The Case For Playing To Win
The last post spoke to the variety of motivations for playing a competitive game. Brackets are filled with different people trying to fill different needs, and that’s fine. But playing to win does come with benefits that I’d like to expand on here.
First, we should hit on an unhealthy achievement-focus vs a healthier process-focus. This is easiest to illustrate using results. Results are clean, unambiguous feedback; you either played well enough to win or you didn’t. Anything more specific gets very slippery very quickly, so as a competitor you have to use them as a foundational metric for your progress. Because of this singularity, results can be a bit of an ego-fest, can’t they? It’s tempting to use them to inform our social dynamics, including who we’re allowed to look down on. Certainly, craving the recognition that comes with wins is unhealthy. And measuring your self-worth with results is extremely unhealthy, win or lose.
But playing to win can actually be an ego-killing process. And this is, I think, it’s ultimate worth.
To a “pure” competitor, the rules of a game are an arena. Within that arena, they will use any means necessary to get the W. They play to win. They seek out and abuse the best characters, tactics, and strategies. Eventually, they have to start making decisions as to how to best use their time in order to win. But because the task (to dominate) is simple, prioritization is relatively simple.
This is in contrast with a “less pure” competitor that has other priorities, be they mastery of their character, fun, experimentation, a want to impress others, or what have you. Having other priorities is fine. It’s just more complicated because they have to reconcile those priorities within the same win-or-lose arena.
The chief value of playing to win, as opposed to an alternate priority, is that it is totally impersonal. Any conflicting desire is just that, conflicting. In order to commit to your best, you have to somewhat arbitrarily reject those desires that would have you play suboptimally. That takes discernment and grit. Chasing the W becomes a means by which you rearrange and overcome your inhibitions and subordinate impulses. That is the sort of tao of games. You commit to a process by which rather than self-assert, you may self-empty so that you can realize.
Lastly, it should be emphasized that playing to win is not some kind of moral superiority.
Games are NOT an arena for your moralism.
Rather, there are benefits that I appreciate. Someone else at this time in their life may or may not and I should be cognizant of that.
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Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Monday, October 29, 2018
Identifying Motivators / Why Play Melee
Identifying Motivators / Why Play Melee
Why you want to play melee influences how you can best play melee.
You can play melee for fun, for mastery, for achievement, to learn, to invent, for the social dynamic, etc. Any reason that you want to.
ALL of these are viable reasons to play. They are also attached to different systems of prioritization. As such, the best advice for each type of player would be different.
Sometimes, well-meaning individuals create unnecessary roadblocks for other people because they don’t discern or ask about their motivations. It’s easy to imagine a more competitive individual degrading a Yoshi main for not “playing to win,” or “wasting their time” but actually the personal prioritization places “achievement” lower than another aspect of competition such as “mastery.”
Similarly, we can imagine a Ganondorf main that finds it difficult to reconcile “playing to win” with “play who you find the most fun.” Despite finding some success, the tournament grind feels like an uphill labor. Is it worth it?
Before we can solve for that kind of struggle, we have to ask ourselves, what does playing melee do for me? What need am I trying to fill? After identifying motivators, it’s easier to understand our relationship to the game.
Consider your most rewarding experiences with the game. What exactly was that emotion? What were you doing? Seriously, journal it out.
It might not have been winning. It could have been learning or even discovering new tech. It could have been experience with friends. Maybe you have a list of different experiences. But chances are there is a highlight or a theme that you can better engage with. That might mean you keep doing what you’re doing, or playing a better character, or playing more often, or playing less often if at all. Maybe it means backing away from tournaments and all-inning on a tangent like TOing. You have to consider. Why commit to a process that isn’t fulfilling? Why not better engage with the parts that are?
Despite what I think is a prevalent subtextual expectation, “play to win” isn’t a fix-all. Achievement isn’t the sole good of competition. It can actually be misleading insofar as it conflicts with (rather than enables) a stronger motivation.
As such, judging the worth of your experience and orienting your behavior solely around your results is perhaps unnecessary. What is necessary is of course for you to decide. Whatever you come up with, try not to use it as an excuse for laziness. Instead, try to tailor your involvement to better achieve what you really want!
Why you want to play melee influences how you can best play melee.
You can play melee for fun, for mastery, for achievement, to learn, to invent, for the social dynamic, etc. Any reason that you want to.
ALL of these are viable reasons to play. They are also attached to different systems of prioritization. As such, the best advice for each type of player would be different.
Sometimes, well-meaning individuals create unnecessary roadblocks for other people because they don’t discern or ask about their motivations. It’s easy to imagine a more competitive individual degrading a Yoshi main for not “playing to win,” or “wasting their time” but actually the personal prioritization places “achievement” lower than another aspect of competition such as “mastery.”
Similarly, we can imagine a Ganondorf main that finds it difficult to reconcile “playing to win” with “play who you find the most fun.” Despite finding some success, the tournament grind feels like an uphill labor. Is it worth it?
Before we can solve for that kind of struggle, we have to ask ourselves, what does playing melee do for me? What need am I trying to fill? After identifying motivators, it’s easier to understand our relationship to the game.
Consider your most rewarding experiences with the game. What exactly was that emotion? What were you doing? Seriously, journal it out.
It might not have been winning. It could have been learning or even discovering new tech. It could have been experience with friends. Maybe you have a list of different experiences. But chances are there is a highlight or a theme that you can better engage with. That might mean you keep doing what you’re doing, or playing a better character, or playing more often, or playing less often if at all. Maybe it means backing away from tournaments and all-inning on a tangent like TOing. You have to consider. Why commit to a process that isn’t fulfilling? Why not better engage with the parts that are?
Despite what I think is a prevalent subtextual expectation, “play to win” isn’t a fix-all. Achievement isn’t the sole good of competition. It can actually be misleading insofar as it conflicts with (rather than enables) a stronger motivation.
As such, judging the worth of your experience and orienting your behavior solely around your results is perhaps unnecessary. What is necessary is of course for you to decide. Whatever you come up with, try not to use it as an excuse for laziness. Instead, try to tailor your involvement to better achieve what you really want!