How to Fix the NBA

The NBA made about $7 billion last year, so it’s not exactly “broken”. Nonetheless, all games need periodic improvements in design, and the bigger the incentives to win the game, the more players will be incentivized to work around the rules in unconventional ways. For example, the largest tournament for the videogame Overwatch gave out $300,000 in prize money last year, and it receives updates and tweaks to gameplay every month to keep it balanced.

Last year, the Golden State Warriors saw their franchise value soar to over $3 billion according to Forbes, an increase of about $450 million. How important is winning to this equation? The league’s 10 least valuable teams (according to Forbes) had 4 winning records last year, with the best being 2 games above .500. None have won a championship since Detroit won in 2005, none have made the Finals since Detroit in 2005 either. The San Antonio Spurs are the most valuable small market team (and 11th overall) but have won 5 championships in last 20 years.

Therefore, teams have a massive incentive to exploit the rules to win. It is the job of the game designers, the NBA, to determine what the correct rules are for creating a well-crafted, competitive game. I will be offering three major reforms to improve the game.

The Obvious: End the Draft Lottery

The Problem

A major problem in recent years has been the rise of “tanking”, where teams that aren’t going to win a championship lose on purpose to get better draft spots. This is excellent strategy, but makes for boring games. The NBA is acutely aware of the problem, and has implemented a series of fixes to try and deal with it, all ineffective. The first was a lottery system, where the worst team was no longer guaranteed the best draft pick. This lottery system has been tweaked over time to reduce the chances of the worst teams to get the best picks, yet of course those teams still have the best shot to get the best pick; the incentives haven’t changed, losing more games still, on average, increases your draft spot. In 2019, the first 4 picks, as opposed to the current 3, will be determined by lottery. Still, the incentives remain unchanged; losing more games is better for your franchise’s future.

The Solution

There is a simple solution to this: draft futures. Instead of the worst team drafting a player, they pick a draft spot, where the draft spot is determined by another team’s win-loss record in the following season. For example, say the Phoenix Suns are the worst team this year (2018). At the beginning of next season, they get to pick who they think will have the worst record in April 2019. Suppose they think it will be the Brooklyn Nets. Then if the Nets finish last in 2019, the Suns will get the first pick, but if the Nets finish 8th to last, the Suns will pick 8th.

This would immediately solve the incentive to tank, as your worse record helps another team (distinct from the obvious losing games helps the opposing team). Each team would then be incentivized to win as many games as possible since their loss directly benefit other team’s draft location. Bad teams would still be rewarded, although it would be much less direct than right now; they’d have an opportunity to get a good draft pick in two seasons, depending on how well they could pick the worst teams next year, which is inherently difficult. Teams would have to barred from picking themselves of course, but it would significantly improve competitiveness in the bottom half of the league, as losing games would no longer help you the following year.

This system is similar to simply pushing off the draft reward for poor records by one year, but the added randomness of the draft futures ensures that any single loss is far enough removed from any benefit to your team, while providing a concrete benefit to another team, so as to disincentivize losing.

A draft future could also be traded, just like a draft pick, and in fact, it would be pretty easy to convert draft picks to draft futures; if a team is owed a first round draft pick in 2021 (say the Miami Heat owe the Phoenix Suns a first round draft pick), then at the start of the season in October 2020, Phoenix would pick in Miami’s place what team they want their pick tied to (say Brooklyn is taken so they pick Atlanta). The record of Atlanta would then place where Phoenix picks in the 2021 draft (e.g. Atlanta finishes 13th in the league, so Phoenix picks 30-13=17th). The timing of the trade can also be arbitrary. Say Miami lucks out and this season they selected Memphis because most people thought Memphis would be good, and Miami had a late pick because they were pretty good last year. But it turns out Memphis is terrible, and Miami wants to add a piece to make a playoff push; Miami could then trade their Memphis draft future to another team who is interested in draft picks and pick up a role player.

This is a clear improvement over our current system, and I have no idea why Adam Silver is still messing around with lottery percentages in an inherently broken system that incentivizes losing.

The Difficult: Shortening the Season

The Problem

Teams are resting their players during the regular season. The Spurs famously benched their top four players for a primetime game against the defending champion Miami Heat in 2012, and were fined $250,000. The argument is that resting star players takes away from the competitiveness of the regular season, in a manner similar (although lesser in magnitude) to tanking.

