you’re playing a game. it’s one you play often, and you consider yourself to be proficient and knowledgeable in it. your game is multiplayer, cooperative, and competitive. sometimes, when you play your game, you’re matched with teammates who are not as proficient or knowledgeable as you are in it. given your above-average ability to play the game, you attempt to advise your teammates on what they could be doing better, how to improve, or otherwise how to win the current round. you may be thinking this would be met with criticism of your attempts to boss them around, but instead it’s met with something else.
a curious and counterproductive mindset emerges, stating that winning is no longer the goal of the game, and there’s a tacit understanding between “normal” players that improvement is for “abnormal” players. instead, the new goal of the game is to have “fun” and to “enjoy” playing, which cannot possibly include the idea of playing to win or, god forbid, improving at it, either.
your gameplay isn’t fun
it doesn’t make sense to me when people say “you’re making the game unfun.” you’re playing a video game that has been designed with competitive nature in mind. typically, they reward efficiency and skill, and it’s by design. playing efficiently and skillfully is a fully intentional part of the game, and you’re telling people to disregard the design of the game, and impose silly, made-up rules on themselves to preserve your personal notion of fun. how does this make any sense from the perspective of someone who wants to enjoy the game?
it’s at this point that i’m convinced that your view of our game and mine are very different. this may seem self-evident, but what i mean is that the casual player typically regards the game in a totally different cognitive space than the competitive player. they believe the game designer is fundamentally wrong about game design, they believe the most passionate players are fundamentally wrong about playing the game, and they believe their view of the game, despite only few people holding it, to be fundamentally true, wondering why only so few people hold something so obvious, and so crucial, to be the virtues by which everyone should live. how do those competitive players not realize they’re actually not having any fun at all?!
improvement is lame
improving at a game requires practice. it’s a skill, like any other. however, when you suggest that someone should practice their game, that’s typically seen as unfun and “tryhardish.” after all, it makes sense, someone who does try hard at the game would practice in their down time when they’re not playing. why then should anyone be quick to dismiss the notion of practice? it usually only has the positive effects of improving your gameplay and experiencing less friction when playing.
but practice isn’t fun. i’ll be the first to admit that typically, spending hours practicing a game and not playing it is not the most fun activity. however, i don’t think that it’s appropriate to judge someone for practicing a game, or to demonize the concept as a whole. if someone has the option to do something that makes them win more, that fits within the concept of fair play (i.e. not cheating), why shouldn’t they do it?
antisocial tendencies
this is where i believe the views go from silly, to antisocial. what casuals don’t realize is that they’re creating an unnecessary divide between players that ought not to exist. why shouldn’t casuals and competitive players coexist? the way every argument seems to go - and every discussion seems to end - is that casual players hate losing to competitive players. losing shouldn’t necessarily be unfun, it’s a very real and normal part of the game. you simply aren’t going to win every game, ever. even if you only play against other casual players, you’re still going to lose.
so why then is the way that you lost a match important? usually something along the lines of “it’s the way we lost! they played lame and only won because of that! if they followed our arbitrary set of rules that neuters all skillful/expressive forms of gameplay we would’ve had a chance!”
why do you care?
normally, i don’t have any problem with any way anyone chooses to play. i am a competitive gamer, and i try my best to win while playing fair. i only write this article because i’ve been personally accused, as a competitive gamer, of ruining other people’s experiences and ruining gaming communities by simply playing the game the only way i know how. all of the things i’ve written about above are real, genuine opinions from people that i’ve played with before, or had the (dis)pleasure of arguing with over the internet.
the problem with these things, to me, is that it’s all just an admission of cognitive dissonance. you simultaneously want to pretend that the game is indeed a skillful thing where people try and employ strategy, but then want to also pretend that some strategies (particularly the efficient ones) are forbidden and bad for the game on the whole. unfortunately, you can’t believe both at the same time, as they soundly contradict eachother.
my honest thoughts? it doesn’t really matter! it’s a game, after all, play however you want! just please, don’t judge other people for playing well. it’s not nice, and it’s just as harmful as what you’re trying to prevent in your community. i believe it’s a flawed mentality, and the only game that’s being ruined is your own.
