Interview with Jason Tugman: StarCraft II, Free Time, and the ...

Interview with Jason Tugman: StarCraft II, Free Time, and the Unplanned Life

Posted by renee.warren on February 2nd, 2012.

Jason Tugman
Age: 39
Location: Washington DC
Manpacks customer since 3/10

Jason has been one of our favorite customers for a long time. He?s provided great feedback as we?ve grown, and isn?t afraid to dish out ?enthusiastic criticism when we need a slap in the face. He reached out to us on Twitter to see if we could sponsor State of the Game, a StarCraft II community podcast, and we?ve had the good fortune of getting to know him a little better.

Jason tells us that StarCraft II?a real-time strategy game by Blizzard Entertainment?has built a community of fans that resembles that of the NFL more than it does Super Mario Brothers. The passion of these fans has blown us away.?The very best players are total celebrities, and people gather in bars to drink beer and watch them compete.

We asked Jason if he?d answer a few questions to share with our readers, to see how he ended up working with the gaming community. We weren?t expecting that he could be the most interesting man we?ve ever met.

1. What have you been doing with yourself the past 39 years?

I?m a firm believer in the unplanned life; I?ve been a theatre geek, diplomatic security specialist in the Marine Corps, theatrical stage manager in Chicago, lecturer on the ?digital revolution?, CEO and ?Chief Idiot? of a DOT-COM, homeless (see previous), big-top builder in the circus, production manager for a ballet, gaming fan-site operator, lighting tech for Oprah Winfrey, web producer for a marketing association, and I am currently a technologist for a federally funded research center in D.C. In my spare time I make stickers for the eSports video gaming community.

2. What are the 3 things that have most influenced who you are today?

Throughout my life I seem to rally around three general themes: finding the line between art and technology, figuring out how communities form and how they are influenced, and seeking the ?why? of things.

I?ve always found formal education dreadfully boring. As a result I damn near failed out of high school and I dropped out of college within my first year. To me, formal education seems to teach you that things work or maybe even how things work but it rarely discusses why things work.

?It is the why of things that I find fascinating, if you can understand
why?something works then the how will naturally follow.?

They say a good programmer is a ?lazy? programmer and that a good entrepreneur finds ways to systematize and automate tasks, and that a good artist obfuscates the obvious. Technology, business and art all have a single common thread: they all involve groking things in order to move past them. I like the idea of constantly learning, moving and morphing and as a result it may seem like my resume is scattered and erratic filled with random jobs and responsibilities but, to me, it?s just a natural progression of learning, systematizing and obfuscating the core skill-sets of each of my mini-careers.

3. How did you get involved with the gaming community?

I work for a technology research center that works with various military and intelligence agencies. One of my jobs is to act as a SME (subject matter expert) on the topic of ?Serious Games?, the application of modeling and simulation (video games) for training and developing core skill sets.

Starcraft II, while an awesome video game, is also a fascinating mental exercise. Cognitive scientists are comparing the focus, skill and multitasking needed to play Starcraft at a high level to that of chess. [ed: for proof, you really need to see this video.]?In fact, some preliminary studies have found that playing RTS (real time strategy games), specifically Starcraft II, helps individuals develop decision making, tactical and strategic thought which is exactly what Serious Games are often trying to emulate. It isn?t very often that one is offered the opportunity to study and play Starcraft 2 for science. I am not the kind of person that would waste such an opportunity?for science.

4. What do you find most interesting about it?

I tend to obsess on things especially video games. When I first played Starcraft 2 shortly after its release I knew I was in trouble, but like many people, I actually watch more Starcraft II than I play. On sites like twitch.tv tens of thousands of people gather every day to watch tournaments and live-streams of Starcaft and other video games ? yes, we watch pro-gamers play video games online. There are daily and weekly online shows like Sean ?Day9? Plott?s Day9 Daily and Marcus ?djWHEAT? Graham?s Live on Three that can regularly have 10,000+ live viewers. Sites like /r/Starcraft and TeamLiquid.net are massive hubs of news, information and gossip (there?s looking at you Screddit) and international tournaments that are live-streamed can easily draw viewership numbers that rival that of network television.

?Just like the way jocks and armchair quarterbacks huddle around sports channels on television so do we gather, but online, for our eSport, Starcaft II.?

5. At Manpacks one of our goals is to save our customers some time. If you had the next hour free to do whatever you want, what would you do and why?

I?d go buy underwear. Seriously, think about it. The reason I love Manpacks is that it saves me time. As an entrepreneur you learn that to be successful you need to process, systematize and then automate everything. The more your automate the more you can do. Manpacks automates something I hate doing; buying necessities. So with my free hour of time I would go to the mall and buy some sexy underwear for my girlfriend so that we could truly enjoy the time saved with the automation of life?s little tasks.

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

[In his free time, Jason also eats fire.]

?

?

?

Tags: eSports, Fire-eating, starcraft2

Source: http://manpacks.com/blog/2012/02/jason-tugman/

carmelo anthony david lee gift card exchange tj holmes waste management two fat ladies dennys