The Contest Blues

I've entered my share of contests in my years. For some reason it's not the same thing as a lottery because you're not spending money, but you are spending time being hopeful, and in the case of yesterday, expending effort.
 
As a conclusion to my mild Skyrim hysteria I attempted to enter a contest in which you could write a work of short fiction set in the Skyrim universe. The guy holding the contest said you could write "anything", be it tragedy, comedy, or mystery, but the main character had to have a rather silly name, and it had to be set in Skyrim. I sat down the day the story was due and cranked out a simple story full of fan service for a certain minor character. I stayed up late waiting for the results to be posted, and I wasn't even a finalist. 
 
I tried to tell myself that it was good practice for my writing, and in a way it was, but the time I spent waiting for the results (when he could have easily let us off the hook and told us he had selected the finalists or something) could have been spent sleeping so that I'd have a normal day the next day. It was also a little rough on my sense of pride, because I thought it was good enough a story to at least be considered. At least with most submissions you get a rejection slip, which I've learned to appreciate, especially if there was feedback.
 
But because this was a contest, the writing wasn't the point. The point was, as in most contests, promotion.
 
GOG kicked off a similar glut of promotions with a crossword puzzle where you fill in answers and send it off before a deadline for the chance to win a game. Having obliterated my normal (if usually eccentric) sleep schedule I awoke with maybe 20 minutes to spare before the context expired. Like a machine I rattled off answers, not even looking at the crossword puzzle itself unless I needed to check for word length, but I may not have made the deadline because of an ambiguously worded clue (not the first time they've done that) and an oversight of my own.
 
All of this isn't that big a deal, but it reminded me that the contests aren't really for anyone but the winner, and the people doing the promoting. You can't know you'll win, so you wind up hoping like the rest of us for a prize that only you will get. The rest of us don't get much of anything for the effort we put in, whatever amount of effort that is, except the lesson that we're not destined to receive everything. Even though it isn't a lottery per se, it's stranger to lose time and effort than it is to lose money. At least with money you can make up for your losses through further effort in a method you're already familiar with. It's trickier to make up for effort that was aimed squarely at a contest.
 
In a way it reminded me of my recent attempt to get a job in the games industry. A lot of hope and effort, a lot of waiting and stress, and in the end it went to someone else. This was much more than a simple contest since I could have used the job, and I believe I would have been good at it. But it's not the only job in the world; I have to keep telling myself that. At least they gave me a nice rejection slip.
 
Yesterday I joined many of you in watching Greg Kasavin ravage the countryside of Skyrim, and it didn't cost any of us any more than our investments in computers, connections, and time spent listening and watching. Unlike those contests I knew I wasn't going to win anything, but I could still learn about the game and see it in action. Throughout a good chunk of that program, as well as the Morrowind and Oblivion sessions that came before, I enjoyed myself quite a bit, geeking out with fellow Bombers. I even helped the Morrowind team out a couple times, if unintentionally anonymously. These types of games don't railroad you too much, so each person who plays them leaves their particular stamp, and you get to see a piece of their psyche up on screen in a way, sharing in their experience of a weird world. Skyrim seems particularly good at that, although I'll never really know how well the game suits me until I actually play it. And I will, eventually. Like my finding a decent job, I hope it'll only be a matter of time.