The Solution

I wrote two and half years ago why the NBA should shorten their season by looking at the mathematics of winning percentages. The takeaway was that all good teams in the NBA make the playoffs easily, and so much of the regular season can be shortened without losing the best teams in the playoffs. It’s still accurate and useful to read. However, I glossed over perhaps the most important point, which is that players are already resting anyway, and if they’re not resting, they often miss games because they are hurt. Reducing the length of the season would help both of these issues.

Nonetheless, this is very difficult to implement. I would advocate for fewer games so that road back-to-backs (two road games in two nights) could be eliminated. Studies have shown that players are 3.5x more likely to get injured in road back-to-backs. This would only require the elimination of about 8 games, but that’s about 10% of the NBA season, and owners would not be happy. Ticket and concession sales aren’t the bulk of NBA revenue, but TV revenue would decline as well with 10% fewer regular season games. However, the regular season games would be better quality on average, with fewer players missing games due to rest or injury.

It’s frustrating because obviously there are too many games in an NBA season; if players are resting, it’s because they aren’t necessary to win the game, or the loss of a game isn’t important enough to warrant the risk of injury. Doing well in the playoffs is more important for teams, so it makes sense that they would sit out some regular season games. At the very least, the league should stop penalizing teams for resting their players; teams are penalized by losing the game. If the losses don’t mean enough, then the season is too long. It’s just that simple.

The Insane: End of Game Sudden Death Rules

The Problem

This is my most controversial problem. The end of NBA games are often not basketball; they are exploitation of the rules to stop the clock by fouling, and then efforts to score as quickly as possible. This effectively stops any actual basketball play on one side of the floor. It’s also boring to watch as a spectator as the game goes from something exciting and athletic to one guy just shooting free throws, and the game slows way down.

The Solution

This proposed new system works like this: instead of having a timed period of basketball, the first team to reach a certain score (higher than the current higher scoring team) wins. For example, let’s suppose we use this method in overtime. Instead of having a five minute overtime, it would be three minutes, but at the end of three minutes, the Sudden Death score would be score of the team in the lead + 7. So if after three minutes of overtime the score is 100-99, then the first team to 107 wins. But if the score is 110-100, then the first to 117 wins. This favors the team already winning as it should, but disincentives fouling, as you want to keep your opponent from scoring at any cost.

Maybe this isn’t a problem and shooting free throws at the end of games is fine. But I think there is room for improvement. Exactly when and how this is implemented is difficult to say. Perhaps this should be implemented during overtime, perhaps at the end of regulation. Certainly it should be tried in the G-League or All-Star game first, as it’s a radical change. The exact numbers and implementation are hard to know. Perhaps the Sudden Death score should be +10 instead of +7. Perhaps it should only be used if after the first overtime is completed and we are still tied. Perhaps it should be used to shorten overtime. Perhaps it would be a good replacement for the end of regulation. I’m not sure, but I suspect in specific areas where long games are undesirable because they are just exhibitions, such as preseason or the G-League, I think this could be a useful tool to call a winner at the end of regulation. It also might be useful for preventing serial overtimes, although perhaps such a rule is undesirable in the playoffs.

I think such an option has to be seriously looked at though, because intentional fouling at the end of games really changes the game dynamics and stops all the action.

Conclusion

A fix for the draft lottery has to be implemented as soon as possible, and the current proposals do not go far enough. Draft futures are a pretty good approach that would definitely reduce the incentive problem teams face for the draft, without straying too far from the fundamental purpose of the draft, which is to create parity. Season shortening is vital but may not be able to overcome owners’ interests in having as many games as possible. Sudden Death is radical but radical ideas need to always be considered. Basketball is younger than most other sports, and significant rule changes have occurred even more recently; the three point line was only implemented in 1979. Changing intentional fouling at the ends of games is much less radical an idea than that.

2018 Predictions

Untestable knowledgeable cannot be scientific. To avoid the problems of retroactively placing events into your narrative of the world, predictions must be laid out before events happen. If you try to use your model of the world to create testable predictions, those predictions can be proven right or wrong, and you can actually learn something. Incorrect predictions can help update our models.

