Escaping Reality

Every so often I get down. I mean really down. I’ll get irritable, emotional, and overall just feel off. I’ve dubbed the times my personal PMS times (Note: Ladies I’m in no way making light of that time of the month. I don’t know how you put up with it. This just proves that females are the superior gender.). And what’s worse is that, logically, I know that I have no good reason to feel this way. Normally it hits me when I’m doing great, and have no valid reason to feel down or depressed. This, of course, only serves to get me even more upset and angry (it’s a vicious cycle). It comes and goes at seemingly random times. It will hit me without warning, and I usually feel this way for anywhere between a week and three weeks. In the past I would always handle it the same way.

Step 1: Find a game or TV show that has a long engrossing story line or rich detailed world.

Step 2: Bury myself in said world, learn all I can about it, and generally shun the rest of the “Real” world.

Step 3: Wait until I wake up one day and not feel all Emo (YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND MY PAIN!!!!).

Pretty much...

And this is how it would go. Every few months I would realize I was feeling a little “off” and I would just dive into whatever world was available to me.

Most often it was a game by Bethesda. Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 have all served this purpose a number of times. Of course there was always the tried and true MMO, World of Warcraft. Games like Diablo 2 and Torchlight, have also offered me hours of escape from myself and my feelings. Of course, I would be remised if I didn’t mention games like Final Fantasy (pick one), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, or Mass Effect, which are the best examples of fleshed out worlds to get lost in.

Then there are the massive amounts of TV shows, which services like Hulu and Netflix now let you watch whole seasons of in a sitting, allowing you to get lost in a long story and character development. I’ve spent many hours watching Lost or Fringe (Love me some J.J. Abrams!). I loved losing myself in these fantastical worlds that are fleshed out over hours and hours of deep story and mythology.

I’m sure what I’m describing isn’t unheard of. In fact I’m relatively certain that more and more this is how most people escape their issues (Sweeping generalizations FTW!).

And why not!? It’s easy. And it’s becoming easier and easier. With today’s technology, how easy is it to get your favorite TV shows streamed to your phone? And how many of us have sunk hours into Angry Birds, trying to kill those smug green pigs? Now any amount of escape is available to us at the touch of a button (or screen), with hardly any waiting. It’s Escape on Demand (must look into trademarking that…)!

So fast forward (or flashback depending on where you are in time) to a week ago and I feel it coming on. I start getting annoyed when the grandma in front of me whips out her War and Peace sized book of coupons in the grocery store and it takes all of my energy to not beat her over the head with that 6-pack of Ensure she’s insisting on saving 20 cents on. I turn on the TV and all of a sudden I want to cry when I find out Glee got renewed for another season. And I can’t even log on to Facebook, for fear of writing hate filled comments on a person’s status update that describes how terrible their life is. Yep, it’s that time again.

But now my life is different. I now have a girlfriend who’s very much a part of my life. I can’t escape for weeks on end into another world, without leaving her behind. And how fair is it to her for me to just “check out” every few months for a week or more into a game or TV show and ignore what’s going on in her life. I know, were the situation reversed, I wouldn’t like it.

But more than that, more than the relationship with her or any of my other friends and family, it’s not fair to me.

By ignoring the problem, and not dealing with it, I have been taken the easy route. Instead of facing how I was feeling and trying to come to grips with it, I instead opted to give up entirely and escape to a different world where those feelings didn’t exists (or at least didn’t matter). I was a coward. Because my feelings didn’t have a logical or rational explanation to them, I ran to a place where everything did have a logical, rational explanation. Why am I feeling this way? I don’t know, but I just leveled up in Fallout 3 and I got another perk to pick and I know that if I get this perk it’ll make me hit harder… and so on and so on.

It’s so easy to do. To ignore what you’re feeling and replace it with something that dulls (or even removes) it and allows you to focus on something that’s fun and/or exciting.

But is it the healthy thing to do? Is it the right thing to do? I can’t speak for anyone else. For myself, personally? The answer is probably no. It’s neither the healthy nor the right thing to do. So this time, instead of escaping into another world to avoid this emotional roller coaster, I’m going to face it head on.

And who knows… maybe this experience will help me ding to the next level in life. ;)

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?

Oh that's so cheap!!!

