Лекция по "Психологии"

1. Recognize that you have power, even if it is over the small group of people in this world who play your game.
2. Understand that your power is fleeting. There are many forces seeking to revoke your power and you may choose to combat them, or to give in to them.
3. Decide what to do with your power while you have it. What good or evil can you do? Who decides what is good or evil in the first place? What obligations, if any, do you have to other players and community members?

Now You're Playing with Power

You got the touch, 
you got the power! “The Touch” by Stan Bush; Transformers: The Movie Soundtrack

If you are merely “theoretically” the best player of your game, I hate to break it to you: no one really cares. Instead, let’s focus on players forged in fire who have proven themselves in organized competitions. These players have taken on all challengers and have publicly demonstrated their dominance of the game. These players have power.

Competitive gaming communities are naturally hierarchical organizations with the very best players in an elite club at the top. Sometimes accompanying the best players at this highest echelon are other leaders: tournament organizers, website administrators, or presidents of player organizations. The only thing certain is that the very best players are always in this unofficial club, and they have enormous influence over the masses below them.

When these players speak about how to play well or correctly, the masses listen. If they believe that the game or the associated tournaments need rule changes or bans, they can rally support among the troops to effect change. (Maybe their ideas about things outside the game are ill-conceived, but their power does allow their message to be heard.) And whether they are seen as villains or heroes, they can assert dominance over anyone who disputes their in-game techniques. The high expert need not listen to the cries of scrubs, because the ultimate power—the power to win—is the final arbiter in any competitive gaming community worth its salt.

When the misguided scrub complains to you, or the earnest beginner challenges you, their fate is in your hands. You can strike them down without mercy. You can nurture and teach them. You can lose on purpose to them, either secretly or overtly. You control not only the outcome of the game, but also, to some extent, the perceptions of your opponents about the game, about you, and about competitive gaming in general.

 

Power Is Fleeting

by Sirlin

Both fame and competitive gamers are fickle. “What have you done for us lately?” the masses will ask you. To stay in the spotlight, you will need to keep winning, which is no small task. Just because you’ve done it before is no reason to believe that winning is your divine right. Others are continuing to improve and work hard and they may “deserve” to win more than you at some point.

When you’re king of the hill, there’s always someone waiting in line to knock you off the top.

—Sagat, boss character in Street Fighter 1, 
to Ryu upon passing his title

You have probably thought a great deal about how to beat your peers and how to stay ahead of them in the race to improve. But your current peers aren’t your only competitors: new players, even players who have not yet started playing will eventually threaten you. You have so many advantages over them (knowledge and experience) that they are easy to dismiss, but they have youth on their side. Eventually, they will have more physical strength than you, and more powers of mental concentration—at least some of them will. Whether it’s tennis or chess, experienced players reach a point where they become vulnerable to newcomers, whether they like it or not. Newcomers are not without their own advantages, chiefly their ability to think “outside the box” because they either don’t know what the conventional wisdom is, or they reject it, as young rebels are known to do.

So if it’s not your current peers who dethrone and surpass you, the future generation of players combined with the ravages of “old age” will eventually get the better of you. By the way, “old age” can be as young as twenty-five in some games!

Will you do as the poet Dylan Thomas advised?

Do not go gentle into that good night. 
Rage,rage against the dying of the light.

 

There are more forces than just other players and old age seeking to subdue you. The demands of the game itself on your lifestyle are serious concerns. No matter your inherent skills, dominating a game takes a huge investment of your time and thoughts. Life has many ways of pulling you away: a girlfriend (or boyfriend), spouse, kids or other family obligations, career obligations, a social life, or even other hobbies. And if all that isn’t enough, you may no longer have “love of the game.” Continuing to be the best at a game you no longer love, or never loved, is a difficult and hazardous thing to attempt. Those who love the game will find an easier time sticking to it, improving, and giving it their time and thoughts. Even if you can keep up with them, devoting such a large part of your life to something you don’t love is going to create its own problems that will no doubt eventually lead to your downfall.

Some games have it easier than others here. If you’re really so good and your game happens to be basketball, well, you don’t have to worry about your career at the pencil factory: you should be raking in the cash by now with your basketball career and advertising endorsements. Several of those life forces just lined up for you, so consider yourself extremely lucky.

Competitive video game players should be so lucky. Unfortunately, as of this writing, organized competitive video gaming is still in it’s infancy and “going pro” is only a reality for a very small number of players of select games. A few gaming organizations are trying to change this, and I’d love to help them make it a reality, but it just hasn’t come true yet. I deeply wish our society valued our mental games more than our physical games, not the other way around.

Since going pro is not a reality for most gamers, it’s entirely possible that sustaining any kind of balanced lifestyle with career and social or family life is incompatible with the time commitment necessary to stay on top of the gaming world. Savor it while it lasts.

Using Your Power

by Sirlin

 

No man can choose how much time he has, he can only choose what to do with the time he is given.

