Progress?

So I have a few thoughts.

My blog is partially about the game and my thoughts on it, but also my journey towards becoming the kind of player I want to be.  As most of you know, I struggle with a lot of different aspects of it; even though I've reached a decently high level, I still want to get better.  But in truth, my real goal is this: I've had some amazingly positive mental and emotional experiences in this game that I want to recreate.  States of focus and calm that made me feel... tranquil, yet energetic.  Very focused but still relaxed.  Basically it's "the zone" magnified.

Playing recently, my entire goal is to coax my mind into that state as often and consistently as possible.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to maintain it for more than a short period of time, and afterwards I feel incredibly drained.  I know I have an "official" (and I'm sure that means something worthwhile) diagnosis of ADHD-Inattentive, which is very frustrating to deal with, but what confuses me is if I do have such a condition, why I'm still capable of entering this state at times.  The first time I ever experienced it, it lasted for hours; how does that jive with what I think I already know about myself and this mental state?

Playing for a long while yesterday I managed to get into that zone for maybe a few games out of a hundred.  So on the one hand, I've been reaching it more often than I had before, even though it's still very infrequent.  On the other, it's such a brief experience, and parting with that feeling is so bittersweet, that it's almost more upsetting to get it and then lose it than to play all day without feeling it at all.

Without a doubt I play my best while in that state of mind, so the upshot of reaching that mental state a lot will be improved play, and maybe I'll have a decent performance and my next out of state event.  But it's unlikely I'll go to one in the future, and it's pretty unlikely that mindset will sync up with any major matches I get, so I wouldn't be expecting too much from me.

This isn't really about winning or losing anymore.  This is more about trying to understand my own mind and what it takes to hone it.  I think I might be getting closer, but I can't really know for sure.

Oh well.  I should be doing my next installment of the video log soon, maybe tomorrow after work.  Take care everybody.

VLog is live!

The first VLog is now up!  It has been named Eskimo Brother because I suck at names.

You can go here to enjoy it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg-M0HA0zx0

If you want a question answered in a future vlog, ask it in the comments or in the IC Blog thread on Smashboards.  Thanks for sticking with me folks!

And sorry its quality is kinda lame.  The video and sound, not what I say.  That part's awesome.  F'realz.

...

I just watched the movie Waiting For Bobby Fischer, and it made me think about a few things regarding winning, losing, what competitive games do to you, and what we do to them.

Let me start by saying this: the more you add to a game, the more you take away from it.  Not the game itself, but the event, the playing.  Say you add sponsorships, crowds, tickets, merchandise.  You add titles.  You add a crowd.  You add hype.  You add rivalries and spectators.  You add ego.

Adding these--not always, but often--subtracts from focusing on the game itself.  The reason most people play a game, and devote themselves to its rules and intricacies and advancement, is for a single reason; they like the game.  Sometimes the initial interest turns into a passion, an obsession.  These people can't quit no matter how bad they think they want to.  You think you quit, you'll be minding your own business, and then somehow somebody reminds you that the game exists and you are drawn back into it.  You can't resist it.  The only way to leave is if the fire dies down on its own.  It's a trick candle of the heart.

Because to you, thanks to whatever weird genetic/cultural combination that crafted you, the game is just beautiful.  Some games are fast paced, some are slow.  Some require twitch reflexes and some require snail-paced planning.  Some are intuitive and some are analytical, though just about all are really a mixture of both.  Different games call to different people, and most of the time we can't help ourselves.  We're weak to those games.

And it's kind of stupid, even.  You started off playing for fun, and then you'll go off by yourself to practice for hours and you won't have even a smidgeon of fun, just so you can be a little bit better the next time you play.  And sometimes the game drives you up the damn wall for whatever reason, and you can't help it.  It's a habit.  An addiction to play, because something in there is just too beautiful for you to let go of it.

Most of us want to be better for no reason beyond a simple inexplicable want.  At least, initially.

