For Love of the Game

Midway through my life's journey I found myself in a dark wood.....and ragequit.

First, I’d like to apologize to both readers and the wonderful people at Team Dignitas and thank everyone for being patient- I caught a bad case of bronchitis that seemed to go away only to spread to my lungs as a minor form of pneumonia. So yeah, my holidays were fun.

Back in November I was playing a game with Empece and a few friends, and losing. I became frustrated and, well, ragequit. Fortunately, Empece called me out on it as I was not aware that I had. I had thought I was upset at losing and quitting to save time. It was only when it was called to my attention that I realized how angry I was and how my comments were affecting the people I play with. 

I began thinking and realized that since I had started focusing on getting better I had stopped doing fun things in game, and stopped having fun….SC2 became all about winning to me. Jogeta, a former Masters’ Leaguer, told me “it’s not about winning. Winning is the goal for when you’ve stopped improving. Losing is better for where you are.” While on an intellectual level I understand that it is very hard to put into practice…or was, until I did two things.

First, I started doing goofy things in ladder matches. And by goofy I mean things that will improve one aspect of my gameplay but almost guarantee that I will lose the match.

Personal favorite?

Double Nexus on a ramp, drawing the opponent’s army there and then double photon overcharge. It’s surprising, and really throws people off. What it is not, however, is effective. It’s not that damaging in the late game and easy to avoid. Still, it helps me learn how to maneuver my army to get my enemy to go where I want, when I want, and how to plan ahead.

And the things people say are priceless!

Other tactics include:

Playing Protoss as Zerg- Swarm them with Zealots! And I guess some stalkers for fun. This has helped perfect my early game Macro-play. And my Zealot Micro has improved a great deal.

Pick Odd Unit Combinations and go for it- In a team game Empece and I developed the most epic combination ever- MEDIC-ARCHON. Funnily enough it threw our opponents off so much we managed to win, though be built other units. Aside from basic Macro play this is about thinking outside of the box. While most players are boring and do the same thing over and over again you always run into those guys that have an off-the-wall combination, and if they’re good with it you might be in trouble.

Pick a unit and mass it- I went for Oracles one game and built nothing but them. Turns out they annihilate missile-turrets pretty quickly, and if you micro there are no losses. This is hard and requires a lot of Macro and Micro, but man, you can do huge amounts of damage.

Cannon…wait, Nexus Rush? Sneak a Probe into their base early on and build a Nexus. If you time it right you can get off a photon overcharge. This really just teaches you building and research timings and just how far various units and buildings can see.

Playing Protoss as Terran- Use ONLY Zealots, Stalkers and Warp Prisms and conduct tons of drops. I used to mock Terran players. I mean, you have to build 3 units in 80% of matches. Still, when you’re running three drops and managing a main army your multi-tasking has to be superb.

So those are my goofy strategies. I lose probably 80% of games, but I always have fun and sometimes the conversations I get into with people are just…fantastic.

Now, the second thing I did was stop playing the game.

It wasn’t by choice, as noted I spent a lot of time being very sick and really unable to breathe well, let alone yell at the screen (kidding, I never really did that), but still, being sick forced me to take time off and think about how I just missed playing StarCraft.  So I’d lie in bed, or sit in the hospital, reading articles for my real job, and think about SC2. I even had some very odd dreams induced by prescription medications where I thought I was a High Templar.

There’s nothing more satisfying than dropping a storm on a ton of Zerglings.

And nothing more awkward than merging into an Archon with some guy you have never met.

Anyway, it made me want to get back into the game and just play.  That’s my advice to all of you- if you find that you’re only having fun when you win a game, and maybe not even then, stop being serious and start forcing yourself to goof off, and after a while of that take a break. Spend all the time you would usually play SC2 working out or learning a new language or painting. Anything other than gaming! I promise you’ll come back with a greater appreciation for the beauty of the game.