So a buddy of mine comes over to my house the other night. We catch up on his life (his job/wife/life sucks) and I fill him in on mine (I’m doing quite well actually) and I proceed to tell him about two new games. I first show him Bulletstorm since he’s a big fan of the Halo/Call of Duty franchise. I demonstrate an Echo and one level (act 6 level 1 I believe it was) where I did my best to explain the appeal of the game. He seemed vaguely interested but didn’t really want to play (could have been for self-conscious reasons. *shrug*). So I pull out Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and explain to him how it’s done by the same guys who have done the Street Fighter series. About this time my girlfriend gets home, so I drop the controller in his hands, point him at the “Arcade” mode and wish him the best of luck while I go greet her and talk to her for a few minutes.

I come back about 10 minutes later, he’s at the last boss, and he’s whipping him severely. And then I notice something… he’s not using any special moves, combos, or even super attacks. Yet he’s destroying the boss like it’s his job. Come to find out he set the difficulty to “Very Easy”. So I pick up the player 2 controller and offer to give him a real challenge.

Now I’ve had the game since the midnight launch, and I have a history of fighting games under my belt. I’m no scrub. I know I can beat him in this game (hubris at its finest). However, I absolutely HATE playing against someone in a game who’s way better than me and getting stomped repeatedly. Nothing kills the fun in a game faster for me.

So we start going at it, and I hold back a little bit to make the matches close. I win a few, he wins a few. I mostly hit the select random character button to give myself some experience with other characters while at the same time, encouraging him to use special attacks and moves. Gradually he starts becoming better and better. I have to start planning move moves more carefully, and often he would surprise me with an out-of-nowhere hyper-combo. So I have to start stepping up my game a little…

then a little more…

then all of a sudden I’ve got a real fight on my hands. I eventually abandon the random characters and go to the fighters I’ve actually trained with (Cap, X-23, Hulk). And then it happens.

The cheapest dog alive!

He selects that blasted Okami dog, Amaterasu….

Now at first glance, the character doesn’t look all that imposing. Sure it’s a wolf (and wolves are bad ass) and it has fire coming out of it (which only adds, exponentially, to the coolness factor), but… I mean… I’m a big green gamma radiated enhanced mutant who can freaking rip up the ground you walk on and beat you over the head with it! Really not that worried.

Until we got the fight going, and all of a sudden I’m in the corner getting wailed on by this freaking dog and I can’t move! I can’t even get off a combo! He’s just low kicking me into oblivion! Now I know there is this in-game ability called “Advancing Guard” that was designed for just such instances, but I’m getting my ass handed to me and I’m really not thinking clearly. And he does this over… and over… and over. And I lose… again… and again… and again.

Is what he was doing a legitimate strategy? Absolutely! Was it effective? Incredibly! Was it pissing me off? You best believe! But then I stopped and asked myself…

Why is this pissing me off?

Was it because he was being cheap? No. What he was doing what was effective, with in the structure of the game, and easy to do. Was it because I was losing? No. I have lost many more games than I’ve won to a wide range of opponents of varying degrees of skill. No, the answer was much simpler.

I felt cheated.

Now be aware, I didn’t say my buddy was cheating. I said “I felt cheated.” Here I was with quite a few hours of this game under my belt, and he comes in with less than an hour and makes me look like a brain damaged monkey holding a controller. My initial reaction was to blame the game, but then I realized it wasn’t the games fault. Sure it allows for such things, but it does offer ways to counter such attacks. I simply hadn’t bothered to learn them. If I had recalled the “Advancing Guard” ability, or learned my character’s move sets better, I would have been able to counter this “cheap” ability and it wouldn’t have cost me five matches in a row.

This incident reminded me that it’s not always the fault of the game or its structure. Sometimes it’s my own lack of understanding of the games mechanics and structure that cause me to fail. While this isn’t always true, as there are some games that’s mechanics are just plain broken, more often than not a game worth its salt has been tested and played enough by the developer to be solid and hopefully fun at the same time. A games mechanics can feel cheap, from Mario’s Lakitu (You bomb dropping bastard!) to Marvel vs. Capcom 3’s Amaterasu, and beyond. I would encourage you, the next time you think something is “cheap” or “cheating”, to ask yourself if it isn’t your own lack of understanding that is causing those thoughts…

Or you could just start doing the same things right back. ;)