Online gaming anxiety
Okay, so this is not in the least bit related to crafting. I want to talk about something that has been hard for me to pin down, much less deal with: anxiety and fear of online communal gaming. This is pretty personal and there are no pictures of yarn.
For the most part, I'm a solo gamer. There are a few I'll join in for multiplayer, but only on LAN - games like L4D, Dead Island, Borderlands - something where I've got a system and headset in one room and someone I know well has the same in another. It's a whole lot of fun to coordinate with a good friend and tackle a game together.
And then.... there came Overwatch.
There's an incredibly engaging and addictive quality to Blizzard IPs to begin with. The Diablo franchise is possibly the most iconic representative of the Adventure-RPG genre out there - but again, you can play solo (or with someone locally) without ever needing to take the plunge into the deep, murky waters of trying to form a group with people you've never met, in a chat window spamming "LFG" until someone bites. Their Magic-esque card game Hearthstone has limited solo playability, as the few quests get exhausted pretty quickly, but in random PVP matches there's no chat function - only a selection wheel with pre-programmed sayings - so the opportunities for someone to be horrible to you are extremely limited.
Overwatch is different. It's completely team-based, so you get randomly matched with other solo-players or partial groups to form a full team of six. There is no point at which one player should be pursuing goals alone; everyone has to work together to win a scenario. And although you can play random sets against AI, there comes a point when that becomes too predictable and too easy for it to really feel like your skills are progressing any further. (It's great for a quick, fun, no-stress game though.)
That leaves PVP: the real heart of Overwatch. And I felt like I had conquered a mountain the first time I jumped in to play against other real people, because I know my aim isn't great. I know I'm not an amazing player. I fully expect that every other person on the team will be smarter, quicker, and more skilled than I am, and I'm terrified of getting chewed out by strangers because I know I will absolutely believe any cruel thing they might say to me.
It's a combination of social anxiety, impostor syndrome, and dysthymic depression. I know that. There is zero reason to think that any other player out there has more of a right to play than I do, or that I owe them anything, or even that anyone is going to be cruel to me. There's no reason to think that I'm going to poison a match by being in it. There are 30 million players as of April's estimates, so I can't possibly be the worst any more than I could be the best, except that I feel like I need strangers' permissions to infringe on their game by trying to play it with them.
Yesterday started a new season in ranked play and, of course, I was still too sick to play anything. Today I'm feeling better, got out of the house for some emergency groceries, and now I can't stop thinking about wanting to try: not just a quick casual match, but maybe testing the serious competition matches. It's building a never-ending loop of tension.
I don't have a solution, and I'll probably try it tonight and then panic.
For the most part, I'm a solo gamer. There are a few I'll join in for multiplayer, but only on LAN - games like L4D, Dead Island, Borderlands - something where I've got a system and headset in one room and someone I know well has the same in another. It's a whole lot of fun to coordinate with a good friend and tackle a game together.
And then.... there came Overwatch.
There's an incredibly engaging and addictive quality to Blizzard IPs to begin with. The Diablo franchise is possibly the most iconic representative of the Adventure-RPG genre out there - but again, you can play solo (or with someone locally) without ever needing to take the plunge into the deep, murky waters of trying to form a group with people you've never met, in a chat window spamming "LFG" until someone bites. Their Magic-esque card game Hearthstone has limited solo playability, as the few quests get exhausted pretty quickly, but in random PVP matches there's no chat function - only a selection wheel with pre-programmed sayings - so the opportunities for someone to be horrible to you are extremely limited.
Overwatch is different. It's completely team-based, so you get randomly matched with other solo-players or partial groups to form a full team of six. There is no point at which one player should be pursuing goals alone; everyone has to work together to win a scenario. And although you can play random sets against AI, there comes a point when that becomes too predictable and too easy for it to really feel like your skills are progressing any further. (It's great for a quick, fun, no-stress game though.)
That leaves PVP: the real heart of Overwatch. And I felt like I had conquered a mountain the first time I jumped in to play against other real people, because I know my aim isn't great. I know I'm not an amazing player. I fully expect that every other person on the team will be smarter, quicker, and more skilled than I am, and I'm terrified of getting chewed out by strangers because I know I will absolutely believe any cruel thing they might say to me.
It's a combination of social anxiety, impostor syndrome, and dysthymic depression. I know that. There is zero reason to think that any other player out there has more of a right to play than I do, or that I owe them anything, or even that anyone is going to be cruel to me. There's no reason to think that I'm going to poison a match by being in it. There are 30 million players as of April's estimates, so I can't possibly be the worst any more than I could be the best, except that I feel like I need strangers' permissions to infringe on their game by trying to play it with them.
Yesterday started a new season in ranked play and, of course, I was still too sick to play anything. Today I'm feeling better, got out of the house for some emergency groceries, and now I can't stop thinking about wanting to try: not just a quick casual match, but maybe testing the serious competition matches. It's building a never-ending loop of tension.
I don't have a solution, and I'll probably try it tonight and then panic.
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