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I haven't won anything from playing games competitively. Nothing. Well, I won $75 in a "freestyle" DDR tournament at Arcade Infinity, but looking back on it, it was nothing more than a popularity contest and it looks uncoordinated and clumsy, so it's nothing I'm too proud of.
I was slightly more coordinated than this guy.
I've read books like "Talent is Overrated," saying that before you can get really good at something, you have to put in at least 10,000 hours. I'm not entirely convinced of that, since it seems that by the time I put in 10,000 hours, everyone good has already put in 100,000 hours. When it comes to competitive gaming, I have some sort of ADD--I jump from being average in one game to average in another game.
It all started with Marvel vs. Capcom 2, since that game was synonymous with my interest in playing competitive gaming. I went through all sorts of stages with that one, from "Those stupid Koreans at the arcade are so cheap because all they do is HPx4 - HVB and if you try to jump in they just call CapCom AAA!" to discovering all sorts of broken tactics like AHVBx3, Guard Breaks, and Anti-Air assists, to discovering the vibrant tournament scene. I never did enter a tournament though, since I was somewhere below the average at my local arcade which paled in comparison to the legends at SHGL.
From there, I moved on and concentrated on rhythm games. DDR freestyle was something stupid, but at the time I was determined to get really good at Beatmania IIDX. Up until 6th style, I showed considerable promise--I got up to playing 7 stars in little more than 2 months, but from then on I stalled. Then, everybody got the console version and just rocketed past me, since I was too poor to afford a JPN PS2/IIDX controller.
Believe it or not, one of these was $100. Now you can probably get 3 of them for $100.
Sometimes, my friends and I would pick up random games and play them competitively. I remember when Tetris Attack started making waves, and it seemed like no matter how much I played, I was stuck on some primitive level. Three of my friends picked up and got really, really good at it. While I was struggling to make something more than an 5 chain, they "had to" limit their own chains to 12 because that was where the score for chains was capped.
In my first year of college, Warcraft III came out and I just got hooked on it. Yet for all I played, I could never get that good at it. I played something like 200 games in 3 weeks, and still could not pass rank 8 (out of 20, back when it was difficult). Frustrated, and with grades on the rapid decline, I gradually quit. Grades would decline even more once I began Final Fantasy 11, but that's another story.
The next games I would move on to would be Tekken 5 and 3rd Strike. Tekken 5 just got released, and 3rd Strike was still cresting on the wave of popularity after the Daigo parry. I ended up joining SDTekken, but I never felt very good about it because it felt undeserved. I always tended towards the bottom, and I had anti-clutch moments in the four tournaments I entered. I was triple perfected in one, and lost matches at the last second because the wrong move would come out. I would lose to "the biggest scrub in the tournament" at one event. The most embarrassing loss I dealt with was when I went to a beginners tournament in San Diego. I was facing a guy that I used to practice a lot against, and in those rounds the score was something sick like me winning 32-2. But in the tournament, I won the first match easily and was up 2-0 in the second match... then I just straight dropped 6 rounds in a row.
Who DIDN'T want to play 3S after watching this?
With 3rd Strike, I attended weekly gatherings at my friend's house and again, I was somewhere near below average of the group. One fine day, he wanted to try getting into Guilty Gear, so he invited nearly all of the SoCal community to his house... and I just got spanked at 3rd Strike... by people who didn't even main this game! They primarily played Guilty Gear! I was convinced that I didn't have what it took to play that game either, so soon that faded away. Tekken faded away when I graduated from San Diego, since I found it harder to get games in LA... they were both incredibly far and the community was a lot more standoffish than San Diego's.
I tried Starcraft BW but by then, everyone was too good. I would get raped by D players, and I would rape D- players. A lot of times I would lose matches because I would make huge retarded blunders at key situations. I don't think I ever stopped an early Zealot rush or a 5 pool. I'm not even sure I won a standard TvZ because if the mutas didn't outright destroy me, my micro against lurkers was atrocious. But I sure would have lots of troops because I had good APM! =\
After that, I kinda stayed away from it all. When SF4 came out, I only played online and against my brother, and never really bothered to seek out competition. When Tetris: The Grandmaster 3 (TGM3) came out at Arcade Infinity, I got really good... for a bit, then when I hit S3/S4 I hit a wall and gave up. I played a ton of Soul Calibur 4, but when gatherings were moved from my city to Irvine, a city 45 minutes away, I didn't even bother to go. Tekken 6 I played strictly online. I had some friends that wanted to get into MLG Halo 3, but the team dissolved because we couldn't find a good 4th player. That, and we also could not win objective games, even though we were decent at deathmatch. (I think we literally held a party after winning our first King of the Hill on Construct.)
