The Case For Playing To Win

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.