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I'm a gamer, have been for as long as I can remember (when I got an SNES around 6) and probably will be until I finally I get tired of them (maybe/probably/hopefully never :>). I played MUDs when I was in elementary school (don't do this!), spent many, many hours talking about Mario RPG (awesome game!) and Chrono Trigger with friends in 4th/5th grade, played Pokemon TCG (when it first popped out in Japan) and M:tG (casually, mind you, not much $$$ when you're <14), spent several hundred hours playing Pokemon and Dragonquest Monsters (including a flight from Japan spent entirely playing Pokemon with a very close friend who out of sheer luck actually ended up sitting next to me - totally unplanned, must have been God's Will to play Pokemon!), and got many a sleep-less nights playing Starcraft during elementary and middle school. But I was always a casual gamer, playing games for fun. My favorite chess? 2v2 bughouse. Every time we had a sleep over we’d pull up Goldeneye, Mario Kart (64 and SNES lol, we’d always close out parties with SNES Kart for no reason), Smash Brothers, etc. My friend would trash me in every fighting game (Smash, Soul, Virtua, SF, Tekken, whatever) but it was fun.
But then I feel like my life changed significantly when I picked up Guild Wars before my freshman year of university (just as a note, I graduated just fine, thanks). This was the first time I’d had serious contact with “the whole world” of other players, and because of my ability to pick up games effortlessly, as well as extreme focus (whenever I pick up a new game I tend to marathon it… then get bored of it), I just naturally became pretty damn good. And for the first time, I not only realized I was pretty good at this sort of game, but by a turn of fortune I ended up having some good contacts – I met a guy playing PvE, he decided randomly to start Guild vs Guilding, and later would become ChooChooRocket and leader of one of the stronger US teams. Eventually over the course of two years and some 4000 hours of play (yes that’s sickening) I’d gone everywhere, from US guild to Eu/Polish guild and bumped shoulders with a lot of recognizable names. Then my guild leader of our then-number-1-ranked guild abruptly quit, we fell apart, and I, burned out, quit as well.
Why’d this change me? I’d become a serious rager. I’d grown an ego.
I didn’t even realize it until some months into playing casual DotA when I’d scared away some of my IRL friends because I’d subconsciously shout at them – if you’ve played “competitive” games with me you know that I can be bipolar, where some game I’m silent, and other games I’m running stream-of-consciousness all game, and when I’m doing that we’re seeing Southlight un-censored.
Thus began about 4 years (and counting) of attempting to blunt my nastiness. Work in progress, for sure. As some LoL people know And I apologize. Y’all may not have ever known, but I feel guilty after every game that I rage. Not that it stops me from repeating the cycle.
What I realized though is that I stopped finding fun in these types of games. At first League of Legends was fun – I was trying to stay casual. I was going to play it for fun. I liked exploring what heroes, items, etc. could do, and I loved it because it seemed limitless, what with their (Riot’s) good balancing job.
The problem was that I was cursed with good game-pick-up speed. As time passed, I became better at the game. It wasn’t a complex enough (mechanically) game to be a hurdle for me like SC:BW; rather it rewarded good “board-gaming” skillsets. I ended up, far from one of the best, but able to hold my own against the best, and (in solo queue/casual games) at least able to go into games with the self-confidence that I could wipe the floor with them. And I could.
But then that coincided with the fun being sapped from the game. The more I played, the more random shit I did (I jungled Taric way before people realized it was kind of doable – someone on youtube definitely took things further and jungled everything though), and the less things there were for me to explore. As the months passed, and I got better and more knowledgeable about the game, the amount of fun, to me, in the game dwindled. Some months ago at some point the amount of fun had fizzled to only bugs. I cracked up at Smash doing an Aegis from top left corner of the map to the top right corner and dying via the bug. But when people do stupid shit I smiled but stopped finding it fun, or amusing. Sure, it could be fun for a few seconds, but unfortunately this game takes many, many minutes. Like 17-60 minutes many. As some people (mainly Shake and Turkey) know, I was a spoilsport, because I’d find “trollgames” boring.
My only fun became winning.
And when you’re playing solely to win with 4 other people (who may or may not be as fixated on winning – not to say they didn’t play to win but they were much better at having fun) things get testy.
