Ladder Fear

On October 27 2011 19:24 Umpteen wrote:
I went through a patch of terrible ladder fear a while back. I would sit down with every intention of playing, and end up browsing TL, writing long posts or watching streams. It reached the point where I actually couldn't look Raynor in the face as the game booted without getting tense and anxious.

Unfortunately, mass gaming wasn't a viable solution. I only have time to play 2-3 games per day, 5-6 on rare occasions, not enough for brute-force desensitization. Instead, I had to sit myself down and devise a mental attitude that would enable me to Find those Games. I began by asking myself:

What am I getting out of pressing the button?

Why was I doing it? What was I trying to achieve?

As this was the first time I'd ever properly analysed my relationship with competitive games, it was a combined epiphany and facepalm to realise that I was doing what I always did, which was to unconsciously cast myself in the fantasy role of:

Ordinary Guy Who Turns Out To Be Amazing!

You know the deal. The Last Starfighter. Star Wars. Ender's Game. Obviously I wasn't literally imagining myself hitting 400apm in my first match, or in fact doing any of the things it actually takes to be good. But I was definitely imagining myself being gifted, a fast learner - quite the cosy little fantasy to put on the line when I hit that button.

I realised that if that were the only reason I could find to play, I might as well stop. The only way that could end was - I could see with hindsight - how my other abortive forays into games and sports had ended: frustration, resentment, and a lot of brooding where I would waste hours cooking up reasons why it wasn't my fault.

So I came up with a different reason to play:

SC2 was going to be the game that changed my relationship with games.

I was going to train myself to enjoy the process of learning, and to value improvment rather than attaining any particular ranking.

Next I considered the reactions I had to winning and losing:

When I won, I'd often stop playing, or watch the replay instead of queuing up another match.

This was easy to understand: I'd been anxious before the game and now it was over, and had ended well. I'd bet on black and it had come up - and now I was going to leave with my winnings rather than risk another spin. On the other hand:

When I lost, my instinctive urge would be to deliberately throw a string of games.

This confounded me at first. But then I saw echoes of it in posts by other people here on TL. They advised those experiencing ladder fear to 'play some 2v2s' or 'just mess about' or 'do crazy strats', because:

It's all about taking control.

Nobody can stop you insta-quitting, just as a strategy you expect to fail can only surprise you pleasantly. Fear of the Find Game button was plain old Fear of the Unknown, and I finally appreciated something else:

The ladder always does its best to maximise uncertainty.

That's what funneling you towards a 50/50 ratio means. Even if you're awful, like me, there's no escape, no emotional refuge to be found in fatalism, or mentally casting yourself as the underdog. The outcome of the next game will, for the majority of players, always be a coinflip. The only way out, I decided, was:

Take the outcome out of the equation and focus solely on self-improvement within each game.

There are plenty of guides here on TL telling you to pick some aspect of your play and practice it - maybe it's creep spread, or injections, or constantly building SCVs, or using your chronoboost. These guides are spot on; that's exactly the right way to improve. But for me, overcoming ladder fear meant making that improvement an end in itself.

Don't practice your creep spread because it'll help you win more games. Practice it because being better at spreading creep is cool. Practice constantly building SCVs and keeping your money low because it's a fun, challenging minigame, and it's great to have a massive army earlier than you used to. Scout and take watchtowers because, at the very least, knowing what's going to be killing you and when is more satisfying than having it arrive unannounced. And when that scouting knowledge allows you to make it a less thoroughly crushing defeat, or better yet a close-run thing, pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

Over the next few weeks, I was gradually able to train myself, both while playing and between sessions, to think about what I'm going to try and do better rather than brooding over what coulda/woulda/shoulda happened in individual games. I still like to watch winning replays rather more than I should, but to congratulate myself on a nice bit of scouting, well-saturated bases, timely upgrades and so on, rather than the outcome. And I still get the occasional twinge when I lose, the ghost of that urge to deliberately put my MMR in the toilet, but I'm able to greet it with a wry and knowing smile, like a childhood enemy whom I no longer fear.