How Competitive Gaming Helped Me Grow as a Designer
Video games have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. As a kid I spent countless hours playing games. I’d immerse myself in the game, dissect the characters, and compete against my brothers and my friends. In 2001, my mom bought me a Nintendo Gamecube and Super Smash Brothers Melee, a crossover fighting game. Little did I know playing this game competitively would be one of the greatest influences in my life, and would lead me to not only pursue a career in design, but pursue design with purpose, ambition, and a sense of fulfillment that I am grateful to experience every day.
Immersive Experiences
Some of the best video games ever made are the ones that take you away from the world around you and completely immerse your mind in the experience of the game. In order for this to happen, a couple things must be true.
Interactions should be made so well that they are second nature
Have you ever played a game and fumbled over your hands trying to control your character and get them to do what you want them to do? A lack of intuition when it comes to interaction, or a lack of interaction education, can lead to friction that deters users from ever returning to a product. In order to create an immersive experience, your user’s ability to quickly engage in the experience is necessary, and the interactions around the experience should be mindlessly intuitive.
Create your world
The world that your users walk through must be constructed in such a way that they gain emotional investment into that world and the character they are to play. That is to say, as a designer, I have to ensure that I create an experience that encourages the user to experience my design in a such a way that they become emotionally invested in my product. How this is done depends on what you are designing, and who you are designing for. If these questions are consistently asked throughout your design process, your design is sure to address your user’s pains and encourage engagement.
Losing is Learning
Playing SSBM, or anything competitive for that matter, means that you will lose, and for most people this will not feel good. What’s problematic is what often follows, and that is when we blame who we are as a person as for the reason for why we lost. I’ll get into this a bit more in the next section, but it is important to take our losses and turn them into successes. Now this is something, admittedly, that sounds pretty cliché, and it is, but it’s also true. A loss simply that, a loss. It doesn’t mean you are dumb, incapable, or a fraud. It simply means that next time you can do better. Your doing better solely depends on how you take that loss and turn it into a learning experience.
Ok so you’ve lost. You worked through the negative emotions. You’ve learned from what you did wrong before, and now you’ve corrected your craft. Now you want results, in fact you demand them of yourself! Again, stop. Tangible results are something that comes in the long run. Do not expect that because you changed one behavior everybody in the world is going to immediately recognize it and reward you. They often will, but sometimes they won’t. The important thing for you to do, is keep learning and improving. If you do this, you don’t have to go around chasing the world that you think is leaving you behind. Let the world catch up to you.
Abstract yourself
We often take pride in the things that matter to us most. We gain emotional attachment, and often have an ego when it comes to our craft, and these aren’t bad things. We should care about the work that we do and a healthy ego means we take what we do seriously and are secure enough to learn from more experienced people, but aspire to work towards our own vision. Still, egos are fragile. When you’ve worked hard on a passion project and it isn’t well received, or when you have practiced all week for a tournament and get knocked out early going 0–2 (no wins and two losses), you can start to blame yourself and drown yourself in your failure. As mentioned above, all of your hard work doesn’t always lead to a reward. This can lead to high anxiety and stress, or give you “imposter syndrome”, making you want to quit. Don’t.
I watch people play in SSBM tournaments all the time on youtube. It’s easy for me to critique not only the person who is losing, but also the person who is winning (because we can all do better). I can look at either player, and I am so detached from their play emotionally that I can purely focus on the game. Eventually, I was able to do this for myself. When I play SSBM, I train myself to focus on the game, but also remove emotional investment in the game as it relates to myself. In other words, I try to watch myself play from a 3rd person perspective, as I’m playing. This allows me to see the game for what it is, a game with a series of inputs that either player controls that creates various outcomes.
As a designer this means that it is ok for me to have an emotional investment in what I’m designing, but every color that I choose, grid I define, pattern I implement, and experience I create is a decision that’s made without my emotional investment in mind. This feeds right back into the UX principle of not designing for yourself, but rather for your users.
If you take away nothing else from this blog post, take this. Abstract yourself from your design, so that you may begin to see your design from a less invested perspective, and gain a natural empathy for your users.
Chasing your Potential
Ok, so now you’re learning from losing and you’ve abstracted yourself from your design. Now what? Well, now you can more easily do some things that people have been telling you to do, like setting goals for yourself. During my years of playing SSBM competitively I’ve set similar goals, and they’ve helped me to not only become a better player, but also allowed me to enjoy competition in the moment of competing whether I’m winning or losing. I recommend constantly having 3 goals.
Your Life Goal
This is what you live for as a designer. What change do you want to make in the world? Who’s problems do you want to solve? What status quo do you want to break to create a better experience? What keeps you up at night? These are questions that help you realize your life goal. Keep everything centered around this and don’t attach tangibility to it. As scary as it is, your life goal shouldn’t be attainable. It is the never ending staircase.
Your Next Big Step
Maybe it’s just my age, but I tend to take life in stages. On a very general level for me this might look like K-12, undergrad, grad school, and now first full-time design job. My next big step is something I do for my design career that moves me closer to the life goal that I have defined. This doesn’t necessarily mean a job change, or a change in seniority level. It just means that you have moved from one phase of understanding as a designer, to the next. Remember results/rewards aren’t presented as soon as you’ve earned them.
Your Weekly Goal
This is anything that you can realistically commit to for your week that helps you reach your goal. It doesn’t even have to be directly related to yourself as a designer. You might decide that taking a couple days out of the week to exercise in the morning before work really makes a difference and decide to do that, or it can be something very design related, like doing a quick hour long visual design challenge. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s a short attainable goal that helps you reach your goal.
I want to reiterate, having an unattainable life goal that is constantly evolving and adapting to your own life experiences and priorities is a good thing! Let yourself grow. Let your goals grow. You’ll find that life is much more enjoyable, and your designs are that much more delightful.
Community
The SSBM community has given me more than I ever thought it could. I’ve gained resources for learning the game, lifelong friends, and even professional connections outside of gaming. My immersion and investment into the community allowed me to grow with the community and benefit from anything that the community as a whole benefitted from. The same applies for the design community. Admittedly when it comes to design, this is something that I still have to work at. Nonetheless, I’ve made it one of my “next big step” goals. It’s a great way for me to continue learning from fellow designers, make connections, and make new friends!
As you can tell video games have meant more to me than just the game itself. It’s taught me a great deal when it comes to discipline, practice, and how to just have fun! Whether you are picking up a controller, or opening Sketch, I hope that some of the insight I’ve given helps you engage in the world you want to experience and create new ones.