This is, of course, the basis for the scientific method, and generally increasing our understanding of the world. Making predictions is also important for making us more humble; we don’t know everything and so putting our beliefs to the test requires us to reduce our certainty until we’ve researched a subject before making baseless claims. Confidence levels are an important part of predictions, as they force us to think in the context of value and betting: a 90% confidence level means I would take a $100 bet that required me to put up anything less that $90. Moreover, it’s not just a good idea to make predictions to help increase your knowledge; people who have opinions but refuse to predict things with accompanying confidence levels, and therefore refuse to subject their theories to scrutiny and testability, must be classified as more fraudulent and intellectually dishonest.

First let’s take a look at how I did this past year, and see if my calibration levels were correct. Incorrect predictions are crossed out.

Predictions for 2017:

World Events

Trump Approval Rating end of June <50% (Reuters or Gallup): 60%
Trump Approval Rating end of year <50% (Reuters or Gallup): 80%
Trump Approval Rating end of year <45% (Reuters or Gallup): 60%
Trump 2017 Average Approval Rating (Gallup) <50%: 70% (reference)
~~ISIS to still exist as a fighting force in Palmyra, Mosul, or Al-Raqqah: 60%~~
ISIS to kill < 100 Americans: 80%
US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 60%
No terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 90% (reference)
France will not vote to leave to the EU: 80%
The UK will trigger Article 50 this year: 70% (reference)
The UK will not fully leave the EU this year: 99%
No country will leave the Euro (adopt another currency as their national currency): 80%
S&P 500 2017 >10% growth: 60%
S&P 500 will be between 2000 and 2850: 80% (80% confidence interval)
Unemployment rate December 2017 < 6% : 70%
WTI Crude Oil price > $60 : 70%
Price of Bitcoin > $750: 60%
~~Price of Bitcoin < $1000: 50%~~
~~Price of Bitcoin < $2000: 80%~~
~~There will not be another cryptocurrency with market cap above $1B: 80%~~
~~There will not be another cryptocurrency with market cap above $500M: 50%~~
Sentient General AI will not be created this year: 99%
Self-driving cars will not be available this year for general purchase: 90%
Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
I will not be able to buy trips on self-driving cars from Uber/Lyft in a location I am living: 80%
I will not be able to buy a trip on a self-driving car from Uber/Lyft without a backup employee in the car anywhere in the US: 90%
Humans will not land on moon by end of 2017: 95%
~~SpaceX will bring humans to low earth orbit: 50%~~
SpaceX successfully launches a reused rocket: 60%
No SpaceX rockets explode without launching their payload to orbit: 60%
Actual wall on Mexican border not built: 99%
Some increased spending on immigration through expanding CBP, ICE, or the border fence: 80%
~~Corporate Tax Rate will be cut to 20% or below: 50%~~ (it was 21%)
Obamacare (at least mandate, community pricing, pre-existing conditions) not reversed: 80%
~~Budget deficit will increase: 90%~~ (Not if you go by National Debt increase January to January)
~~Increase in spending or action on Drug War (e.g. raiding marijuana dispensaries, increased spending on DEA, etc): 70%~~ (hard to say: Rohrbacher Amendment, FY2018 DoJ changes)
Some tariffs raised: 90% (reference)
The US will not significantly change its relationship to NAFTA: 60%
~~Federal government institutes some interference with state level legal marijuana: 60%~~
At least one instance where the executive branch violates a citable civil liberties court case: 70% (I made this too broad as I can cite Berger v New York and the NSA violates it every day)
Trump administration does not file a lawsuit against any news organization for defamation: 60%
Trump not impeached (also no Trump resignation): 95%

Sports

Miami Heat do not make playoffs: 95%
~~Miami Heat get top 6 draft pick: 60%~~
Duke basketball wins 1 game or more against UNC: 80%
Duke basketball makes it to Round of 32 in NCAA Tournament: 90%
~~Duke basketball makes Final Four: 50%~~
Duke basketball does not win NCAA tournament: 80%
Warriors or Cavs will win the NBA title: 60%
Lebron James will not be highest paid NBA player during 2017-18 season: 70%

Personal

Employed in current job: 90%
I will have less than 300 Twitter followers: 60%
I will change my registered party from Republican to Libertarian: 70%
~~I will have authored > 14 more blog posts (not just on this blog) by June 30, 2017: 90%~~
~~I will have authored > 30 more blog posts (not just on this blog) by December 31, 2017: 80%~~
michaelelgart.com to have >3,000 page loads 2017: 70%
These predictions are under-confident: 70%

I missed all the ones I marked as 50% confident, but I’ve realized that 50% predictions do not convey any information. I could have also listed the predictions as simultaneously saying that there was a 50% chance the exact opposite of the statement occurred, so actually, I got exactly half of them right, and I will always get exactly half of them right. This makes the category completely useless, and so I have decided to avoid posting any predictions of exactly 50% accuracy for next year.

