Competitive games are bad?

In the good old days when you had some friendly competition on your console playing against a friend, it was fun and if someone was annoying you could smack that person on the back of his or her head. But sometimes things get heated up and frustration, often due to failure, isn´t good for your mental health. I guess some people can handle that better, they really play just for fun and when they lose then it´s not a big problem for them. If you´re more like me then it´s almost the end of the world, you play to win and you really want to win! This type of behaviour is really one of the reasons why I don´t get involved with most competitive games, because it really brings the worst part of me to the surface. Especially when I play with friends I don´t like to be that guy who takes the game too serious, which is often why I either bite my tongue when playing competitive games or I just don´t play them. So you can imagine that things are even more extreme when I play with strangers online, then there is little that holds me back and it´s often not the best side of me that I show. But I have to admit that I only get annoyed when I detect cheap tricks or even cheating.

Competitive games are bad? I don´t think that´s the right way to put it, but they usually do bring a more ugly side of you to the surface. Unless you really don´t care if you win or lose, but I can´t help but think that there aren´t that many gamers out there that play just for fun and don´t really care about winning. It´s the worst when there is an achievement/trophy tied to winning and you keep failing, that´s fuel for some serious rage! It´s one of the reasons why I don´t play any fighting, racing and sport games anymore. It´s just too much frustration for me and usually most achievement are tied to victory and being succesful, something I´m not that good at when it comes to playing online. Either people are just much better than you or they use some cheap tricks to beat you, often the same move or just have much better gear than you to beat you. This competitive fever is also a presence in first person shooters, maybe it´s even worse there because the tension can get pretty high in a session when things don´t go the way you want them to go. With fighting and sport games it´s usually one gamer vs another gamer, but when you´re a part of a group in team deathmatch you can easily be destroyed by the other team if they work well together and your team doesn´t. Especially if the other team communicate and actually know eachother, it usually makes them work better together and it really makes it worse for you to do well in a match. It´s easy to get mad, but that hardly ever leads to succes...

What to do when you´re provoked or taunted by other players? This type of behaviour is common in competitive games, so don´t be suprised if you encounter people like that. The best thing you can do is mute and block them, because nothing good comes from responding to these people. If someone is really rude or even going so far as threaten you then feel free to report them, because no matter how much you´re invested in a game you should never go that far! What you don´t want to do is get mad, because you´ll probably be less effective in battle. Because if you´re too focused on hunting down one guy you´ll probably miss the others, in a one vs one match it might work for you but blind hate isn´t your best guide to victory. If you do feel like responding then try to be clever, for example: "That´s impressive that you could stay the entire match in that corner, you must be the worlds most boring guy!" Of course this will usually make the other person respond more agressive, because most people that are being a douchebag online won´t have anything clever to say. Also notice how their spelling gets worse when they get even more mad at you. People who have to feel better about themselves to bring others down are usually not worth your time!