How an Anxious Game Player Learned to Compete | By Deb Amlen
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The idea of playing games where I am pitted against real people makes my palms sweat without fail. That’s particularly true when I am asked to play against total strangers online. Call it performance anxiety, if you will. I compete well in other areas of my life, such as when I beat others out for the fastest-moving line in the supermarket, but with board or video games, I’d much rather putter around on my farm in the cozy atmosphere of Stardew Valley than try to destroy someone else’s efforts in another game. For me, at least, playing games is about having fun and enjoying time with important people in my life.
Not everyone agrees with my philosophy. Magnus Carlsen, the chess grandmaster, has been widely quoted as having said: “Some people think that if their opponent plays a beautiful game, it’s OK to lose. I don’t. You have to be merciless.”
Duly noted, Mr. Carlsen. If you ever want to challenge me to a game, I’ll be hiding behind my farming equipment.
But I was curious about Crossplay, the first two-player game from The New York Times. It allows players to take turns building off each other’s words to rack up points. I fired it up during the testing phase and was promptly matched with — you guessed it — a total stranger. Cue the sweaty palms. I had no way of knowing whether my opponent was a supercompetitor who knew all of the playable words and how to place them. Maybe this person knew how to block all the bonus squares and would not rest until I had been thoroughly humiliated. A couple of deep breaths and an array of chocolates I had stashed away for such an occasion helped me ease my way into the first round.
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What happened over the course of the game, however, surprised me. I’m typically a lover, not a fighter. But each time my opponent placed a word, I found myself growling quietly, jealous of the great letters that person had been given and the wisdom behind the move.
What was happening to me?
All I knew was that I suddenly needed to win. There would be no cheating, of course. But I would dominate the board, I told myself. I would play like, well, Mr. Carlsen, if he played Crossplay.
It felt important to bring my most competitive spirit, and I talked myself into believing that it was strictly for my opponent’s benefit: Playing without trying to win would make for a boring game, and I wanted both of us to have a good time. And while we were having that good time, I would wipe the floor with my adversary. It wasn’t personal; I simply had a better strategy.
If you were to ask Richard Bartle, he might say that the killer in me had emerged. Mr. Bartle is a game designer and researcher who in the 1990s developed a psychological profile for video game players known as Bartle’s taxonomy. His categories, which were turned into an assessment by Brandon Downey and Erwin Andreasen in 1999, consisted of four basic types:
- Killers, who derive satisfaction from dominating others, even if it damages relationships with other players. My son the video game developer tells me that these players are more recently referred to as “griefers” — or by using an anatomical term that can’t be mentioned in The New York Times.
- Achievers, who are motivated by the desire to attain goals and complete in-game challenges. Their focus is on earning points and progressing through the levels of a game.
- Explorers, who are driven by curiosity. They enjoy discovering new environments, game mechanics and hidden content.
- Socializers, who prioritize interactions with other players. They like to collaborate and form alliances.
Most players fall into more than one group, and more recent research from Quantic Foundry, a game analytics consultancy, suggests that people may exhibit different characteristics when playing different games. A player’s motivations are not the same in, say, a survival game like The Last of Us, as they are in the calm world of Farmville.
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It also depends on your relationship with your opponent, according to Rohit Crasta, a game designer who worked on Crossplay. “When I’m playing against my mother-in-law, for example, I play much differently than when I’m playing against my brother,” he said. Thinking back, I can remember teaching my younger sister how to play chess and letting her win a few times. Compare and contrast that with the time I played the game with a man I was dating: I whupped him, and he never called me again. Checkmate, I guess.
I don’t want to see myself as a Killer, although I’m clearly not immune to all Killer impulses. I’ve told myself that I’m not hurting anyone, for example, when I buy up all the railroads in Monopoly. The properties are just sitting there, waiting to be purchased, for heaven’s sake. And it feels so good to have the entire collection, even if it results in side eye from other players. (The money I earn from owning all four railroads isn’t bad, either. Maybe I’m more of an Achiever.)
So I decided to just play Crossplay to the best of my abilities. I shuffled my rack of tiles to give me a different perspective on what I had been dealt. A lot of time was spent scouring the board, looking for areas where I could place tiles parallel to an already-played word and collect the extra points from the crossings. Any foul language I might have uttered was kept to a minimum by telling myself that it was just a game, and by keeping a piece of chocolate in my mouth at all times.
It was also important to be respectful toward my opponent. There would be no withdrawing from a game that had already started. Nothing is more frustrating than gearing up for a good game, only to find that the other player has mysteriously disappeared into the ether.
I lost that initial game, but I won something else: My palms stopped sweating. I wasn’t anxious about the outcome anymore. As far as I know, my opponent had fun. And I can look at myself in the mirror, knowing that I stayed true to my Socializer value of playing respectfully and having a good time.