Throughout this entire journey, I've seemingly met all the great players of every game, even when they weren't that great at the time. It's kind of a jolting feeling when you see someone who wasn't that good when you first played, get top placings at big tournaments. It makes me wonder if I'm just that lacking in talent, or if it was just because I could not stick with it when I hit the first wall. And what's even crazier about it all is that my skills are impressive to people that aren't in that particular scene. To a 3rd Strike player, I was amazing at IIDX. To a Tekken player, I was amazing at 3rd Strike. To an SF4 player, I'm amazing at MvC2. To the IIDX players, I'm amazing at TGM3. Yet in each individual scene, I never amounted more to average.
Now comes Super Street Fighter 4 and Starcraft 2, and I'm just wondering if I still have the guts to play them competitvely. I've already been dealt lots of heartbreaking losses in Starcraft 2 to bad players(I've lost several games because the Z would build 6 muta and even though I had double the food count, I only had marauders and it was auto-loss), and playing with the local SF4 scene I am getting destroyed by their good players... like 0-10, 0-7.
But in the end, even if I turn out not to be the best, not to be very good... the competitive lifecycle will always appeal to me. The feeling of triumph over someone, the repeated honing of new skills, combos, tactics, strategy, learning the intricate mechanics to gain that tiny little edge... all of it is something I love to do.
Even if I am just average.
 
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Great read.
Coming back from your losses and learning from your mistakes already bumps you up from an "average gamer." Even if your win rate sometimes doesn't show it, persistence is what will set you apart from the rest.
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Once you hit that wall you have to keep pushing, if you keep skipping around from game to game you'll never be amazing. You have to be able to put up with a long time where you feel like you aren't improving at all, then you'll make a breakthrough and you'll progress in leaps and bounds, at least that's the way it works for me.
Great post btw
Also: if your micro sucks don't play terran >_>
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I beg to differ. Any Starcraft player is not an average-skilled gamer, we who are D have learnt skills far beyond the comprehension of any average gamer.
I bet you, if you played WoW now you'd be one of the best on your server.
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It's good you enjoy it all, even if you never get too far. I wish more people (myself included) were content with their state at life, although don't ever put yourself down to never be able to hit points of higher levels of skill. It really isn't about talent more than hard work. I mean, yeah, some people are easily more predisposed to be good at certain things, but hard work can be very fruitful too.
I think it's better if you just found your calling, so to speak. The one game you really want to focus on, but that's probably why you never go beyond average, because you seem to try to be a jack-of-all-trades with competitive games. You'll never excel at any one game if you are shifting through so many, unless you had a powerful understanding of all related games and could apply that to skill. But they're all different, and require their own technical mastery.
I'm really the same way too, constantly trying to be good at so many competitive games, but I eventually came to the conclusion that I need to just stick to the games I love. It's what I did subconsciously when I played CoD years ago pre-4, and I was on my way to going through CAL ranks, if not for my outside life interfering. I wasn't close to the best, but I would've had a chance to hone my skills. But I would focus on CoD, instead of trying to be good at so many games. At that time, I was only really good at CoD, and nothing else (which isn't anything to brag about now, probably not then either, especially to CS players).
It's kind of hard to be called "The Korean" by my buddies at school. I mean, really, I'm not even remotely there. Hell, most non-Koreans own me (not that Korean = amazing by default, just generalizing the skill groups here).
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it seems you are tying to play games that are incredibly demanding in skill in a concentrated area. Jumping from game to game, and completely different styles of games, you will never be able to master what is needed to become truly competitive to that genre/game. I can't really talk from a professional standpoint, but i have made about 900 dollars in my gaming career, and I regret every minute of it. Grades suffered to a point I did not like. Since then, I have pretty much quit competitive gaming, and moved to casual. I am still much better than the average gamer at most games in the genres I play. I also started playing poker casually at the low levels. I really enjoy the game, and get a lot of enjoyment in my life from playing it.
