Things have been somewhat quieter on the Starcraft front lately. I’m still playing, still trying to improve but life has been eating at my time a lot as you probably have noticed already. But, I’ve been less and it’s not only because of Real Life. Some decisions have been made regarding my commitment to Sc2 and I had think carefully about my approach.
Warning signs
MMO addiction was a popular topic a while back especially with WoW and Everquest, like a deadly diseased that was going around destroying lives, careers and families. Of course it was all blown out of proportion but it was still a real thing and quite a few people have come out saying that their playing was interfering in negative ways with their lives.
And without realising, I was starting to fall into some of those patterns. I was spending way too much time obessing about the game, thinking about how to improve, how to beat certain matchups, etc… etc… Most of my free time was devoted to the game.
The wake-up call came late last week when I nearly didn’t sleep at all for an entire night because I was laying awake thinking about the details of the Terran vs Zerg matchup and despite all my efforts I simply couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Re-evaluating
I don’t believe in knee-jerks reactions like swearing off Sc2 forever on the spot because it was getting out of hand. I find that often these kind of decisions miss the entire point of why it was happening in the first place. It didn’t take long for me to figure out why I was so stressed out about the game and winning, I was putting too much pressure on myself simply because I wanted to reach Platinum league. Not because I put much value in my ranking by itself but because I had that set as a goal and usualy I reach my goals and anything else would be a failure…. I don’t like to fail much.
But no matter how I turned it around, it always came back to the same thing. Getting to that damn league was not doing any good for me and I couldn’t continue going at it the same way. Also, my most important goal was to enjoy myself playing and not be stressed and trying to get to Plat at all cost was doing the exact opposite.
New goals
I love playing Sc2. Always did and I’ll probably keep loving it for a long time. I do still want to improve myself but getting to an arbitrary league or ranking should not be my goal. So I’m adjusting my goals.
First and most important I still want to enjoy myself playing the game. That hasn’t changed. Second, I’ll content myself with simply improving myself. It will be at my own rate and if I feel like doing something else a certain night it’s perfectly fine. But on the whole, I’ll still try to pick new tricks here and there.
For the past few days I’ve been playing without the pressure of achieving a ranking and I have to say it’s done wonders. I stopped worrying about it all the time and I enjoy my time more when I’m actually in the game. I don’t know how long that will last but I can see myself playing this way for a long time.
