Thursday, March 17, 2011

I'm not competitive. I just like winning!

“You are so competitive!” My girlfriend smirked at me as I finished recounting my elaborate battle in a World of Warcraft PvP battleground.

“…. Nuh huh!” (Always one for the sharp witted response, that’s me!)

Perhaps my definition of “competitive” is skewed. I always associated someone who is competitive with someone who has to always win. We all know someone who’s like this. Every game they play, they have to win. If they don’t win, we all know what’s going to happen next. They are going to go through some of the 5 stages of gaming grief:

  1. Denial – Blame the game/controller/lighting in the room/the earth’s gravitational pull for the loss. I mean it couldn’t be that they lost to a better player. No sir.
  2. Anger – “This game is stupid anyways! I mean who really plays Halo/Call of Duty/(insert insanely popular multiplayer game here)”. This could be accompanied by a controller making one last flight across the room before being obliterated on the wall.
  3. Bargaining – “Hey let’s play another game (that I know I can beat you in)!”, or “How about we play that again, but you don’t cheat this time!”
  4. Depression – “I don’t feel like playing this game anymore.” Usually this happens if you beat them so soundly that there are no excuses to be made, you just made them look stupid.
  5. Acceptance – “Good game. You beat me. Show me how you did that move again…” This stage is rare. However, if you find someone like this, cherish them.

Indeed, that's how it is...

Competitive? That isn’t me! Hell, I’ve thrown more games than I can count just to make other players feel better (this is a subject of much debate amongst me and my other gaming buddies, and is somewhat contradictory to the rest of this post). To say I lack the “killer instinct” would be an understatement. That’s not to say I don’t like winning. I absolutely do, but not at the expense of someone else’s enjoyment of the game (again, another subject of debate, and possibly another blog post).

So I decided to look up what definition of “competitive” actually is. Dictionary.com says:

com•pet•i•tive –adjective

1. of, pertaining to, involving, or decided by competition: competitive sports; a competitive examination.

2. well suited for competition; having a feature that makes for successful competition: a competitive price.

3. having a strong desire to compete or to succeed.

4. useful to a competitor; giving a competitor an advantage: He was careful not to divulge competitive information about his invention.

Of all of that, I would suppose the third definition is the most relevant. I do have a strong desire to compete and succeed. However I don’t have a strong desire to always win. And I think that’s the difference.

I measure a “win” by how much I’ve improved. To me, the experience I gain, and what I learned from previous experiences, shapes me into a better player. On some level, I suppose my main competition is always myself. This mindset isn’t something that has come naturally, but has taken years of experience to attain. If I’m going up against someone in a fighting game who is just plain better than me, a win to me, would be getting him down to 50% health whereas the last few times I might have only gotten him down to 75%. Sure I still technically “lost” the match. But to me I’ve learned more about how to be a better player. And that 25% gain is worth more to me than beating someone soundly at any game. So I guess I am competitive. And I hope that I always stay competitive, as I strive become better at everything I put my hand to. And who knows… maybe next time I’ll get that guy's health down to 49%. ;)

So how do you define a win? Is it all about the score, or does a win mean more than just besting your opponent?

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