"The pursuit of perfection is a kind of prison." Topic

Here's how I embraced the joy of ‘good enough'

The Guardian: link

Very good points, IMHO. Wargaming risks becoming dominated by the idea that one must have exquisitely painted figures and diorama-standard terrain, as frequently shown in the glossy magazines and in demonstration games at shows. But one can have a challenging, enjoyable game with simply painted figures – or even unpainted RISK figures! – on stylised terrain.

Look at the games played by HG Wells, Brigadier Peter Young, Terry Wise and Don Featherstone: the figures were not painted to the standards of those seen in today's magazines and the terrain was often very basic, but they were having fun.

High quality modelling and expert painting do not have to be an important part of your wargame hobby – unless you want them to be.

" perfect is the enemy of done"

I paint to please myself. Put up next to many others they would look awful but to me they are fine. I have other things to worry/fret about.

I was doing some touch-ups on a figure and I realized that you could only see the flaw when you were holding the figure 8 inches from your face, so I stopped. I try to not worry about things that you can't see when the figure is on the table at arm's length.

It all depends on your objective. I paint to get figures on the table. Others are more focused on a well-painted figure. I love to see them, but if I tried for that quality, I wouldn't play a single game.

"Best is the enemy of Better" – Voltaire

Good thoughts – used to work with a person who despite a great work ethic (better than mine, for sure) and tons of smarts utterly failed because always was seeking perfection, so never actually finished anything

As to gaming, I point to The War Game by none other than Charles Grant, in which he freely uses regiments from other countries to fill in for the game

I said the words to myself right before I got to them in the article, "if only it were so easy."

After many years working in casinos, mostly as a slot technician, I got a job with a slot machine manufacturer. And after a year or so of installing them, I was promoted to Software Tester and became a specialist in certain type of machines.
I was shocked to discover that releasing "buggy" software was standard practice in the industry! We had people from Microsoft and other software companies, and they all agreed!
It was not cost effective to release "perfect" software!
I gasped and sputtered and argued, but fellow coworkers showed me proof and statistics and whole library shelves of books.
As a retired person who paints man-dolls, time is my currency. I paint them "good enough" and I seldom go back to correct small mistakes. I put them on the table and if someone finds a "bug", I may touchup, or just get another batch painted before I can't anymore!

Not clicking on a Guardian link. It only encourages them.

But you need both the knowledge that deadlines must be met and the understanding that X is The Standard and everything less is not.

The constant desire for improvement without a deadline accomplishes nothing and leaves behind a series of unfinished projects. Consider Charles Baggage and his "difference engine."

But we've all seen the projects "completed" by abandoning standards--ugly castings at best, unplayable convention games because no one actually playtested, books no one seems to have edited or even proofread, and sometimes in the larger world fatally flawed ships tanks and planes or grossly inadequate training. "Cutting a few corners" has killed more people than all the world's serial killers put together.

You have to have both. You have to know what the deadline is, you have to know the standard below which you can't go--and you have to know when the project simply can't be done to a minimum adequate standard within the time allowed.

Good luck telling the boss.

perfect is the enemy of done

I'm stealing that.

It's really about balance: It has to be good enough and it has to done on time.

That does sound a lot like my job. Yours, too, probably. But it's a job we love, so we keep doing it.

Perfection is a great aim but its only a target and missing is perfectly acceptable. I strive for the perfect rules, that's the fun of it, it keeps you interested, However we play with what we have knowing it is not perfection, there may not even be a perfect set of rules, to do so you would have to define perfection and that may not even be possiblw, but trying for it is fun.

Trying for perfection is a waste of a life. Better to get it good enough and move on to something else.

There is a fine line between being good enough and being lazy. I was playing a game at the local game store across from us a bunch of guys playing an ACW battle with one side being based and spray-painted tan. The other side was unpainted. I asked them if they ever painted their figures and was told that was too much like work. They seemed to be having a good time and that's all that matters. But a board game could do the same and you don't have to base and paint figures or provide terrain.

link

Sometimes perfect is the enemy of the good.

Unpainted is perhaps for them "perfection" A great game on 3D terrain, what more could you want?

Perfection is in the eye odf the beholder. A "supreb" paint job as some would call it on my figures falls well short of my idea of perfection, for me it would be an utter waste, vastly more hobby times wasted for no gain on the battlefield.

Aspiration to some perfect goal is goood, obsessing too much about that aspiration bad.

But a board game could do the same and you don't have to base and paint figures or provide terrain.

I've even been on a bike ride to contemplate this statement. In the end I can see no logical reasoning to support this statement.

A board game is a 2D representation of the real world a Miniatures game is a 3D representation of the real world. This is a Huge difference, its easy to spot dead ground on a 3D representation of a battlefield and to easily capture the information as to whether an element is on the ground floor or the top floor, the miniatures is simply placed at the appropriate height Such representation is a far more complex and time consuming task in a 2 representation.

I am unaware of any wargames rules that have a parameter affecting gameplay based on the visual coluor standard of the miniatures being used by the protagonists.

Plastic figures are available for almost any period nowadays and are cheap and pre cultured so no loss compared to a board game.

Board games at least in the UK are not cheap. Minatare game rules can in many cases be obtained for a dollars or are free.

Even Featherstone indicated books could be used to represent hills and I personally had buildings made of cereal packets for many years.

On this basis a board game is in no way an alternative to a wargame. You could equally have said they could play dominoes instead. That is a very cheap game but is about as representative of a miniatures game as a board game is i.e. not at all.

Perfection is in the eye of the beholder and one mans perfection can be another mans description of hell.

The phrase I learned is "Perfect is the enemy of good enough."

But it appears no famous person said that. Rather, famous people said these things:

"Perfection is the enemy of progress." – Winston Churchill.

"Better is the enemy of good enough." – Sergey Gorshkov, commander in chief of the Soviet Navy from 1956 to 1985.

"le mieux est l'ennemi du bien" (the best is the enemy of good" – Voltaire.

"…America can't afford to let the perfect be the enemy of the good." -- Bill Clinton, statement released about December 17, 2009

That's why software development companies release their products with bugs and why games are published with oversights and mistakes.

But don't worry – you can buy a new release every 6 months.

Wolfhag