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I know exactly how you feel lol. Working my way up in sf4 and still playing way too much mahvel because the game is too fun. I feel halfway competent in those 2, but before that..
Starcraft
Pump it Up
Guilty Gear
3rd Strike
CvS2
Arcana Heart
Super Turbo
Blazblue
Now I've even come to start on Melty Blood and I played Tatsunoko vs Capcom before I realized how far behind I was behind the top local, yet how stagnant everyone else seems locally.
I get you 100%. I have a D+ zerg, I can play crazy/nightmare songs on pui, have a scrubtastic Ky-Kiske, a 3s Ken that can't short short super consistently and Yun that can't finish Geneijin combos, never got past mashing rh with sakura in cvs2, learned one saki combo for AH1 but never got much further, and can kinda zone while mainly abusing tick throws with ST Sim. I actually got relatively decent (enough to place top 3 in local tourneys) in tvc/blazblue, but those have already been left by the wayside.
I know exactly how you feel though. I've had a little more success by virtue of a weaker local scene, but I've had a guilty gear player come and beat me in 3s in a tourney, that was a kick in the gut for sure lol. For a while I could simply never win a match in loser's bracket.
You take something from everything though, even when you don't think you do. Apply yourself to something and it may start to click. For proof, when I was trying to learn sc before fighters, I could barely get wins at D to stay even. Come back after playing fighters for 2 years or so, I hit D+ in a day's time >.>
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Good read, but, everyone hits a wall, infact you will hit many walls if u keep trying, its about passing them.
You always hear about players hitting walls, especially in starcraft. How many times have you read
"I just cant beat a good protoss"
"I swear PvZ is impossible"
"I have NO idea how to hold a bunker rush"
Its pushing past these walls, that take time and a lot of dedication and patience, that turns the avg person into a great person at what they do.
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Enjoyed reading this one, thanks for taking the time to write this down.
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FREEAGLELAND26780 Posts
Enjoyed this!
Welcome to the average world, haha. Though I will argue that SC puts you "above average" especially in terms of all other RTSes...
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Holy Shit!! U WON 75$!!! I on the other hand share many similar experiences yet has never won any small tourneys. except small money bets on dota... =.=
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10k hours is an insane amount of time. If you'd have put that much time into any of those, you would be good, no question.
Not many people are actually willing and able to put in that much time though. They get discouraged or bored and quit.
There's nothing wrong with that.
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Very entertaining and well written.
My first thought was, maybe you could become a coach, like when Daniel Lee tries to teach the reporter starcraft + Show Spoiler [Well I didn't do a good job, but…] +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USE1uPZbOZw I didn't do a good job, but you understand the concept. That's why I'm the head coach not the gamer Reporter: Sadly, we lost coach
Daniel Lee: No you lost. And I gave you good directions, you just didn't follow
My second thought is that maybe you're mentally weak. Not as in stupid, but reacting poorly to competition/defeat/setbacks+ Show Spoiler [failure] +. Like Mark Cuban said that when Dirk Nowitzki took a personality test, he scored off the charts ... and after some googling I believe they're referring to the Caliper test.
And finally, unlucky at cards...
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I have the same issue but I've thought of a way to make myself feel slightly better. I played CS 1.6 and Source competitively for many years but never reaching a high enough level to be recognized.
After I stepped back from it, I realized that I was better than 95% of the players who ever played these games, but competition at the top 5% was incredibly intense. I believe that this is true in every game. It's like when people say the more learn, the more you don't know.
I guess what I'm trying to get across is to be happy that you are at a high enough level to realize that you suck.  Good luck, keep gaming!
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Netherlands19125 Posts
Good read! Nice blog, keep it up XD.
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United States4796 Posts
Awesome read. Great show of modesty.
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man if it wasnt for the spotlight i would have never read this, is so good and interesting, defenitely a good read.
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go zerg imo in BW its a much easier race
if your opponent is lousy just spam hatches and ovies, and spam those larvae macro so ezpz
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God dangit I love you Joe.
Never would have known this was you if I didn't see your Twitter.
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