Playing angry vs staying calm

In the third Star Wars movie (revenge of the sith) Palpatine says that anger gives Anakin more focus, but is that really true? Of course Star Wars movies are fiction and not to be taken seriously, but let´s look a bit closer at this anger gives you focus idea. Because it´s easy to get angry and from personal experience I can tell you that I don´t experience more focus when I get angry, I´d say the opposite is probably closer to the truth as I become dumber and more likely to repeat the same mistakes.


Getting angry makes you dumber? A scientist will probably explain this much better than me but it comes down to you not thinking clearly because anger clouds your judgement. You don´t reason, you don´t think you just do things. You´re probably familiar with the expression of blind hate, well that´s how it is when you´re really angry. Somehow you don´t think clearly and you just go crazy. So as a gamer you´re not going to play better when you´re angry, it´s more likely that things will only go worse from that point if you get angry.


So rage quitting makes sense? I think that this makes rage quitting more logic, because when you know that you´re angry and that you´re not going to play better after that then it´s perhaps smarter to take a break instead of enduring more frustration. It´s a trick I´ve never learned and probably will never learn, but it´s actually better to leave a match when you´re angry than to stay in it because you´ll probably won´t be playing better after that.


So staying calm works better for a gamer? For as long as you can stay calm you´ll most likely play better than when you get angry. But it´s difficult, when people annoy you or maybe even use cheap tricks to beat you then it´s easy to get angry. I´m not saying to ignore that and just have do you own thing, because it´s difficult to let certain things go. Sometimes you want another player to pay for what he or she did. But let´s not forget that I´m a rager, I don´t let things go and playing angry is about all I can do when I play games. But that doesn´t mean I don´t have fun, I guess we all have fun in our own way and as long as things go well then the anger is usually at a minimum. But I have noticed that when I stay calm, that I can focus better and usually perform better than when I lose control and get angry. Anger doesn´t solve anything, it doesn´t make you play better and you´ll probably end up more angry because of the bad result you´ll most likely get if you get angry during the match. So try to stay calm or leave the game if you feel like you can´t take much more of what´s going on in the match.