Dwarf hamster winter white, by cdrussorusso
So Nintendo recently held their first Nintendo Direct in almost a year. As a proud owner of a Nintendo Switch, I was excited to hear what my favourite company had on the docket for 2021.
One of the games that caught my eye was a tactical strategy RPG with the working title Project Triangle Strategy. But, let’s be real here: it’s Final Fantasy Tactics for the Switch.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…It’s a tRPG, i’ts produced by Square Enix, it’s a Final Fantasy Tactics game.
At the end of the Direct, Nintendo released a demo of Project Triangle Strategy. As I eagerly downloaded the game on my console, I had a deep sense of foreboding…
This was not my first rodeo with the Tactics series. In the early 2000s, the one and only game I purchased for my Nintendo SP was Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and I quite enjoyed it. In 2018, I purchased a mobile port of Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions.
It’s the latter game that fills me with dread. That’s because I’ve been playing this game for the past 3 years, and for the past 3 years, War of the Lions – to put it succinctly – has made me its bitch.
The game is hard, guys. The game is sadistically hard.
It’s one of THOSE games. The type where part of the strategy of playing is knowing how to economize your save slots because at any point you can inadvertently save yourself into a corner, which then forces you to erase your progress and start all over.
I’ve already done this once with War of the Lions. And as I booted the demo, I had PTSD flashbacks of the last time I had played and failed to make enough adequate backup saves. I was looking at another tens of hours down the toilet. Did I really want to endure this again?
I believe we as writers have to grapple with the similar fear of sunk costs.
What are Sunk Costs?
According to Indeed, a sunk cost refers to a cost that has already occurred and has no potential for recovery in the future.
This might sound like a lot of writing projects that had a failure to launch, that never got off the ground.
Was it a waste of time to finish that fanfic you could never sell?
Was it a wasted effort to complete that short story that no publication wanted?
Was it a waste of time to write that novel?
I want to nip this thinking in the bud: it’s never a waste of time to write.
You may be disappointed that your written projects don’t have the successes you hope for them. But even in failure, lessons can be learned in how to improve your craft.
Every experience can be construed as a teachable moment. Learn from your mistakes, dust yourself off, and try again. With every attempt, you’re getting better.
Oh. And if you’re going to play a Final Fantasy Tactics game, always have the foresight to make multiple save files.