I play chess "seriously" (expert level) and am about a gold/platinum league Starcraft II player, and the games do show a surprising amount of similarity. Both show the most variance in the midgame, begin in identical formations (where memorizing openings is common), and converge to endgames that have somewhat less variance than midgames.

Huge opening theory and high draw rate are primarily the reasons why I switched to another mind game called Gomoku. Gomoku, when played at a high level, requires as much depth as Chess. Go is a also good choice but I find Gomoku much easier to keep in my life.

>> there's a defined early game, a midgame and endgame.

all things with defined start and finish criteria can be conceptualized this way.

careers: education is early game setting you up for success, job/career is midgame, retirement is end game.

relationships: dating is early game, engagement/marriage is midgame, death/divorce is end game.

software development: envision project/write requirements is early game, coding/developing/testing is midgame, shipping and bug patching/customer support is end game.

... I could go on and on, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader

I think you've got the parallels for "early game" right, but the parallels for "endgame" wrong. The endgame is the phase directly before the end of the game, where two players who have each managed to avoid screwing themselves over in the early game, and who have each managed to match their opponent's multiple-front challenges and feints in the middlegame, finally are forced (usually by the game's increasing resource constraint) to "put all their cards on the table" and do the interesting and tricky things that make their playstyle unique.

right. the end game is before the end of the games. we're on the same page on that.

disconnect on our understandings is that I didn't define the game ending criteria for each example. in chess, it's either a checkmate or a draw that ends the game.

for my examples, my criteria are death for the career, the relationship ending, and the software product reaching the end if it's supported life.

The point was that checkmate is not "endgame," it's literally when the game is over.

Endgame is a part of the game, the late stages. It comes after the midgame.

It doesn't go "early game, midgame, checkmate."

Same for all of your examples, where you note the endpoint, not the endgame.

look, I get it.

everything has a starting point. (you decide what career you want) then an early game phase. (you go to school to get a degree) than a midgame phase. (you start work and collect paychecks during your career) than an end game phase. (uou live the retired life using the resources you earned during your career ) than the game actually ends when predefined conditions are met. (you die or whatever)

got it.

we are literally arguing in circles because we are not conceptualizing the problem the same way and not communicating clearly.

I think the thing trying to be pointed out here is that "retirement" is not inside what most people consider to be the game of a career. When you quit your last job, your career is over; that is the checkmate moment.

Retirement, on the other hand, is the equivalent of the time between games (or after you quit playing games) when you have a static ranking from your previous play (maybe you're a retired world champion, say), that other people treat as a milestone in their own development—something to reach or to pass.

Now, if you said life, then sure, the endgame phase of that is retirement. But the early-game phase of that is when your parents are providing for you, and only extreme incompetence (or genetic bad luck) can cause you to "lose."

again, we're arguing in circles because we are conceptualizing the analogies differently. our definitions of "career" are different.

oh well.

ca·reer kəˈrir/ noun 1. an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress.

There really aren't different definitions. It's a "work life", it doesn't include retirement.

When I played I basically refused to memorize openings and instead worked on developing my own. It was weak, and the highest level players crushed me, but players below them were often so thrown off by the opening that I was able to gain an advantage and win against people who would have soundly trounced me if I had used a standard opening. I ended up getting out of chess when I reached the point where I was primarily playing against those who were unfazed by non-standard openings.