Competitive? – Part 2

From your comments I get the feeling that people thought I was talking purely about online gaming yesterday.

I wasn't, that was just my most recent experience. Playing online, I expect to run into hyper competitive assholes…I just didn't expect the same level of competitiveness in what was a co-op game.

My problem is that I just can't understand the hyper-competitive mindset. If I'm playing any type of game, I play to have fun. As I said in my last post, I like to win…but I don't need to win. My response to an opponent, win, lose or draw is usually to thank them for the game. To me winning is a minor bonus and a very small reason of why I play anything.

Let me give you an example of the mindset I'm talking about:

I have never played any sort of game with my brother where I haven't caught him cheating. He's also the person who will kick the board over, turn off the game console or just try to pick a fight the second he starts to lose.

What I don't understand is how someone's mind can work like that. I mean, like anyone, I get a certain amount of pleasure from winning…but that's from the satisfaction of knowing I did something well. I would get absolutely zero pleasure from winning by cheating, because that's not a victory, that's just me making the whole exercise pointless. While I don't condone it, I can understand cheating if you're cheating to win a prize you really want…but cheating just to beat a family member or friend at a game of scrabble? Cheating to win just proves that the other person is better than you because you can't beat them without cheating, which to me is an automatic loss.

It's the same with 'kicking the board over'. I remember playing a golf game against my brother on the PC. We were playing an 9 hole 'skins' game, and when I won five out of the nine holes, meaning it was impossible for him to win the overall round, before I knew what was happening, he grabbed the mouse, opened the menu and quit the game.

I'd come to expect that kind of shit by then and just started laughing and told him how pathetic he was. He responded by getting aggressive, starting up his usual verbal abuse…while shouting that I hadn't beaten him, and that if I was so good at the game I could play him again. In his mind, he hadn't 'lost' because the game hadn't finished, and the fact I refused to play him again meant that I was 'afraid' to play him because I knew he'd beat me…and definitely not because I knew it was a day's worth of gloating if he won, and he'd just reset the game again if I started to win.

Oh, and in case you're thinking I'm talking about a ten year old here, I was about 17 at the time and my brother was 20.

That's the mindset I don't get. Where someone would rather embarrass themselves and metaphorically 'kick the board over' rather than admit to themselves they've lost a freaking game.