—Shameless revision of a quote by Gandalf the Grey, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

One way to go is to be a total jerk during your reign. You certainly can be. You can be shady, always involved in questionable rules calls and investigations of possible cheating. You can openly trash talk and belittle your competitors. You can be rude and obnoxious. You can be the villain. Some players act this way, drunk on the power they command in their little corner of the world. Some players are jerks to begin with and will act this way, power or not. Competitive gaming communities value the ability to win tournaments so much that they will put up with you, possibly even “love to hate you.” Tournament judges will probably be looking for excuses to make your life harder, but if you’ve gone down this path, you probably don’t care about that since you love the infamy of it all.

The thing you might not be thinking about, though, is that your involvement with your gaming community is likely to far outlast your reign of terror at the game. To get where you are, you’ve probably met many players who have become friends and acquaintances, and since you have common interests with them (the game you play), your relationships are likely to outlast your win streak. How will you be remembered when new kings of the game take your place?

My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

—Percy Bysshe Shelley, English Romantic Poet

Shelley’s poem was about a traveler who encountered a pedestal at a ruined statue surrounded by nothing but endless stretches of sand. Though the king’s accomplishments are long forgotten, his ire and arrogance live on. Incidentally, “Ozy” comes from the Greek “ozium,” meaning “breath” or “air.” “Mandias” is from the Greek “mandate,” meaning “to rule.” Ozymandius was a “ruler of air” or a “ruler of nothing.” Something to think about before getting too drunk on your own measure of “power” in your gaming community.

Good and Evil

It is not so easy as you might think to judge the actions of a powerful player as good or evil. Consider two examples: The Slaughterer and The Teacher.

The Slaughterer

This is the case of legendary Street Fighter player Thomas Osaki. I did not actually play with Thomas during his heyday, but I have since met him and I hope he forgives any misrepresentation of his conduct during his glory years.

In his day, Thomas Osaki dominated the game of Street Fighter in Northern California. His reputation for “playing to win” was quite extreme. They say he never really engaged in “casual play,” but rather always played his hardest, as if every game had something on the line or was a serious tournament. They say he played this way regardless of his opponent, even if his opponent were a nine-year-old girl with no skill at the game. He would “stutter step, throw” her like all the rest (a particularly “cheap” tactic). Did he have no compassion at all? Was he just a jerk? I like to think of Thomas (or his legend, in case it happens not to be true) not as mean player, but as an inspiring player. He set a bar of excellence. In his path of self-improvement, he was not willing to compromise, to embrace mediocrity, or to give less than his all at any time. His peers had the extraordinary opportunity to experience brilliant play whenever he was near, not just at rare moments in a tournament.

And what of the nine-year-old girl? Perhaps she had no business playing in the first place. From Thomas’s view, getting her off the machine allowed him to face the opponents he “should” be facing anyway.

Shadows and Vorlons

Before we get to The Teacher, and before you write me letters on any of this, consider the parable of The Shadows and the Vorlons from J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 television series. In this space epic, the Shadows and the Vorlons are the two “ancient races” that have opposite belief systems about how to treat all of us younger races. The Shadows cause chaos and unrest. They make deals engineered to incite war between races and they double-cross their “allies.” They use nearly invulnerable spooky black ships piloted by kidnapped telepaths to attack, unprovoked. Obviously, they’re evil.

The Vorlons, on the other hand, are diplomatic and nurturing. They prefer to stay out of the action, letting the younger races develop on their own, but the Vorlons do make critical moves to help the younger races unite. In fact, the Vorlons even seeded the galaxy with certain DNA during the beginnings of life to guarantee that all of us younger races would grow up to view them as gods when they appeared. This way, we will all be sure to listen to their message and unite against the forces of the Shadows when the time comes. The Vorlons represent good.

Or do they? The Shadows eventually reveal that they are after the same thing as the Vorlons: to ensure that we younger races become strong and wise. The Shadows believe that showing up every few eons to shake things up frees the galaxy of the weak to make room for the strong. Coddling the weak, though poetic, is not healthy for the long-term survival of a race, they argue. The Vorlons seek similar ends, but through nurturing, promoting growth, and peace.

One argument against the Shadows is that they are imposing their will and their beliefs on everyone, which is seen as wrong. Consider the application to competitive games, though. There are two key differences. First, the Slaughterer does not impose his beliefs on everyone—only those who play his game. While humans were not free to simply ignore the beliefs of the Shadows, no one is forcing you to play competitive games at all, much less the Slaughterer’s particular game. You have entered his domain by choice. Second, the very nature of competitive games is that one player (the winner) imposes his beliefs about how to play the game on another player (the loser). Perhaps this is inappropriate in galactic politics, but it’s exactly what competitive games are about. Those who are turned off by the notion of the Slaughterer imposing his values of winning and losing really shouldn’t be playing competitive games in the first place (or they should adopt the values of the Slaughterer).

