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Despite my title sharing an acronym with a group that is known to be pretty angry at times, I believe I have found something great.
I have a long history of playing video games, and a long history of getting mad at them. Whether it was getting super pissed at frogger when a truck hit me, or telling someone who 4pooled (and more recently, 6pooled) to fuck off because they were a no skill newbie who would never do anything with their life, I was a nerd-rager.
Recently, and at least part of the inspiration for my epiphany has to go to WhiteRa, I have stopped. What is the secret? I realized this is a game.
But not in the sense that most people mean when they tell you to calm down because it is just a game. I feel strongly that people should be passionate about gaming. It matters to me as much or more than most things. What I realized is that a game should be played, and played for enjoyment. Both players are doing whatever they think will be the most fun (or yield the most fun in the future). I enjoy getting better, and winning. However, these two things are often mutually destructive goals. I would probably have gotten a lot of "winning-enjoyment" if I 6pooled every game. My "getting better-enjoyment" on the other hand would be almost zero.
I think people with my winning/improvement preferences have a very hard time preventing themselves from getting angry at what they perceive as people with strictly winning preferences beating them. It is too hard to mentally reconcile the weakness of my goal during a loss. When I'm watching SC2 and about to play it is easy. I know I'm going to play some new strategies a bunch to learn them so tomorrow I can win, even if today I lose. But when I lose today I still get mad.
Then I realized I'm playing a game. And so is my opponent. It doesn't make any sense to get mad at my opponent when I knew perfectly well that his goal was almost certainly to beat me. I pressed that find opponent button. None of the attitudes towards my own game play have changed, but I had a crucial realization about the nature of my opponents, and that made all the difference.
Every person is playing in whatever manner gives them the most enjoyment. That is a fact that should be taken for granted, and perhaps dissected if you want to beat them. Being angry at them doesn't increase my enjoyment, so I don't play like that anymore.
p.s. I just got a DotA 2 beta key so everything I just said about not raging might be moot.
 
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DotA is probably not the best thing to play
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Yelling at your team on vent is one of the top 3 reasons to play DotA.
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I love the original idea about this post. In many ways, I feel like competitive gaming can bring out the best in us, if we just let it. Eventually we can treat losses like the learning experiences they are. It is very difficult, and takes intentional practice, but it is possible. The realization that there is another player on the other side of the line, and that we could just easily be them, is essential. But most important is realizing that, no matter whether the opponent was script or human, overmatched or undermatched, we can always learn from the game and improve, and THAT is the essence of competitive gameplay, even above winning or losing.
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Read your entire post
First 4 replies: DotA DotA DotA DotA
Well DotA is definitely a team game, with a skill ceiling non existent when compared to either of the Starcrafts, so don't hold back if you wanna vent on your teammates, because no matter how good you are and how much better you're getting they will still be a limiting factor.
Scream your heart out 
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... If your goals are/were getting better and winning ... then you should laugh at every 6p that comes at you! :D If you know what your doing then it's easy to hold with a bit of drone micro or even proper scouting and then you can get back to ladder. Hence getting better, as you will ALWAYS meet chease in SCII, and knowing how to hold it is important  . GL!!
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On December 22 2011 20:35 Rossen wrote:... If your goals are/were getting better and winning ... then you should laugh at every 6p that comes at you! :D If you know what your doing then it's easy to hold with a bit of drone micro or even proper scouting and then you can get back to ladder. Hence getting better, as you will ALWAYS meet chease in SCII, and knowing how to hold it is important . GL!!
Haha, this is what I would always tell myself before I started playing, but somehow for me it never worked very well in practice. Until recently I mean. It was amazing how I could have that attitude, but after getting cheesed or 1 base timing'd 3 or 4 times in a short span I would totally lose control.
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I guess I'm weird but I totally don't care if I lose to cheese. I know that its rather easy to execute and there is - in all honesty - not so much that you can do wrong do defend it. Sure, you can panic and do a couple of things wrong but even in the worst-case-scenario theres only a handful of things that will lead to your demise.
What used to really go under my skin was losing long, drawn out games where I found so many opportunities to win when watching the replay.
But after a while I realized that the joy of playing starcraft 2 is not about the score screen and the small text "Victory!" or "Defeat!" but about all the time before the score screen and this happiness and joy exists - no matter the outcome ^.^
(Oh and I totally wanted to get better, be the first Bonjwa, get someone to write songs about me and earn a lot of agressive female fangirls, so I needed to find a way to play more)
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On December 23 2011 05:36 Felo wrote:
I guess I'm weird but I totally don't care if I lose to cheese. I know that its rather easy to execute and there is - in all honesty - not so much that you can do wrong do defend it. Sure, you can panic and do a couple of things wrong but even in the worst-case-scenario theres only a handful of things that will lead to your demise.
What used to really go under my skin was losing long, drawn out games where I found so many opportunities to win when watching the replay.
But after a while I realized that the joy of playing starcraft 2 is not about the score screen and the small text "Victory!" or "Defeat!" but about all the time before the score screen and this happiness and joy exists - no matter the outcome ^.^
(Oh and I totally wanted to get better, be the first Bonjwa, get someone to write songs about me and earn a lot of agressive female fangirls, so I needed to find a way to play more)
as opposed to male fangirls right?
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On December 23 2011 05:50 wooozy wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2011 05:36 Felo wrote:
I guess I'm weird but I totally don't care if I lose to cheese. I know that its rather easy to execute and there is - in all honesty - not so much that you can do wrong do defend it. Sure, you can panic and do a couple of things wrong but even in the worst-case-scenario theres only a handful of things that will lead to your demise.
What used to really go under my skin was losing long, drawn out games where I found so many opportunities to win when watching the replay.
But after a while I realized that the joy of playing starcraft 2 is not about the score screen and the small text "Victory!" or "Defeat!" but about all the time before the score screen and this happiness and joy exists - no matter the outcome ^.^
(Oh and I totally wanted to get better, be the first Bonjwa, get someone to write songs about me and earn a lot of agressive female fangirls, so I needed to find a way to play more) as opposed to male fangirls right?
Yes, they just aren't as appealing to me 
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EPT