This is where it gets weird and a little sad to me.  You have the game, and you have the players, and it's pretty awesome all in all.  But the moment you add things like hype, spectators, tournaments, championships, and titles, something both amazing and terrible happens.  The spectators develop a sense of entitlement.  They make demands on the players.  They start dictating the shoulds and shouldn'ts of the game for the people who are actually playing it.  They add foreign elements of pride and ego and territory into these events that, as far as the game is concerned, don't exist.

Players begin to worry about who is watching, and by the mere act of observation, the game is changed.  Players act more aggressive or defensive.  They become afraid to lose, in some cases afraid to win, or even to play at all.  And then people start telling the players what to do.  You have to play man.  You have to win.  Show them what you're made of, you're the best, prove it.  No, don't play like that, give us what we want to see.  You have to.

Says who?  Who says anybody has to do a damn thing?  The passion didn't start with somebody saying "you have to be amazing at this."  It came from within.  That passion is what got you up there, and then somebody else just encroaches on it.  Who the hell are they to tell you what the game is about, and what you have to do when you play it?

But truthfully, I can't hate on the crowd because when you love the game, both playing *and* watching, then you can enjoy it no matter what you're doing.  I love watching high-level play of most competitive events just because it's kind of awesome to see craft at its finest.  To share the experience with other people who feel the same, to have somebody to talk about it with, just amplifies the experience of seeing players who are good and amazing weave magic with their chosen game.

And being good, being amazing, that really was kind of the root of the game at first, wasn't it?  You loved the game and you wanted to understand it, and with understanding came more skill and with more skill came a new way to appreciate an old pastime.  And some people just want to watch and enjoy it and sometimes it's not any kind of act of malice or spite or bias but it simply *happens* that the game changes.

But let's say you add a title.  Suddenly you aren't thinking about the game anymore.  You aren't playing for the sake of the game or yourself but because somebody put something else on the line.  And while some people are immune to these kinds of pressures, most aren't.

You really can't account for how these things affect everybody.  Some people like winning just because it makes them feel superior.  Some people just want to be flashy, or some people just want to relax and have a good time.  And the best part is that the game doesn't care what your intention is, so there is room for you to play how you want and for the reason that you want.  And some people only play their best with those external pressures egging them on.  Sometimes the game can only advance because people, in the desire to win and be better, use those pressures to push themselves to the next level.  So who even knows.

What's the point of all this?  Well, I tricked you, because you read all this way only to realize there really isn't one.  I like crowds and hype and spectators and tournaments and championships and big games where everybody says "this is for all the cookies," and everybody screams and it comes down to the wire and the crowd is going nuts and you end up telling the story five times to the same person who doesn't even give a shit because you can't get it out of your head, it was that amazing.

But in some ways I also kind of lament it.  Because there's something utterly fantastic about playing without a purpose or a target or a title or a crowd, where we aren't inflicting needless expectations on the players of the game.  Where you can just explore the gamespace and go crazy playing how you want to play, constantly chasing that element of the game that set you on fire in the first place.  And the irony is that when you combine the first and the second, when the players up on the big stage forget about the crowd and play like nobody's there, is usually when everybody in the room ends up winning.

Happy New Year, everybody!

I'm not really good at doing the whole ball-drop timing thing.  But happy new years to the people who still read this thing (:

Also, I was thinking about maybe doing vlog stuff in addition to this so you can all laugh at my silly face while I say things.  And I can emphasize my points and posts with meaningless hand gestures.  We could do Q&A type stuff, I could just rant, and I would save this writing section for more analytical stuff.

Anyhow, to reiterate:

Happy New Year!

Two thoughts in a row!

Cons of living in Dallas, TX:

Only two people to smash with on a regular basis.

Pros:

Those two players are DoH and Darkrain.

So I spent the evening practicing with Darkrain, and I've come to a few conclusions.  The first is that I'm not very good with Sheik.

The second is that the moment I start wanting to really win, I start playing awfully.  And unfortunately, my strategy of trying to convince myself that "I'm going to lose, I will make mistakes, it's inevitable" and using that to keep my nerves down, doesn't work.  I still get way too upset over my errors and my mistakes.