Although this Shadow approach may seem harsh, I am often reminded of the meetings between American and Japanese players of Street Fighter. In general, the Japanese are on a higher level of play (I won’t go into the reasons for that here). When faced with a new set of incredibly strong opponents such as the Japanese, wouldn’t you rather your own community of players were trained in a results-oriented system that pruned the weak and produced winners forged in fire? A nurturing, kindergarten-like system may have many more civic virtues, but when you face the Japanese (or any fierce opponents) only military virtues will save you.

Still, though, the Vorlon’s approach has some appeal. I know everyone wants their way to work and is rooting for good to triumph over supposed evil. Many players need coddling before they can mature into strong warriors. The gaming community as a whole needs nurturing teachers who can guide new players in the right direction. Surely the community as a whole would benefit from having nurturing teachers working to increase the number of overall players, and increasing the skill level of those players. By mentoring weaker players rather than just slaughtering them, they are increasing the overall level of competition and slowly forcing everyone to improve.

So who is right? Unlike the Shadows, I’m not here to impose my beliefs on you (on this topic, at least), so you will have to choose for yourself. I think either approach is viable and perhaps a gaming community needs people from each of these camps to be complete. I will say this, though: taking the Shadow’s approach will generally strengthen your own play skills, while taking the Vorlon’s approach will generally weaken them. Teaching has its virtues, but it is often bad for the teacher.

The Teacher

The Teacher does have to learn both the fundamentals and the nuances of a game well enough to teach. He will have plenty of opportunity to observe common mistakes and to critique the play of others. Unfortunately, there are no medals for critiquing play, only for winning, though there is something to be said for living vicariously through the success of your students.

The Teacher has several forces working against him. First, all the time he spends on helping weaker players could be spent playing against stronger players. Next, he can develop bad habits by using techniques on weaker players that would never work on stronger players. And what’s worse, he will not have even a fraction of the practice that the Slaughterer will have when it comes to “pushing as hard as you can for as long as you can.” The Teacher will often need to push just enough to challenge the student, giving them chances to learn this or that concept. Remember, even I advised playing weaker players as part of your development so you can hone a technique you’ll only get a brief chance to use in a real game. The Teacher must often take on the role of that weaker player.

Meanwhile, the Slaughterer learns to push and push and never let up, never give up. Every moment he plays the game, he plays as hard as he can. Even if his weaker opponents don’t give him practice in tactics, they always give him practice in keeping his intensity at 100% at all times, an invaluable tournament skill.

Slaughterer or Teacher, it’s up to you. Everyone defends the merciful teacher, but I hope I have made a case for you to appreciate the virtues of the cold slaughterer. He’s the one pushing the envelope of play skills, which makes his contribution incredibly valuable, even if it is not often popular.

 

Final Thoughts

by Sirlin

So do all the lessons of winning at games apply to real life? No, they do not. But only a fool would walk away from competitive games without learning a wealth of life lessons. Games require training, practice, and discipline. Having a love for what you’re doing really does help you. Games teach you to remain calm under the most dire of circumstances, and to never give up until your very last breath of life is spent. They teach you to learn from your mistakes, rather than shift the blame to others, because that is the only real way to improve. They teach that continuous self-improvement over time is the only way to survive.

Competitive games are a means of expression as well. Players seem to have trouble approaching a game differently than they approach life in general. The way they take in information, the way they make decisions, the aspects they value, and the skills they excel at are usually similar inside and outside of the game. In fact, many people, myself included, have come to understand a lot more about who they really are through the way they end up expressing themselves in games. There are many forms of expression in the world, but one of the advantages of competitive games is that they force you to test your worldview against the worldviews of others. It’s easy to develop highly unpopular theories about life in general that you have no real way of testing, but competitive games force you to jump in, get dirty, and see how those ideas really stack up. If you are an unconventional genius, you will prove so beyond all doubt. If you are a confused quack, that too will be borne out, and you will have the opportunity to learn from others and change your ways.

Furthermore, competitive games teach you to focus on results. You can define yourself to be a great player, but the community will define winners in terms of their ability to win. They care about results, and you should too. Everyone “could be” the best player if only they practiced more, if only they had the chance to play more, if only this or that. But none of that really matters when the gold medal is handed out. The gold medal goes to the person who gets the job done. That is great lesson for anyone who is involved in any business endeavor at all. The grand, unfinished product or project is of little value compared to the one that demonstrates results. The brilliant, half-finished book is of little value compared to the published one. The daydreams of a better life are not as valuable as getting out there and effecting real change in your life, and getting results.

So the application of Playing to Win to real life is not a simple, direct relationship. It may require some wisdom on your part to know which aspects of games are diametrically opposed to real life, and which ones are not. Those are decisions you’ll have to make for yourself. Should you choose to truly Play to Win, though, I would expect your path to be as difficult and fulfilling as almost any other worthwhile personal journey you might undertake.

Happy gaming, and make your own luck.

—Sirlin

 

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by Sirlin

 

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