the cycle

I can't let this become a bad thing. I can't let Starcraft 2 become an obligation, a source of stress. First it happened with Magic, then with Go, and it may happen with Starcraft. It starts out fun and with plenty of winning. I improve every day, and my skill rating shoots up week after week. Then I start to play more and more, and my rating finally begins to level off. As my opponents become more skilled, fewer and fewer of my mistakes slip through unpunished. I start to feel an obligation to play well, and that turns into something more like a fear of failure. Every time a game starts, I can feel my heart pounding out of my chest. If I can't do well, then what has all my time playing been for? Am I just no good? Am I not as smart as I thought I was? Sure I seem to pick up on things faster than average, but what about delving deep and swimming with the big boys? As all these thoughts pass through my mind, I begin to cling to my rating, creeping up ever so slowly. If I lose several games and it goes down, I'm devastated. If I win, I'm afraid to play more for fear of losing it. Eventually even the thought of playing makes me nervous.

With Magic (that's Magic: The Gathering, the trading card game) it was the worst, because I was actually paying money to participate in every tournament, on- or offline. If I won, then the prize would make my net loss negligible (or sometimes even give a net gain). But a loss meant I had to face my financial irresponsibility head on. I imagine that's how amateur poker players feel. And I was, essentially, gambling. Come to think of it, considering you can easily sell the virtual prize packs on eBay for a consistent monetary value, Wizards of the Coast (the company that makes Magic, among other games including Dungeons and Dragons) really is treading a fine, fine legal line.

Then I discovered Go and KGS (in July of last year), and switching games was the easiest decision I'd ever made. After all, KGS was totally and completely free! I felt like such a sucker for having handed over all those hundreds of dollars to WotC over the years. It's such a shame, because Magic really is a deep, interesting game. Maybe someday when I have riches pouring out of my ears, I'll dabble in Magic again. I certainly plan on returning to Go, which I still consider to be easily the greatest game I've ever played and probably ever will play. I love the way the stones flow across the board with complete logic but complete freedom. My mind tends to conceive of everything in terms of shape and texture, and the gameplay of Go is communicated by nothing but that. There is no symbolism as in Chess: you don't need to know that the piece shaped like this moves diagonally and the piece shaped like that moves in an L-shape. All the pieces are simple circles, and none of them have special properties. The shapes you see on the board are the game. Pure elegance. And when the game became stressful, I would try to return to that state of mind. I would go into a game trying to forget all the rules I had learned or made for myself, just letting myself freely drop the stones wherever my heart desired. And that helped. But ultimately I just couldn't tear myself away from the responsibility of winning, away from the devilish allure of that cursed strength graph!

And so it goes, and so it goes. Now, with Starcraft 2, my rating has stopped shooting up (except for the artificial shooting up that comes from Blizzard's insidious bonus point system, which is obviously there to give every idiot the impression that they're improving but which Blizzard creepily claims to be in place so you can catch up after being away from the game, ignoring the fact that if there were no bonus points, there would be nothing to catch up to--but that's a rant for another day). It does still go up very slowly, and I try not to watch it. Part of the problem is that it takes a lot of mental energy to play the game as I should, having concrete goals in mind, evaluating what I did right and wrong each game, and most importantly keeping an alert and adaptive state of mind during the game instead of letting the multitasking numb me into a trance. When I have it in me to give it that attention, things are great. But sometimes I just want to relax and play a few games, and that's when I start caring too much about winning or losing. I guess that's why modern single-player games are so focused on letting the player make steady progress without much effort. When all you want to do is relax, you just want that steady stream of positive reinforcement.

In writing this out, I've given myself the idea to take preparatory measures the next time I get into a really good state of mind. I'll decide what I want to focus on over not just the next few games but over the next hundred, and I'll take copious notes. The next day, even if my brain is feeling tired, hopefully I'll be able to refer back and know what to work on, even if I don't get any new ideas.

Also, maybe I should go back and watch some Husky casts to rekindle my childlike appreciation for game pieces shooting at each other.

Games played: 632
League/Points: Diamond/1527