The Zero Sum Game

[+ScroogieII]

I hope that I'm able tonight to fully reveal my views on Waymarking in terms of its being, with respect to its players, a "Zero Sum Game".

 

The Game, as best I can tell, is enjoyed by two sets of players. The Waymark creators and the Waymark  visitors.

 

For the most part, the creators dictate the outcome, the visitors play, not necessarily by a stipulated and agreed upon set of rules, but with generally self administered rules, employing as their tools the material supplied to them by the creators. For each, the product is simply what each has managed to create as a result of their excursion into the world of Waymarking.

 

The product of the creators becomes the tool of the visitors. Very quickly, however, we come upon the realization that the product of the creators has eaten into their supply of product. IE, for each Waymark created there is one fewer potential Waymark available to the Waymarking community as a whole. Thus we have the initial realization of The Game as being a Zero Sum Game. Similarly, each visit has eaten into the visitor's supply of visitable Waymarks. Hence, again a Zero Sum Game.

 

Though this seems a dark and dreary view of the future of the game of Waymarking, if we were to further examine the number of active Waymarkers extant, as well as their annual output, then compare this data with the number of potential Waymarks on this planet, possibly we wouldn't spent so much time lamenting the potential demise of Waymarking.

Keith

Edited February 11, 2020 by ScroogieII

[+elyob]

You have well articulated your dark and dreary view.  My local region is waymark dense but I have no fear of reaching point zero here.  I suspect that you might be nearing that point in your area.  

[+ScroogieII]

Well, actually, I've moved, but only 100 kliks, to an area we had done a lot of WMs in already. There were still a couple of WMs left in the old town, but that's about all.

[+pmaupin]

I hope that when I come to your beautiful region, I will be able to do some waymark and also visit many.

[Bon Echo]

On 2/11/2020 at 12:56 AM, ScroogieII said:

possibly we wouldn't spent so much time lamenting the potential demise of Waymarking.

 

My concerns with this game have nothing to do with running out of things to waymark or visit. It's more about running out of the web service itself. At the end of the day, all I have for my efforts is a whole lot of data stored on GS servers. If they ever pull that plug, hundreds of hours of work are lost. It takes me minutes to visit a waymark (as in posting a visit, but the act of physically visiting the location and taking photos is nearly irrelevant because 90%+ of the time I go there because I want to, not because of Waymarking). But creating each waymark probably takes me on average of 30 minutes. I'm up to 700+ waymarks so you can do the math. And I'm a "small time" waymarker with numbers like that.

 

 

[+ScroogieII]

Ahhhh Jason. All you ever do is complain...  

Keith