Starcraft 2 and The Terrible Fear Of Failure | INFJ Forum

Starcraft 2 and The Terrible Fear Of Failure

Chessie

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Apr 5, 2010
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This is something that has interested me for a while now and it has to do with something very specific to Starcraft 2. Even other Blizzard games don't suffer from as much fear and anticipation of the 'next game' as Starcraft 2 is capable of generating. Why is that?

Well, I have a theory or rather, several pieces of information that look very neat together.

Keep in mind while reading this that I don't think the game needs to change. The game is teaching me patience. Huge quantities of patience. Sometimes I fall apart after just a few games and sometimes I can go all night. If you want to know how to avoid Tilt, you have to know why it happens. Being aware of each of these factors can allow you to consciously direct your mind away from certain lines of thought. The other player is not a cheating bastard. The units are not imbalanced.

I will list a few characteristics of other games which are present to help players deal with losing and encourage them to come back into the game.

1.To the victor go the spoils...and a little something for the loser too.

In Diablo 2, Call of Duty (pretty much all of the recent ones), and any one of a list of recent games there is a particular reward simply for playing. Even Team Fortress 2 awards you for just staying in the game with regular drops just for staying in so long as you're contributing a kill once in a while.

World of Warcraft is perhaps the apex of this idea. Even into the late game it is very difficult to just 'die completely'. You can't ever lose everything you owned from death and even if you die, you still gain a bit of experience. Starcraft 2 is very 'one or the other'. Death and loss or triumph and supreme domination. You get some points or you lose some but there is no middle ground.

2.Defeat costs nothing.

There is a certain creativity to assembling a functional base and organizing a strategy. If it works, it is the best feeling in the world. If it doesn't, it can feel like an indictment of your creativity and flexibility as a player. The 'replay' function feels like a looming weight hanging over your head, ready to show your every failing.

If you lose in Team Fortress or even World of Warcraft, you can quickly slip back to the situation you were in and try a new tactic. Starcraft doesn't allow you to do this. Every game will be completely different and losing costs you the entire build-up to the situation you were in.

3.Failure is a private thing.

Nobody can see how many times you've had your face ground into the dust at the click of a single button in Diablo 2. Win/Loss records are private in Team Fortress 2. World of Warcraft won't give away how many games you've lost in a row. You can be TERRIBLE and people will still play with you even if you suck miserably.

Starcraft has these right out there in public. Every crushing defeat is there to be mocked by the public at large.

4.God is touchable.

The most heavily kitted out World of Warcraft warrior with the absolute best armor he can possibly have can still be killed by a slightly crap mage of near equal level in the right circumstances. The longest running player of Team Fortress 2 will always die to a bullet in the head from a Sniper rifle or prolonged fire from the other end of the map. In Call of Duty, even the best cannot weather a hail of bullets.

In Starcraft 2, the odds that Mr.Bronzey Mc-Spacky pants is EVER going to kill Huk or Jinro are approximately zero. It just will not happen. The distance between a player like Idra or Huk and the lowest level Bronze player is so massive that persevering to improve feels like pissing off Niagra Falls. You won't ever 'get lucky' and manage to kill these player.

5.If I'm not winning then I can just go hang with friends! (this section is temporary until chat rooms are implemented)

Starcraft 2 is not a social game right now. It's a game of strict combat. You can't just sit and observe others playing or converse with them in large part.

The Public Test Realms allowed players to interact and to gather up a group of people to just come and enjoy watching another player's game. It was huge fun sitting and casting games while they were going on, describing the tactics and going over each element. You learn a lot from it. It's also very friendly.

This friendly interaction takes the competition down a notch and encourages experimentation and exchange of ideas. It makes players feel less isolated with their failures if they can head into a chatroom and say 'Damn, I screwed up'.

6.Losing requires no loss of pride.

Starcraft 2 requires you to surrender. No other major multi-player game I can think of off the top of my head except perhaps Warcraft 3 requires a surrender button to end the game quickly. You are either killed or you win. Surrender is a very powerful idea. It acknowledges defeat so complete that you don't even want to see the end of the battle.

This surrender is not just the loss of your base but of pride and of the effort you put in. Even Chess requires that the other player defeat you before the game can end. In Starcraft 2 you can continue to play after the point you have been beaten, but the only reason to do so is to make the other player hate you.

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Taken individually none of these things would make a player feel particularly uncomfortable but together they can add up to a sports event level feeling of pressure to perform. There are plenty of threads on how to 'deal' with Tilt but not many on why tilt happens so heavily in SC2. I figured the information might be helpful. None of these things is BAD for the game. This game will teach you not to fear failing. It just takes time.

I've learned a lot about myself from Starcraft 2 because this game is SO high intensity. It's worth it to realize that when you game, you reveal a lot of your own inner being.
 
This came from another forum and I figured I'd post it here because I found it interesting and I know a lot of INFJ's have a huge fear of failure.
 
There's a few reasons why the fear of failure is more prevalent in Starcraft 2.


  1. It's a competitive game. Your rank on the ladder determines your worth as a human being.
  2. You know that as soon as you click "start game" you've committed yourself. There's no backing out without penalty.
  3. It's a thinking mans game. You can't get by with ungodly sniping skills. At the end of the day, the smartest guy wins.
  4. Even in a team game the loss is personal. As soon as you start failing the whole team is doomed.
  5. When you win a game your mind tells you that the chances of winning the next one are reduced.
  6. You need to think fast all the time, you can't slip and expect to redeem yourself like in a shooter. The length of the matches only exacerbates this.
  7. Unlike a shooter you're controlling an army, and need to make far more calculations than if you were playing just one soldier.
All of these make each match mentally draining, meaning it's harder to commit to the next match.

Funnily enough the first point is the worst. The biggest reason for the fear of failing is the ladder. Play private games with some buddies and it matters a lot less.
 
Ooooh I play starcraft 2 as well~~

yeaa it is scary playing because the game has such a "relentless" feel to it, your opponent will rarely show mercy everyone goes all out.

But I like playing custom games more than ladder games, custom kinda gets boring after a while. Custom games aren't included in ladder so :p