In the other categories:

Of items I marked as 60% confident, 11 were correct out of 13.
Of items I marked as 70% confident, 8 were correct out of 9.
Of items I marked as 80% confident, 10 were correct out of 13.
Of items I marked as 90% confident, 6 were correct out of 8.
Of items I marked as 95% confident, 3 were correct out of 3.
Of items I marked as 99% confident, 4 were correct out of 4.

This doesn’t look that impressive or well-calibrated, although one point I will make is that one of the 90% confidence predictions I missed was a personal goal to blog more. I only missed this by one blog post, and it makes sense that I was overconfident in it. Taking that one out, my 90% predictions come in at 87.5%, which is pretty good.

I did better than I should have on my 60% confidence predictions. In retrospect, predictions about the number of Twitter followers I would have, and about Trump’s approval rating were really under-confident (affected my 70% predictions as well). I severely cut the number of tweets on my personal twitter account in favor of one with more anonymity, and Trump never really recovered from his initial approval ratings, information I had pretty readily available. Additionally, my 60% confidence that Bitcoin’s price would be above $750 seems woefully incorrect, and it’s clear in this case, that I really had no idea what Bitcoin was going to do.

Predictions for 2018:

World Events

Trump Approval Rating end of year <50% (Gallup): 95%
Trump Approval Rating end of year <45% (Gallup): 90%
Trump Approval Rating end of year < 40% (Gallup): 80%
US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 60%
No single terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 95%
The UK will not fully leave the EU this year: 99%
No country will leave the Euro (adopt another currency as their national currency): 80%
North Korea will still be controlled by the Kim dynasty: 95%
North Korea will conduct a nuclear test this year: 70%
North Korea will conduct a missile test this year: 95%
Yemeni civil war will still be happening: 70%
S&P 500 2018 >10% growth: 60%
S&P 500 will be between 2500 and 3200: 80% (80% confidence interval)
Unemployment rate December 2018 < 6%: 80%
Unemployment rate December 2018 < 5%: 60%
WTI Crude Oil price up by 10%: 60%
Price of Bitcoin > $10,000: 70%
Price of Bitcoin < $30,000: 60%
Price of Bitcoin < $100,000: 70%
Lightning Network available (I can complete a transaction on LN): 80%
Drivechain development “complete”: 70%
Drivechain opcodes not soft-forked into Bitcoin: 70%
No drivechains soft-forked into existence: 95%
US government does not make Bitcoin ownership or exchange illegal: 90%
Self-driving cars will not be available this year for general purchase: 95%
Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
I will not be able to buy trips on self-driving cars from Uber/Lyft in a location I am living: 95%
I will not be able to buy a trip on a self-driving car from Uber/Lyft without a backup employee in the car anywhere in the US: 90%
Humans will not be in lunar orbit in 2018: 95%
SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will attempt to launch this year (can fail on launch): 95%
SpaceX will bring humans to low earth orbit: 70%
No SpaceX rockets explode without launching their payload to orbit: 60%
Mexican government does not pay for wall: 99%
Border wall construction not complete by end of 2018: 99%
Some increased spending on immigration through expanding CBP, ICE, or the border fence: 80%
No full year US government budget will be passed (only several months spending): 90%
US National Debt to increase by more than 2017 increase (~$500B): 70%
Increase in spending or action on Drug War (e.g. raiding marijuana dispensaries, increased spending on DEA, etc): 70%
Some tariffs raised: 90%
The US will not significantly change its relationship to NAFTA: 70%
Federal government institutes some interference with state level legal marijuana: 70%
Trump administration does not file a lawsuit against any news organization for defamation: 90%
Mexican government does not pay for wall 99%
Trump not removed from office (also no Trump resignation): 95%
Democrats do not win control of Senate: 60%
Democrats win control of House: 60%