This culminated in me going on a rage spree for two weeks as stress mounted from school, then a withdrawal from both the game and the Newegg tourney, and finally 90% quitting the game. In the time off I’ve felt a heavy burden lifted from my shoulders, I’ve been able to do a lot of things I’d been leaving on the table (like books to read, <3 you Ecael), and so on and so forth. I don’t like the game. Maybe I haven’t liked it in like 6 months. I feel like an idiot accepting game invites the past two weeks in the odd chance I hop on (usually to look for people) because I didn’t really want to play, and so irritation ensued. Oh well.
But then on the other side of the spectrum, for all the “fun” games like Monster Hunter Portable 3rd and Parasite Eve 3rd Birthday (though that’s quickly losing its flavor…) and so on, I can’t help but crave the competition. I love contradiction. I appreciate that I never bothered to spend much effort in SCBW getting “good” (beyond being able to wipe the floor with all my IRL friends hahah), because my saving grace is that doing 2v2/3v3/4v4 with friends leads to funny stupidity, despite having to try to carry a 10apm guy. Matchmaking, while being my curse in LoL (escalating levels of competition), seems to be my savior in SC2 (stay in the same pool of idiots <3). Funny how that works.
Anyways I wrote the blog to vent and also to see if other people had/have similar issues, and if so what they did/do to deal with it. May come as a surprise to some, but I don’t particularly enjoy raging at friends. And I’m all the more appreciative of my close group of friends that put up with me over the years (including said guy that squashes me in fighting games who I’ve known for ~15 years and has seen everything, including all my insufferableness in GW hahahah, <3 you Baikin). Sigh.
And for everyone that I raged at in LoL, I'm really sorry, and the only real show of apology I can give is to quit the game. Good luck and have fun ^^
 
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United States10671 Posts
My friends set up a ventrilo channel specifically for people who play games at our school. A lot of the people rage too when they play LoL, especially at the noobier members of the vent channel. Though I have to say that through it all, their rage just magnified the fun that everyone had because everyone was having fun regardless of the rage.
Though it is true that one guy (who is CRAZY good), decided to quit LoL because he lost faith in the rest of the vent channel, I guess you could say I have sorta similar issues.
But I'm one of those people that sort of don't rage. In fact, I might be the cause of some people raging.
I play Poppy on LoL, and recently I heard about some guy who just went 5 philosopher stones and sorcerer boots and somehow carried the team. So I decided to try this, but instead of getting 5 philosopher stones, I got 6....and I trolled the entire game as I stacked up over 10K in money before selling all the stones and getting my usual items.
Raging is a part of any video game. You don't need to be sorry for it.
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bai uta
dunno why you're dodging but oh well
if you want to rage go buy a punching bag. Its what I did, except its not a punching bag.
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haha i can relate, in a way.
if i were to break it down, all games kind of fall into two categories (and these are, believe it or not, subjective)
there's games i consider competitive, where i play to win, get mad if i lose, and all that good stuff.
these games you may not find competitive. you may find they fall in the second category.. casual.
and it works the other way around too
let's say you're an avid ssbm'er
sure, i played ssbm a bit, i know the basics of shffling and character matchups, but i never got super serious with it, and still enjoy a ffa with items, etc.
if you and i were 1v1'ing, this wouldn't be a problem, you'd just wipe the floor with my poor peach. i have fun, and you win. s'all good, no potential for rage
however if we were 2v2'ing and on the same team, you wouldn't be amused if you were trying your hardest to barely make it back to the ledge, and i pulled mr wiggles at the last second and tossed it at you. whereas i would find it hilarious and pull a troll face. here we have potential for rage
this occurs in pretty much every team game where there's a disparity of skill on one team (and optionally, one person may play for fun, when other person plays to win). in fact, it's not even a requirement for the better player to rage at his inferior teammate. sometimes, the better player is the one that plays for fun, and the beginner is the one that takes it super seriously. as a newbie, i have actually raged at my teammate who's definitely better than me because we lost and he didn't try during the game.
the problem that i see is, i still can't figure out what causes me to view a game in a competitive light, and what doesn't. for instance, i don't give a shit about any racing game, and would find it amusing spinning people out of control, costing both of us the race. undoubtedly it's a competitive game, but just not for me. i have also had no luck converting from a competitive mindset of a game, to a non-competitive one.
