DB

In any sort of medium, space, or activity, there is the question of an objective way to measure skill, or superiority of skill. Who is the best at a thing? It is in our nature. We as people, we as humans enjoy competing in our tribes against other tribes. It’s not just unique to humans. Many other animals compete against others for all sorts of evolutionary advantages, but that’s beyond the scope of my understanding and of this little essay.

This discussion is inspired by competition, and a discussion by a pillar of the Street Fighter Fighting Game Community, Brian F. In a video of his, he discusses on his stream with his chat about the fixation of being “good”, how there’s more than one measure of competency, and how focusing on goals that are much higher than your current skill level can be harmful.

Not exclusive to fighting games, but can be found in online video games, is an Elo rating system, which was first used to rank chess players against one another. Competitive games often have an Elo system, which serves as a way to assign a person a value to their skill level. The purpose of the system was to better label a chess player’s strength against another by using statistics. In video games, they serve the same purpose. They allow you to know that against the entirety of players who are competing in the game, how skilled you are in comparison to each of them.

The strengths that an Elo rating system give to its players are better quality matches. It feels terrible to be on either side of a one-sided game. It isn’t particularly challenging for a strong player, and it is incredibly discouraging for a weaker player to play against a player who is that much better than them. But, in an even-sided game, it can be assumed that the players are evenly matched–in rating, at least. Either side has an equal chance to best the other, which will allow for a more enjoyable playing experience. And for the most part, this holds true. The experience can be a little dubious in the case of team based competitive games, however, especially when you are forming teams with randoms, or Pick Up Groups (PUGs).

The Elo rating system can fail when a player focuses on goals which are unrealistic to their current skill level. This can happen for a variety of reasons, including reasons that are related to associating one’s skill level with their self-esteem, or their perception of identity with being a “good player”. When pride and self-esteem come into the mix, an Elo rating system spells a little badly for players who have not been taught healthy ways of engaging with competition, and of understanding the ways that competitive video games can make them feel, and how they are responding to these feelings.

As a gamer with experience both in team-based competitive games and in single-player competitive games, I have a number of unhealthy habits and predispositions. I tend to tilt (yes, I believe it is the same as the poker term) easily, which can happen to anybody, and fall into a defeatist attitude that makes it hard to win. I easily blame myself for mistakes that I perceive in the moment, regardless of whether they are realistic mistakes that I can fix. I may appropriately identify a bad habit in that moment, and also inappropriately blame myself for not properly micromanaging my friends and teammates from making their own mistakes in the game.

It’s not great, and I try to avoid team-based competitive games because I can get particularly nasty when it comes to those things. So, in terms of competitive games, it is mostly fighting games, and chess nowadays. Chess, for the tactics that I enjoy in other types of games, and fighting games, because I fell in love with them and I enjoy playing them.

Something that is apparent in fighting games is learning to fall in love with the learning process. You spend a lot of time practicing combos, then going into online matches, and losing a lot to characters, moves, and strategies that you are unfamiliar with. You are always learning and adapting, immediately, and over time. You have to fall in love with that process, and set small milestones for yourself to continue to enjoy that process. Perhaps because I started fighting games a little later, and I had to familiarize myself with a new genre of game, this process–which exists in anything that you want to get better at–exists.

So of course it exists in the TTRPG space. Of course TTRPGs are something you can get better at, right? If it is art, there are undoubtedly things we enjoy. There are players and games that we prefer over others–how do I move closer to those ideals that I’ve seen? I worry a lot about being a better GM, writer, and creative person. It is because I associate my self-esteem and my identity with these things. I call myself a storyteller, so I better be good at it, right?

If I’ve learned to fall in love with the learning process in fighting games, why can’t I translate that to TTRPGs?

Instead of becoming the next Matthew Mercer, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabira Iyengar, Deborah Ann Wohl, Jason Carl, or Chris Perkins…I should just see where I am at my table.

I should find the milestones I can achieve and hone the game for the group that I’m playing with. Does that mean I can’t be inspired by great GMs that I respect? No, not at all. But, it doesn’t mean that I will hold myself to those standards. I won’t hold my players by those standards, because we are not professionals in any respect of any creative space that we enjoy in the TTRPG space.

So, small milestones? Yeah, I can try to keep myself within those small steps. I guess the second question to answer after that is…what is good, anyway? What’s good for my group?

I’m looking at how long this post is already, so we’ll save it for next time.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll figure out the answer to that question in that time.