Sports

Miami Heat make playoffs: 80%
Miami Heat do not make it second round of playoffs: 80%
Duke basketball wins 1 game or more against UNC: 90%
Duke basketball makes it to Round of 32 in NCAA Tournament: 90%
Duke basketball does not make Final Four: 80%
Duke basketball does not win NCAA tournament: 95%
Warriors or Cavs will win the NBA title: 60%
Steph Curry will be highest paid NBA player during 2017-18 season: 60%

Personal

Employed in current job: 90%
I will vote this year in the general election: 80%
I will have authored > 12 more blog posts (not just on this blog) by June 30, 2018: 90%
I will have authored > 25 more blog posts (not just on this blog) by December 31, 2018: 80%
I will have read 6 additional books this year: 80%
These predictions are under-confident: 70%

2017 Predictions

It’s fun to have opinions, and it’s easy to craft a narrative to fit your beliefs. But it’s especially dangerous to look back at events and place them retroactively into your model of the world. You can’t learn anything if you’re only ever looking for evidence that supports you. However, if you try to use your model of the world to create testable predictions, those predictions can be proven right or wrong, and you can actually learn something. Incorrect predictions can help update our models.

First let’s take a look at how I did this past year, and see if my calibration levels were correct. Incorrect predictions are crossed out.

World Events

Liberland will be recognized by <5 UN members: 99% (recognized by 0)
Free State Project to reach goal of 20,000 people in 2016: 50% (occurred February 3rd)
ISIS to still exist: 80%
ISIS to kill < 100 Americans 2016: 80% (I think <100 were killed by any terrorists, fewer in combat)
US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 80%
No terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 80% (50 did die in the Orlando shooting unfortunately)
~~Donald Trump will not be Republican Nominee:~~ 80% (whoops)
Hillary Clinton to be Democratic nominee: 90%
Republicans to hold Senate: 60%
Republicans to hold House: 80%
Republicans to win Presidential Election: 50% (I predicted in December, Nate Silver had Trump at 35% the day of, who’s a genius now??)
I will vote for the Libertarian Presidential Candidate: 70% *
S&P 500 level end of year < 2500: 70%
Unemployment rate December 2016 < 6% : 70%
~~WTI Crude Oil price < $50 :~~ 80%
Price of Bitcoin > $500: 60%
Price of Bitcoin < $1000: 80%
Sentient General AI will not be created this year: 99%
Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
~~I will not be able to rent trips on self-driving cars from Uber/ Lyft:~~ 90% **
Humans will not land on moon by end of 2016: 95%
Edward Snowden will not be pardoned by end of Obama Administration: 80% *

Personal

Employed in current job: 90%
I will have less than 300 Twitter followers: 60%
I will have authored > 12 more blog posts by June 30, 2016: 50% *
~~michaelelgart.com to have >4,000 page loads 2016:~~ 50%
These predictions are underconfident: 70%

Sports

Miami Heat make playoffs 2016: 80%
Miami Heat will not make Eastern Conference Finals: 90%
Duke basketball wins 1 game or more against UNC: 60%
Duke basketball makes it to Round of 32 in NCAA Tournament: 70%
Duke basketball does not make Final Four: 90%
USA wins Olympic gold medal in basketball: 70%
Kevin Durant will not be highest paid NBA player during 2016-17 season: 70%

*I didn’t personally vote for the libertarian candidate, but I did trade my vote, resulting in Gary Johnson getting two votes more than he would have had I not voted at all. I’m counting this as at least a vote for Johnson.

**Technically, I am not particularly able to get a ride on a self-driving Uber because I don’t live in Pittsburgh, but I don’t think that’s what I meant. I also didn’t expect any self-driving Uber rides to be available anywhere, so I’m counting it against me.

*Obama still has a few weeks to pardon Snowden, but it’s not looking good

**Most of the blog posts were not on this blog.

So let’s take a look at how I did by category:

Of items I marked as 50% confident, 2 were right and 1 was wrong.
Of items I marked as 60% confident, 4 were right and 0 were wrong.
Of items I marked as 70% confident, 7 were right and 0 were wrong.
Of items I marked as 80% confident, 8 were right and 2 were wrong.
Of items I marked as 90% confident, 4 were right and 1 was wrong.
Of items I marked as 95% confident, 1 was right and 0 were wrong.
Of items I marked as 99% confident, 3 were right and 0 were wrong.

