Sometimes, nothing can be done. You didn’t mean for it to happen. You would have stopped it if you could, but you couldn’t. It’s tragic and often grizzly. Try as we might, sometimes, gaming just goes bad. I don’t mean bad like parents play for too long and neglect their kids. I don’t mean bad like games teach kids to be violent. Those are both things that aren’t a reality for a staggering majority of gamers. Like, 99.99% (trust me, I’m a scientist. Seriously). What I mean is that sometimes, you just suck at gaming. For seemingly no reason. You hop on for a quick game, and it’s almost like you’ve forgotten what thumbs are for (obviously, they’re for pressing buttons. How could you forget that?). Maybe you want to do some online multiplayer, and boot up the ol’ rig, and proceed to do nothing but lose all night. What is going on? Is this madness? Are you in some horrible wonderland?
No, you’re just having an off night.
It happens to all of us, and we all hate it. All of us. You hate it, I hate it, everyone. The weird part is though, and I don’t know if this is true for everyone (I work from personal experience, just like all of you, no one’s done a study to verify this… working on the grant money), but everyone seems to hide it. You’re reading this on the internet. I assume you internet elsewhere, though I wouldn’t blame you if my article history was your homepage. If you DO internet elsewhere, I’m sure you’ve gone to a gaming forum or two, I’m just swinging blind here, but stop me if I’m wrong. Internet forums, especially ones about gaming, or really any subject that is inherently competitive, are full of individuals boasting of their successes, or calling attention to others failures. That’s about 90% of what you’ll find on the internet.
So why don’t we talk more about when we lose? Losing is something that can really help us get better at what we want to be better at it. Winning does this too, but really, you don’t learn much from winning. You did what you did because you THOUGHT it would, or could, lead you to a win. So you’re simply vindicated. Good job for you. You know what you did works in a very specific set of circumstances. Lose and you get to see where the weaknesses are. I’m sure you all know as much.
I guess it’s an embarrassment factor. People don’t like admitting that they’ve failed in something they tried to do. You tried to win, you didn’t, you failed. But… you failed infront of who? The internet? The only reason people are jerks on the internet is because it’s anonymous. Who cares if people know you failed? They’ll never know YOU failed… it doesn’t make much sense to me.
In this guy’s opinion, people should be a bit more honest about their gaming shortcomings. Especially when it comes to multiplayer games. A more highly skilled player base, as a result from learning from our mistakes (actually learning, like, from one another) results in a better experience for everyone. So here, I’ll get us started.
League of Legends: I play on the nightly. Have a 13 game losing streak going. I think I’m a bit too aggressive, and when I do well, my actions don’t always translate into helping the rest of my team do well. I need to not be so self focused… I think.
Civilization 5: Just got the game. Washington keeps strong arming me. I’ve been trying to go the culture rout, but I don’t think my science progression is focused enough.
Legend of Dragoon: The Divine Dragon can go eat a ****. I think I’m merely underleveled. He simply wipes the floor with me at level 24. Using Dart, Albert and Rose. Crutching on Rose Storm (without sitting in Dragoon form obviously) and trying to stay alive long enough to whittle him down… that’s the part that’s not working.
SO. I invite all of you to, in the comments section, come clean about some games you’ve been sucking at recently. Maybe you’re in a slump, maybe you were never good. It’s ok, as long as you’ve the drive to get better, we’ll all get through this together.