I think I was in a much better place years ago when my focus was exclusively on maintaining the right attitude while I play.  I had a string of matches tonight where I was completely in the zone, and except for the occasional chuckle or "wtf was that" when something weird happened, I pretty much felt... blank.  It was kind of nice.  There was a moment where I thought, "I'm not really angry or happy," even though during those matches I was actually playing unbelievably well.  I just KNEW the right thing to do in--it seemed like--90% of the situations.  After about four or five games of this, I started thinking, "wow I've got it I'm doing really good heck yeah" and then it promptly faded and I went back to air-dodging off the level like normal.

I guess I'm going to try and stop thinking about anything except being calm and empty.  Before I even play, work myself into a state of as little emotion as possible, and focus on staying in that place.

I had a thought

People have a tendency to make mistakes when they are nervous.  You know, people like me.

I also know that I play much better when I'm relaxed, and sometimes when I'm simultaneously relaxed AND into my match, I go into a very focused state of destruction.

So, it finally occurred to me to ask myself, what is it that makes me nervous?  I typically make smart decisions, but when I start getting antsy, I also begin to just go for blind attacks.  And I often screw them up technically.  Nothing goes right.  What is it that makes me so nervous and tense, even in friendlies?

For some people, it's not wanting to lose.  I know that I hate losing, but it happens a lot so I'm kind of used to it.  I'm also pretty used to the crowd booing against me, but it gets to me the most when I feel like they shouldn't be.

Recently, I went into work thinking "today is going to suck."  But it wasn't exactly a pessimistic "everything is going to go wrong today," kind of thought.  It had a more matter-of-fact spin to it.  I was kind of tired, I had to work a lunch rush in the most hectic position, and I was scheduled with several people I didn't like working with.  It seemed very likely that my day would not be a good one.  That was my logical assessment.

For some reason, that day I didn't get angry about anything.  The normal stuff that bothered me I just kind of took in stride, thinking "yeah, that's pretty much what I expected."  When my workload lightened slightly, I thought "hey, this isn't so bad," and became energized, and actually did my job BETTER than normal.

Most people have told me that I need to have more confidence when I play.  I think... this is kind of true, and kind of not.  I DO need to stop beating myself up about random things that go wrong.  But what I really need to do when I play, if I want to play better and win more, is stop thinking about winning.  I've found that the closer I get to winning, the more nervous I get.  The more I expect myself to win, the more my mistakes bother me, which snowballs into causing more mistakes.

I'm not really that scared of losing, especially not if I think it's likely.  I remember going into my matches against Mango at APEX thinking that I was 99.9% likely to lose; I'd just watched him play Vanity Angel and pull out some pretty ridiculous combos with Falcon, even while hungover, so I was pretty sure that the real Mango was hiding in there somewhere, ready to jump out and yell "ahh, rape."

I went into that match with ZERO confidence and what's weird is that, not only did I win, I did it with almost NO technical errors.  I made a few, sure, and I made judgment mistakes and in the end I only one-stocked his Mario with infinites legal, but then he brought out his Falcon (which had murdered me last time we played) and I three stocked it.  Again, he was hung-over, so that obviously had a lot to do with it.  But at the same time, the things I was doing were coming out right.  No flubbed wavedashes, no botched short-hops.

My match against Silent Wolf was remarkably similar.  I was sure that he was going to slaughter me because I'm just not that great against people who play really fast.  And I was so certain that I would lose that I wasn't really that nervous to play.  And I wound up winning pretty soundly.

I guess in a weird, counterintuitive way, I'm more nervous about winning than I am about losing.  The more I remove victory from my mind, the more I focus on the moment.  And I've been finding lately that--at least while practicing--my skill goes up when I tell myself "you're going to make mistakes."  I stop worrying about them, stop thinking "I have to get this right," because I've already accepted the error in advance.  And I DO screw up still... but now it doesn't bother me.  I just think, "oh right, I was just hitting L too early because my fast fall didn't come out," and the error suddenly goes away.