You’re supposed to be as close to the perfect calibration line as possible. The big problems are the 60% and 70% predictions all coming true. The chance of all 60% predictions coming true assuming they actually had a 60% chance of happening is 13%. The chance of all 70% predictions coming true was 8%. These seem unlikely, so I need to work on finding more uncertain things to predict or upping my confidence in some of my predictions.

Predictions for 2017:

World Events

Trump Approval Rating end of June <50% (Reuters or Gallup): 60%
Trump Approval Rating end of year <50% (Reuters or Gallup): 80%
Trump Approval Rating end of year <45% (Reuters or Gallup): 60%
Trump 2017 Average Approval Rating (Gallup) <50%: 70%
ISIS to still exist as a fighting force in Palmyra, Mosul, or Al-Raqqah: 60%
ISIS to kill < 100 Americans: 80%
US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 60%
No terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 90%
France will not vote to leave to the EU: 80%
The UK will trigger Article 50 this year: 70%
The UK will not fully leave the EU this year: 99%
No country will leave the Euro (adopt another currency as their national currency): 80%
S&P 500 2016 >10% growth: 60%
S&P 500 will be between 2000 and 2850: 80% (80% confidence interval)
Unemployment rate December 2017 < 6% : 70%
WTI Crude Oil price > $60 : 70%
Price of Bitcoin > $750: 60%
Price of Bitcoin < $1000: 50%
Price of Bitcoin < $2000: 80%
There will not be another cryptocurrency with market cap above $1B: 80%
There will not be another cryptocurrency with market cap above $500M: 50%
Sentient General AI will not be created this year: 99%
Self-driving cars will not be available this year for general purchase: 90%
Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
I will not be able to buy trips on self-driving cars from Uber/Lyft in a location I am living: 80%
I will not be able to buy a trip on a self-driving car from Uber/Lyft without a backup employee in the car anywhere in the US: 90%
Humans will not land on moon by end of 2017: 95%
SpaceX will bring humans to low earth orbit: 50%
SpaceX successfully launches a reused rocket: 60%
No SpaceX rockets explode without launching their payload to orbit: 60%
Actual wall on Mexican border not built: 99%
Some increased spending on immigration through expanding CBP, ICE, or the border fence: 80%
Corporate Tax Rate will be cut to 20% or below: 50%
Obamacare (at least mandate, community pricing, pre-existing conditions) not reversed: 80%
Budget deficit will increase: 90%
Increase in spending or action on Drug War (e.g. raiding marijuana dispensaries, increased spending on DEA, etc): 70%
Some tariffs raised: 90%
The US will not significantly change its relationship to NAFTA: 60%
Federal government institutes some interference with state level legal marijuana: 60%
At least one instance where the executive branch violates a citable civil liberties court case: 70%
Trump administration does not file a lawsuit against any news organization for defamation: 60%
Trump not impeached (also no Trump resignation): 95%

Sports

Miami Heat do not make playoffs: 95%
Miami Heat get top 6 draft pick: 60%
Duke basketball wins 1 game or more against UNC: 80%
Duke basketball makes it to Round of 32 in NCAA Tournament: 90%
Duke basketball makes Final Four: 50%
Duke basketball does not win NCAA tournament: 80%
Warriors or Cavs will win the NBA title: 60%
Lebron James will not be highest paid NBA player during 2017-18 season: 70%

Personal

Employed in current job: 90%
I will have less than 300 Twitter followers: 60%
I will change my registered party from Republican to Libertarian: 70%
I will have authored > 14 more blog posts (not just on this blog) by June 30, 2017: 90%
I will have authored > 30 more blog posts (not just on this blog) by December 31, 2017: 80%
michaelelgart.com to have >3,000 page loads 2017: 70%
These predictions are under-confident: 70%

Overwatch

If you’ve been wondering where all my political blogging that I did last year has gone, I’ve transferred it over to a new blog to better separate personal stuff from political things. I’m not linking it as to make it slightly harder for random prospective employers from the far future to find it. If you don’t know what my new blog is, just tweet at me or message me privately.

I enjoy videogames, but I often don’t have enough time to really indulge in them. I’ve had great experiences with past Blizzard games, and so when Overwatch came out in May, I decided to get it.

