EPTPeople just don’t know how to lose. It makes me sick sometimes.
I’m not talking in the sense that you’ll USE CAPS LOCK AND YELL AT ME FROM THE SAFETY OF YOUR COMPUTER either. Most people cannot accept the fact that they lost. They aren’t learning anything from their loss, and will make as many excuses as possible to cover the fact that they screwed up.
“But Moosey, I didn’t screw up!”
Yes, you did. If you’re losing, there has to be some mistake you made*. Just fess up, admit you made a mistake and LEARN FROM IT. If you mess up at work and cost your company thousands of dollars, you can’t blame it on someone else**. If you sleep with your fiancée’s best friend, you can’t blame someone else. Hell, even look at insurance companies. If you rear-end someone, you’re the one at fault.
So why do people think that making excuses during games work? The only excuse I ever want to hear is “I didn’t know how to play the game”. Even then, if you’re making an excuse for losing a game you just learned; I’ll probably punch you in the face. [I do not condone this behavior, please use extreme caution if you choose to follow this route]
Sometimes losing cannot be helped. If you're proxied by 2 Barracks, and go for a 14 hatch; you're likely going to lose the game. You'll lose games, and that's just going to happen. Sometimes the stars align, and you'll hit a really hot streak where everything goes right. Sometimes this happens for your opponent. Instead of bitching about it, learn from it.
Oddly enough the best way to get better at anything is to learn about it. We’re in the age of the Internet. The Internet can tell you everything. If you can’t beat level 12 of Super Hyper Awesome Game: The Battle for the Striped Socks, you can always go online and hear from other people. Chances are that somewhere, someone has the same problem as you.
Some people let personal problems get in the way of winning. Myself, I used to think I was top dog in the state of Minnesota for Magic: The Gathering. I began to play less and less, and wouldn’t accept any criticism. I was always right. It took me a year of extremely mediocre performances to realize that I wasn’t the hot shit I thought I was. I let my ego control me, and it skewed my view of the game.
Admit when you mess up. This seems to be the hardest thing for some people to grasp. They will blame EVERYONE but themselves, and will go to extreme lengths to do so. A few examples of this are:
I got sniped from across the map because you were talking too loudly.
He got lucky.
God this lag is HORRENDOUS [while sometimes true, you would be extremely surprised how often some people say there is lag when there is none]
If I knew that he was going to 2-gate my 14 hatch, I would've gone pool first.
A pair of articles which sparked my desire to write this classified Magic players as such. With minor word tweaks, I feel it's extremely relevant to Starcraft. All players fall into one of these groups:
1. New to the game (Bronze)
2. Learning hotkeys and basic build orders. (Silver)
3. Hitting a decent level of competency, start to realize things they're doing wrong. Don't fix them. Blame luck. (Gold)
4. Recognizes what errros they are making, fixes them as best they can. (Platinum)
5. Adapts, learns from every game. Does not blame "luck", "timings" or their opponents. Realizes that every loss is their own fault. (Diamond)
My inclusion of the five leagues is not meant for you to think that all Diamond players realize their losses are their own fault. I'd prefer you to think of these as the mental leagues. You can have Diamond skill level, and only be in a Gold league for your mental game.
Everyone makes mistakes. It’s human nature. That’s exactly why pencils have erasers, and keyboards have a backspace. People make mistakes every day, it’s GOOD. If people didn’t make mistakes, there would be no room for improvement.
If you’ve screwed up, and you don’t admit it; if you defend yourself when you have no case, people will lose respect for you. I’m not saying you need to admit every mistake you make to people, as that gets quite annoying. There is literally no such thing as a perfect game of Starcraft, and that is something you need to learn to accept.
Not learning from your mistakes makes it extremely difficult to get better at anything. There are the naturally gifted people who will make few mistakes right from the start, but those people are still screwing up.
Working hard, learning from your failures and admitting when you’re wrong are the three most important ways to getting better at, well… Life. You can bet that the people who take lessons out of losing aren’t going to be working at Wal-Mart until the day they die.
If you keep making excuses, you’re only hurting yourself. If I lose because I mis-micro my Stalkers against marines, sure; I lost a game. Time for another one. That won’t matter in 10 years… But if you keep making the same mistakes in life, you can sure bet that success is not going to be something that you’re used to.
Just face up to it when you mess up, please.
*There is almost always something different you could have done. It might not change the outcome, but there is always a chance it could have.
**You could blame it on the intern.
****I apologize if this article seems choppy, I didn't want to rework it from the ground up. If you take anything out of this, awesome. If you don't, meh.****