Will this work in real matches?  Time will tell.  It'd be pretty cool if it did, huh?

PS:  a big thanks to Unintentionally for reminding me of something I actually wrote awhile ago, about accepting the possibility of your loss beforehand while you simultaneously play as hard as you can to win.  It seems I have outsmarted myself, lol.

Frustration

Okay.  I've been here before, in many respects.

Over the years I've improved slowly and painfully, then plateaued, wanted to quit, and forced myself through it.  I broke through those walls and became better, even if it was only a tiny margin at a time.

I want to believe that I can still improve, and that I can finally break down this one barrier that's been eating me alive for so long, which is my technical inconsistency.

I can't seem to communicate to people just HOW BAD this problem is.  I don't really get frustrated when I lose, I get frustrated when I play poorly.  Particularly when I make lots of stupid technical errors that I shouldn't be making after playing for 6 years.

Things like trying to wavedash, and failing, then attempting to fast fall to avoid eating the aerial that I'm now in range of, and double jumping with my joystick.  Or trying to waveland onto the stage, but just standing up; then when I try to wavedash back onto the edge so I can try again--and see if my controller doesn't need resetting or something--then I roll by mistake.  Then I decide "whatever," and try to short hop and get the edge, only to full jump.

Somebody said that I make lots of bad decisions, and it's hard to explain to people that your decisions aren't really your own when your hands don't cooperate.  I'm constantly at odds with my own body to actually communicate my desires to the game.  Some games more than half of my attemped inputs come out as errors.

This is not an exaggeration.  WD d-smash becomes WD f-smash because of a c-stick flub, followed by an attempted roll that turns into a spot dodge or jump because I spaz on the joystick.  My next JC'ed grab is a full jumped f-air to which I then miss the fast fall (and subsequent L-cancel).  Upon landing, I airdodge horizontally, failing to wavedash again.  My next short hop n-air is a dash attack because I miss my jump button.  And so on.

Again, not exaggerations; these are specific examples taken from recent smashfests and friendlies I've played. And when I tell people that I'm frustrated because these mistakes are getting me raped, they say things like "everybody has bad games."  I am trying to explain that this goes beyond most people's definition of a bad game, and it happens with a consistency that people think I'm embellishing.

This would not be as big of an issue if I had some safe baseline to fall back on, some technical elements that I NEVER mess up so I can play safe while I calm down... except I don't.  I cannot handle the controller without some risk of missing buttons or slamming the joystick in some random direction.  Most people find themselves overreaching their tech-skill sometimes and saying "okay okay we'll tone it down."  I cannot tone it down to an error-free level.

Sometimes this is clearly tied to my mental state; when I'm frustrated or agitated I often play worse, and when I'm calm and focused I typically play better.  Durr, obvious I know, but yeah.  However, even when I'm practicing solo in a relatively calm state I will still make these silly mistakes.  When I'm nervous, in high-pressure tourney situations... well, most of you have seen what happens.

I have accepted that I don't really have a talent for this game beyond my obsessive nature.  But this is at an extreme that I don't know how to cope with anymore; the amount of practice I invest does not seem to correlate at ALL to my technical proficiency, and I'm starting to lose hope.  I come up with new systems and ideas to try and rectify it, but nothing's working.  My past month-plus of dedicated practice, of going back to basics and hammering them in with constant repetition, has yielded absolutely nothing.  I still screw up these fundamentals at a rate far beyond what is acceptable for any player trying to legitimately call themselves good at this game.

The worst part is that I can't just give up and call it quits because there's something inside me, a small petulant voice made of spite and ambition and idealism, that refuses to let me.  I'm not going to keep playing if I honestly believe I can't get any better, and apart from this voice, that's what I'm coming to believe the more and more I practice.

tl;dr: bah.  If somebody has any advice on how to fix this nonsense, please send it to me.