and overall, i have to say i get a lot more fun out of playing casual games than i do winning in competitive games. so in the end, who's making the smarter choice? the diamond-league starcraft rager, or the casual wow player who runs instances with his buds high off his mind laughing for every time a poly sheep makes a 'baaa' noise?
my 2c
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I find winning to be fun. This does look wrong in a sense, however I believe that winning and exploring the competitive side of everything leads to a higher appreciation of it. In every game I play I strive to be the best. I pick up games fairly quickly, and also drop them quickly as well once they have lost their ability to challenge me. This is why I picked up Quake, Starcraft and HoN, and why, as I've been told, why I shouldn't pick up LoL. It may seem like a detaching process to some, but I find that always picking up new games is one that keeps me from being passionately committed (raging), the moment I find it not to be challenging, I drop it, and maybe try some time later, or never again.
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Yeah, i can relate to this topic a lot. I played CS 1.6 competitively for about 8 years, and for the most part, the funnest part was either dropping 20 kills, or winning the game. I los ta few friends because I had trouble with them not being very good - and I could never find a good team (it seems backwards that despite your skill level, you need proof of being cal-main to actually get into a cal-main team, even if you are better than them). To say plainly, it was so frustrating to be very skilled at the game, yet to feel held down by the process of finding a good team, or constantly having teams become inactive or breaking up due to stupid reasons. There's a reason why I switched to scbw - I could blame my loss in a game completely on myself. For some reason this is comforting to me - I get as good as much as effort I put into the game, not depending on others too much.
Alas, i still miss cs 1.6, and had a lot of fun. Sometimes you just need to sit back, realize the adrenaline rush you get from competitive gaming and cooperative play, and realize you are having fun (this is easiest when you are lanning with other players)
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Yeh, i've also stopped playing LoL because i would just rage at my friends nonstop for doing dumb shit. Even if we were winning the game, i promised myself when i started LoL that i would never get like this. I'm too competitive 
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Yeah definitely one of the major factors for my burning out on GW was the difficulty of finding a team and keeping at it. When I had a stable team (sometimes for months at a time, like EaSy) it was some of the most fun I had, even when we raged at each other. But it's so hard, so that when I quit I was like I'm never taking a team game seriously, ever again. But then LoL went that way and, ugh. It's a terrible feeling pissing off people I liked playing with by raging.
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I used to be a right cunt in dota and lesser in WoW and lesser still in SC2. I still get a pang of anger when I lose or get trash talked.
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LoL has a weird effect on people. it's like poker where everyone thinks they are the greatest player in the universe until they start losing, then it's not their fault. i'm much better at LoL than some of my friends who plug 6+ hours a day into it. RTS prepares you for that sort of a gaming environment and you know what to expect.
guild wars had great competitive potential but unfortunately suffered from severe balancing issues and an incompetent balance team after factions. it broke down so bad that War Machine recruited me to run flags since they no longer had enough core members.
the only game that really ate at me was WC3. it's the only competitive solo game where you can outplay your opponent and still get raped because he lucked out and found an exp tome or a lightning shield wand. it pissed me off for a while, but then there was plenty of times when i was the one who found the good items and abused the hell out of them, thus making them ragequit and me an undeserving winner. it goes both ways.
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On December 31 2010 02:19 Caller wrote:
bai uta
dunno why you're dodging but oh well
if you want to rage go buy a punching bag. Its what I did, except its not a punching bag.
didn't you say you would quit like last summer? rofl.
yea. LoL makes me rage too..some of my friends ... i don't even know what's going through their heads sometimes...
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I've actually lost friends for yelling at them during Halo 3. I really didn't understand them. They would get mad when we lost, but when I called them out on what they could do better, they claimed that they were "playing for fun." One guy absolutely lost it when I told him that the AR sucks in Halo Reach just like it did in all the other games. I haven't seen him since.
For me, getting better at something is a true joy in life. Of course, it's sometimes relaxing to not do that, to just play freely, mess around, beat up the computer for being dumb. But in the end, I'm always having more fun when I can look back at what I did and say, "Wow. I really did get better. I've accomplished a lot of personal victories." Every time I try to turn off competitive mode, it's just not fun anymore. I sit there and wonder what the point is of playing if I'm not gonna try to get better, especially if it's something I put a lot of time into.
