In the Online Gaming Dumps
Over the last few weeks, in my spare time I’ve been playing the new Blizzard game Overwatch, which is a team-based first-person-shooter in which two teams go head-to-head over different objectives. The game’s really great — polished, complex, engaging.
(You can see my statistics by clicking here.)
But today, I set the controller aside for a long break while playing the game’s competitive mode. How this mode works is that you get matched up against players estimated to be at your skill rating. After wins, your skill rating goes up, and after losses, the skill rating goes down.
I started at skill rating 56 on the 0–100 (best) scale, and after a few evenings of playing, I’m now at 48. My team and I get destroyed every time I load up a new match. I guess that’s a failure of the ranking and matchmaking system.
But loss after loss after loss in a video game gets pretty frustrating pretty quickly. And it makes a real-world lesson all too apparent: There’s always going to be someone better than you. And in the case of Overwatch, I guess my lesson is that half of the playerbase is better than me.
So the question becomes, why play? Losing repeatedly isn’t a good time. And I often load the game back up again with a “growth mindset”: Even though I don’t expect to do good, I’ll try my best and maybe learn something along the way.
But even that doesn’t end up well. Part of it is because the game is a hobby, a fun spare-time filler. I don’t really have the time to devote to getting better — and as it is, I play too much! I look fondly back on the days of summer vacations and spring breaks, and know I’m facing off against those with more time to hone their skills than me.
So a little later I loaded up another Blizzard game, Hearthstone, which is a collectible card game. My opponent slaughtered me. This game, unlike Overwatch, punishes casual players in another way: The more you play, the more resources you gain to spend on rare cards to get an extra edge. Hearthstone’s been around for a long time, so even lower-tiered players have a bunch of rare cards that are challenging to compete with.
So here’s the moral of the story: Online gaming — and the Internet more generally — allows millions of players of different skills to compete at different tasks. The playing field is uneven. So what do people who are in the middle of the pack do? It’s a tough call. I feel like there are two main options: On one hand, you can drop out and let more talented people compete. On the other hand, you could remain in the game, and find alternative ways to make progress.
This letter is too long already, so maybe I’ll have to revisit these ideas in some future writing. But for me, it feels like the right option is self-selecting out of the pool. I’m just not that encouraged to develop intrinsic motivators.
Some interesting links
OK, you’ve gotten this far reading about a video game you don’t play. Here are some things you might find interesting that I came across in the last few days:
Here’s a video of a YouTuber asking Central Parkers whether they’re playing Pokemon Go.
Here’s a neat article talking about how you’re very likely to have a living doppelganger (pseudo-twin). Reading this article reminded me of the guy who’s always at one of the conventions I go to that looks just like me. Every year I tell myself I’m going to introduce myself to him, but I always chicken out.
Speaking of Overwatch, here are some neat prints a guy did that were available for 24 hours — sorry, they’re all gone now. But you can still enjoy the art.