Not only do I not usually play video games, but I also don’t tend to play games when they first come out. I also like to stick to single-player, story-driven games (Portal, Arkham Asylum, Skyrim) and sometimes strategy games (Total War series, Civ V) or both (XCOM). And, of course, I tend to play these on a long delay, waiting for Steam sales to reduce the financial burden of my infrequent hobby. But in this case I decided to go for a multi-player game soon after it had come out. Many have rightly stated that Overwatch is a Team Fortress 2 rip-off. Of course, I think people are far too protective of intellectual property anyway, and good rip-offs can be even better than the originals. Blizzard took the excellent gameplay ideas in Team Fortress 2, inserted their art and character backgrounds from their failed MMO Titan, and then created an amazingly fun and deep multi-player shooter.

Competitive role-based multi-player gaming is pretty fun. Trying to beat puzzles crafted by game designers is great too, but there’s something you can’t reproduce without battling against other people and their strategies. I always enjoyed player-vs-player parts of WoW, but part of it always came down to players who sank more time into the game got better weapons. This isn’t the case in Overwatch. Of course, this isn’t a new game genre either, but the creativity of what you can do and the absolute chaos you can fall into so easily is incredible. It’s just pure fun.

Blizzard also just did an incredible job with all the details apart from gameplay: the world is engaging and beautifully detailed, the game isn’t buggy at all, the point system is well crafted, the matching algorithms work quickly and efficiently, and the community dialogue has been amazingly transparent. I don’t know what the game is like as a power player who wants to play competitively for dozens of hours a week, but I know for what I want as a casual gamer who will only sink a few hours into it a week, this game is essentially perfect. It’s also very easy to get into, and Blizzard has already started releasing additional content with no extra cost. If you haven’t played this game and were thinking about it, I can fully recommend it.

But this video game has also coincided with a renewal of board game popularity, not just in my life but in the entire market. This is somewhat surprising given the already mature market for games on computers, consoles, and mobile devices. Nonetheless here we are in the midst of a board game revolution. Somehow in the past year I’ve found myself playing Catan, Codenames, Escape: The Curse of the Temple, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Avalon, and more. I’ve undoubtedly played more board games this year than any other year I’ve been alive. And I even dabbled in Go a bit this year as AlphaGo made headlines. I suspect this renewed interest in applied game theory in a fun setting contributed to me buying Overwatch.

Unlike other multi-player video games which might rely on grinding to give players an edge, these board games rely exclusively on luck and skill; time devoted doesn’t factor in besides how long it takes you to learn. To me it makes these games a fundamentally higher brain exercise than something like WoW or Skyrim could ever be. For me personally, this is a pretty exciting way to see gaming go mainstream (In a related vein, I’ve really enjoyed Crash Course’s new Games series with Andre Meadows).

When you put games on this axis of simple tactics to complex strategies, it also becomes clear why so many people want to watch games like Counterstrike, League of Legends, Rocket League, or Overwatch rather than games like WoW, Minecraft, or Grand Theft Auto; games that require more learned skill, innate talent, and strategy are far more interesting to watch that games that rely on grinding. And if you move further along the axis towards complexity and strategy, you’ll start to run into competitive physical sports like basketball and soccer. Obviously strategy and complexity aren’t sufficient make games universally popular (cricket is fairly complex but isn’t very popular in America, american football has similar popularity issues in the rest of the world), but they are necessary. EconTalk had a great discussion this week regarding the development of sports into entertainment; 50 years ago the major sports of today were nothing like we know them. They have developed into much improved products, and it wasn’t just TV exposure; the sports are measurably better in every way. Rules, nutrition, training, professionalism, advertising, etc have all improved drastically. There’s no reason to think games beyond the physical won’t see similar growth over the next 50 years.

It’s also worth pressing that this gaming revolution is a sign that Things Are Pretty Much Ok (TM). Despite what you may be hearing, violence and terrorism is trending downwards, fewer people are living below $1 a day than ever before, and apparently despite the ongoing technological isolation of our society, social board games where people play face-to-face are doing better than they’ve ever done. Seriously, if we agree that developed countries have mostly solved lifting everyone above subsistence existence, we get to philosophical questions of human existence beyond survival. What should people be doing, what activities should they engage in? Enjoying social gatherings with strategic brain games, seems like a wonderful way to spend that time, and I think could provide a proxy for a type of win condition for economic policy. The future of games isn’t just fun, it should be a major part of our culture for many years to come.