I try not to play competitive games with friends who aren't serious. If it's something I'm gonna take seriously in the future, I know that it will just make everyone worse to play casually with friends, in every possible way. It's not worth it.
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I never played LoL seriously but I also uninstalled a few days ago. There's a long list of things I've never liked about the game (in hindsight I really wish I'd chosen HoN) but I tolerated because it was fun. Now, it's not so fun, and after my pathetic grades last semester something's gotta give.
I'm done with these games
+ Show Spoiler +
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good choice my friend.
high Elo ate into all of us, whether they admitted it or not. the drive to be recognized is too much to balance carefully. at one point you have to decide either to go all the way with it (like HS, Loco and all the streamers) or pull out (like me, knaan, my entire WCG team actually, and now you i guess). occasionally there's people like Tree who can handle it mildly but they are ever so rare.
honestly i think becoming good at LoL makes you hate it all the more. "mid-high" Elo and thinking you're on top of the world is better than actually being on the top of the world and having to try so hard to maintain your reputation and your skills. i enjoyed the game a lot more before my first games against namedrops.
the best days were the 60 minute ques with 3 Finkill/Snowflake dodges and ultimately getting crushed by jiji's premade. i'll forever cherish the monumental waste of time haha.
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I just gotta say that your apologies to the people you've raged at seem to indicate a great deal of respect for your friends and teammates, even if they played badly. Raging obviously isn't good or productive, but it's a natural byproduct of passion in many people, so I'm sure anyone who's ever felt a similar passion can forgive you for your rage.
It's a pity so many competitive games are also team games. Maybe try looking into taking up a fighting game more or less seriously? Regardless, I hope you find something fun to follow up with after leaving LoL.
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I played DotA casually since Allstars first came out, and there's something about the AoS genre of games that induces rage, I don't know what it is. Maybe the community of players or just something about the gameplay, but I find that I rage constantly while playing DotA/LoL, but I'm much calmer while playing SC. I've given it some thought and it must be a combination of the team aspect of the game - you can have terrible team mates and lose even if you played well - and the fact that it requires low APM to play, giving you plenty of time to type.
I've been trying to tone down the rage and treat LoL games more like SC games, give a "gl hf" at the beginning and a "gg" if I lose.
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On December 31 2010 04:31 Terranist wrote:
LoL has a weird effect on people. it's like poker where everyone thinks they are the greatest player in the universe until they start losing, then it's not their fault. i'm much better at LoL than some of my friends who plug 6+ hours a day into it.
Sorry for the double post, I just grinned a little here at the irony. No offense intended, either. You may very well be much better than your peers, but as you said, that's what everyone believes.
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man you make me want to write a blog about LoL haha.
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@Beta
No? :x I don't think I ever considered quitting at all until November when I was getting stressed the fuck out. I even had a conversation with Smash and Turkey about trying to get a team together and taking the game seriously, but... yeah.
@red
I agree, it becomes such a strain to "stay on top of things" and I'm just not willing to go all-in anymore. There're some people that can find fun in the game regardless (like Shake) but I just can't do it. I can't I can't I can't and trying to play the game just pisses me off now, with very rare circumstances (like when I'm just trying to give a Kassadin show).
@Ech
For the most part, I don't carry over rage after a game (most of the time it's instantaneous and I forget). I always feel bad about it though, and when I'm raging after a game it's either because someone's egging me on or because it's a culmination of something constant. It's rarely ever personal with me - there're some people I hated with a passion (HeeJongShin and AznWiseGuy and a few others like that) but otherwise I don't care, despite how much venom and fire I may spew.
@c.Deadly
I'm of the opinion that it has to do with team games, to be honest, especially team games that require a significant amount of devotion to teamwork and chemistry, while also praising individual glory. Guild Wars was like Build Wars and Rage Wars, it was pretty nasty with a lot of guild incest and stuff. I'd imagine it's the same in LoL, which is why in the past when competitive LoL was brought up I always mentioned the similarities that I perceived between the two "competitive communities." It's hard as hell to develop teamwork when individual people are recognized more often than not, and it takes very few hot-headed people to start wrecking that. I'm the latter, and I know it.
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EPT
