough realm to find such meaning.
It's not limited to finding meaning in stuff, though, there's also the question of how contained a field/interest is. The best (for example) Age of Empires II (new version) players have a very confined (though not as confined as in some other games, including chess; also due to the latter's history of theory) space for originality. You end up with small improvements on a basic variation of a strategy. You can't discover something there to usher in an actual new era in the field (apart from the aforementioned very limited sense).
You can also compare it to games like Civilization. While there is some value in computations early on, it quickly becomes too tedious and the return is ever diminishing and arguably little already after the first 20something turns (nevermind the actual computation being taxing), so people very rationally just play as they feel (but that is the opposite of pro-level/contest-driven games).
It's also an archetype of a niche, to be dedicated for decades on being good/great in a game. It's why I agree with some notable players (such as the one used as example in the OP) about this making little sense in the long run, as opposed to some university field (yes, the more theoretical fields, like the humanities, can also be pretty subjective, but there are other fields if that is a problem).
 
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You can also compare it to games like Civilization. While there is some value in computations early on, it quickly becomes too tedious and the return is ever diminishing and arguably little already after the first 20something turns (nevermind the actual computation being taxing), so people very rationally just play as they feel (but that is the opposite of pro-level/contest-driven games).
That is accurate.

I preferred marathon speed in 6, when not playing with my buddies.

If you take things to the logical maximum, it was possible to win a science victory before 1AD, via heavy pillaging. Effectively farming AI science improvements. At a certain point, I was chopping in universities for the AI, building their infrastructure, then carpet pillaging their city, before giving it back.

I think I won an SV in something absurd like 1350BC, but it was a miserable way to play.
 
If it paid enough I'd play snakes & ladders for a living and use the profits to get a real education and buy some fancy fruit & other luxury items.
But the top players likely need to maintain their level for a while, so as to amass money... And if it makes (some of) them feel their life is spent on something pointless, it may not be a good plan :D
 
I was so very lucky having no talent nor opportunity to go to university and yet I gained the opportunity to become a consultant and grant writer who was able to go out and find concentrated areas of poverty to which I was able to bring water and sewer and street and housing improvements. I can think of nothing more rewarding, and it just fell into my lap. Money was okay as well.

Interesting, when the world changed and all that fell apart, I went back to school, in middle age, for some time, and found that led to nothing so then I spent some years in poker rooms which I learned to hate but it paid my student loans. My experience is that the best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley.
 
I follow some 'professional' YouTubers concerning the PC games I play; they make their living playing the games on the highest skill level and making content.

My personal sentiment is this; I envy their skills. I do not envy them playing the same game for hours each day to make a living. I would come to resent the games deeply and burn out, if it was me in their shoes.

I would absolutely pursue a University degree.
 
My friend is a chess Grandmaster (let him crash my place a week en route to a tournament in Germany) and one of the most depressed/depressing guys I know.

YouTube makes it look glamorous but if you don't have a Twitch personality and aren't willing to wh0re yourself to an internet audience it's actually quite a slog to make money @ it.

Being some academic sounds a bit boring tho. I'd rather be out in the world and build something that could help humanity than either of those.
 
If there was a game that I enjoyed enough to make it my full-time job, I’d be tempted to do it.

Chess, however, would require me to be around professional chess people, and that sounds exhausting.
 
A college degree does not make one an academic. It mainly demonstrates an element of ongoing engagement in learning and will broaden ones intellectual horizons. The knowledge gained can easily be applied to work place skills over a wide variety situations. Becoming a gaming or streaming star is quite focused and not to different from any other sports stardom. Very few people who play sports in HS and college are good enough to make a living at it after either level of education. Gamers are similar. Very few will make the cut to stardom and riches. The career path is a pretty short one unless it leads to other opportunities: being hired by the gaming company for some position?

It seems like being in such a position would make one a "slave" to the whims of a quirky community while foregoing a less risky path. In any case the future is a bit murky and perhaps those top gamers will one day be as movie stars are today.

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I retired this year after 51 years of multiple careers. Now I play all the games I want. Of course, back in the Seventies, video/computer games were few and far between unless you wanted to feed quarters into a machine to play Mortal Combat or whatever it was. Board games had a much less of a footprint than it does now. Also, I enjoyed my four years of college -- and not just for the parties! So even now, I'd rather gone to college than mastering a single game.
 
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