Theorycraft and Optimization - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 130

analysis in sports and society. Although data has been tracked for decades,
the last thirty years have seen an explosion in the use of statistical analysis
to facilitate understanding. The most overt sign is seen throughout soci-
ety, with The New York Times describing statistics as an attractive college
major for future employers, describing statistics as a “cool” and “sexy”
area of study. 3 Some argue that the 2008 implosion of capital on Wall Street
was largely driven by the infl ux of quantitative analysis into economics that
began in the 1980s. 4 Nate Silver started with statistical analysis of baseball
then turned to U.S. politics, leading to his inclusion as one of Time 's 100
most infl uential people in 2009 . 5 S tatistical analysis holds a substantive role
in society that can propel a person to fame and fortune, cause a fi nancial
collapse, or make a person seem even sexier.
Beyond the broad social trend toward the increasing role of statistical
analysis, sports of er a look at the roots of theorycrafting. In addition to the
connections between professional gaming and professional sports, sports
are generally subject to rule sets. Although the tracking of statistics has
a long history in sports, the use of those statistics for team building and
strategy is a more recent phenomenon. Michael Lewis detailed how Billy
Beane sought to apply statistical analysis to the running of a Major League
Baseball team, with the goal of appraising “the events that occurred on
a baseball fi eld more accurately than they had ever been valued.” 6 Lewis
shows how this approach allowed Beane to build a successful team on a
budget, yet was anathema to the baseball establishment. Statistical analysis
in sports has spread beyond baseball, with MIT graduate Daryl Morey
working as general manager of the Houston Rockets, where he received
notoriety for recognizing the value of players like Shane Battier, his “no-
stats All-Star,” 7 and for founding an annual sports analytics conference
at MIT. 8 Statistical analysis is a multi-million dollar budget line for many
teams, one where Morey and others can invest resources that help teams
win, without worrying about a salary cap for statisticians. 9 Ef ectively, sta-
tistical analyses seek out the hidden rules of their sport. What action will
maximize the chance to score a run or a basket? What is the best defensive
approach or who is the best defensive player? Prior to statistical analysis the
answers to these questions were subjective, but statistics give the impres-
sion of clear, certain answers.
This desire to understand the rules of a game and maximize odds of
success is where statistical analysis of sports connects to the approach of a
particular kind of gamer. Often gamers are split into categories of casual
and hardcore. According to Clive Thompson, Peggle became a hit with
hardcore gamers when they recognized the geometry built into the game.
He writes that the hardcore “players are able to see past the apparent luck
of Peggle , and to spy its underlying—if extremely complex—rules.” 10 In so
doing, gamers apply a dif erent kind of tool to understand the game, like
the way in which Beane and Morey use statistics to understand their sports
and theorycrafters seek to understand how WoW works. Optimizing play