EPT___
"Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess."
- Rene Descartes
In Descartes Discourse on Method(the cradle of modern reasoning and scientific theory) he opens with this line and for us who browse game forums on a daily basis, the truth of that statement can be brutally obvious and I wonder about its implications sometimes.
I did my usual sweep of mmo-champion this morning-- a habit I haven't been able to quit even after ending my WoW-subscription almost a year ago, and I stumbled onto the age old discussion of "baddies" and what constitutes as a bad player.
The roles were well worn and comftarble still as people descended into that typical "I'm right, everyone who disagrees is deserving of pain or worse"-attitude and in three posts everyone had called everyone in the thread an asshat in some way or another... and from there it just got worse.
Now, playing LoL has slowly toughend my skin against nerdrage and e-tears, so I don't get swept away by the fires of stupid as easily as I once did, but the most important difference for me as a player now is that I have come to terms with the fact that there are always angles to any problem to be considered that may be equally "right" as my own idea and I now know for certain that I too can be so sourly mistaken and bad that it's downright ego destroying.
It's common that most people in games and forums act like their chosen mode of discussion and logic is the sound and only one-- which makes sense, since I would have to do the same for everything I write in a broader sense-- but it is also common that this rigid relationship to problems is what holds some people back. If I am unable to criticially question every detail of my playing and never assuming that others may know better then me, I would most certainly reach a certain level of play and just stay there instead of progressing further.
Being good at things and being ok with being wrong seems to be what distinguishes the truly aspiring and potenitally great from the flock. I won't say good or bad, because sometimes that is not true either, there are horribly rude people out there who are complete ego-maniacal about their genius who can still play with the best of them and win. It's a big world, so there's bound to be some "exceptions" to these rules-- but in a large scale, and IMO the one I should care about -- I need to be wrong to get better.
What I'm trying to say is this, if I had the option to switch off Ego in some hidden options tab in any game, I would. And I think that I would become a much better player for it
