For the most part, I think games are supposed to be a relaxing thing. Once your day is done and its compliment of tasks are completed, enjoying a game should be a matter of stress-free fun. I think this is mostly the case for single player games, but, for me, multiplayer is a different story. Even when I sign on with the sole intention of just enjoying the gameplay, the competitive drive still comes out and that need to win takes over. It’s not so bad in games wherein I’ve already accepted that I’m just plain not good, but in others it can get downright ugly. It’s so strange what mere games can evoke sometimes, so I thought it’d be interesting to talk about it for a bit.
In the past, my ugly game was Halo. I was never great at it. At my best, I was probably in the upper-middle of the player pool. Nevertheless, I always played to win. I’d take every opportunity I could get and revel in the results while simultaneously cursing anyone doing using the same “cheap” tactics. In reality, there are no true “cheap” tactics in games like Halo, only oppressive ones that the game itself encourages by is very design. Not doing “cheap” things often means losing, but that comes as little consolation when you’re on the losing end of them. I distinctly remember getting genuinely angry over being spawn-camped or ganged-up on in Halo 3, Halo: Reach and Halo 4 back in the day.
Oh, how I’d go on about ho bad the team was that was absolutely destroying mine and how things would be so very different if they’d just fight fair. At the same time, some of my favorite memories of the game were those times where I and I my buddies managed to shut down another team or find some sort of combination that would keep us alive (and annoying) throughout the whole game. It was ridiculously contradictory. Thankfully those days are over as far as Halo goes. Any skill I had is long gone and now it’s just fun to hop in and remember just how much of my game time was wrapped in playing Halo with my friends.
Unfortunately, ugly competitiveness doesn’t just die with one game; it just changes venue. For me, that new venue is Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel. I’m not quite as contradictory in it as I was in Halo; I don’t play any of the top-tier meta decks. However, that doesn’t stop me from both playing the game as it is and getting stupidly salty at anyone who does the same. For those unfamiliar with Yu-Gi-Oh!, the basic goal is this: use your deck to build the best board possible while also preventing your opponent from doing the same.
There are many points of interaction in a given turn, and they can range from denying the opponent actions and/or resources to adding resources/options to your own hand or board. The more either one of you can play, the more difficult it will be for the other to advance their strategy and win. In other words, preventing your opponent from playing is more or less the goal.
I know this as does my opponent, yet, that doesn’t make it feel any better when you’re the one on the wrong end of the exchange. Yu-Gi-Oh! being a 1v1 situation tends to enhance the effects too. You feel really strong when your strategy is advancing and momentum is on your side, and you feel very weak and cheated when it’s not. It all feels rather personal as well, which, of course, makes everything worse.
I’ve been trying to get my friends interested in trying the game for two years now, yet everytime we’re hanging out online and I’m playing Master Duel, all they here is villainous commentary as I win and all manner of bitter, angry salt as I lose. In other words, winning or losing, I tend to make for an ugly sight when I’m playing Yu-Gi-Oh!, so naturally they’ve shied away from trying the game themselves. It makes sense right? Why would you want to play a game that brings out that kind of nastiness?
Perhaps it would be better to just not play competitive multiplayer games online. They obviously bring out something ugly in me, and I’d be better off either dropping them entirely or somehow learning to chill. Yet, the challenge they offer is still fun. The anger/elation is contained to the match, but the satisfaction of the challenge is not. I’d like to learn to chill and not be so competitive, yet, paradoxically, that competitiveness is what makes those sorts of games fun. Is there anything to be done about it? I’m not sure. Short of stopping entirely, perhaps this is just how it’ll always be.
Anyway, this is just how it is for me. What about you? What games bring out some ugliness in you? Is it multiplayer games or is it something else?
Image from the Nintendo eShop page
VIRTUAL BASTION 