I’m not asking for Gold Stars
But sometimes I wonder about how competitive I am when it comes to video games. In general, I’m so far from a competitive person - I don’t like competing with anyone for anything, because it’s so naturally ingrained in my mind that I’m going to lose. My inner voice will always tell me I’m not ‘something’ enough; be it pretty, smart, talented, etc. But when it comes down to me playing a video game in any sort of competitive setting - even friendly competition - my inner voice is screaming ‘Let’s own these punks in the face!’
This is especially true of FPS games where the entire objective is to kill your enemies as many times as possible within the time limit. I’m absolutely horrid at these games but my mind is still convinced that I’m going to win.
The reason I got to thinking about this was a date I had last night. I was at my boyfriend’s house for the first time, and after we watched the obligatory ‘scary movie’ (Misery, which was amazing by the bye), we decided we would play some video games… and the first thing out of my mouth was ‘I’m gonna kick your ass.’ Where the hell did that come from?
He didn’t seem bothered by that statement. In fact, he took it as a challenge and we egged each other on for a while before we actually started playing the first of three games that night; Marvel vs Capcom 3. I won every single round we played, often with Felicia - a fact I made no small deal of, with such charming phrases as ‘Oh, honey - I beat you with a catgirl! That’s gotta hurt!’ (If you’re wondering, I also beat him with Wesker, Trish, Zero, Tron Bonne, Deadpool and She-Hulk)
The second game was Mortal Kombat. Now, I’m really awful at Mortal Kombat - I don’t know any of the combos or fatalities, I barely know how to block, I only know that Liu Kang is annoying as shit and 90% of the characters are dead in the franchise’s established canon. However, this didn’t stop me from beating him fairly soundly with Sheeva, Kitana, Mileena, Sindel, and Scorpion. This was also the game where he managed to beat me once - I was playing as Raiden and he as Sub-Zero, and he stomped me something wicked. But this was one round out of at least twenty we had played between the two games - I think in a game of averages, I clearly came out on top.
We then moved on to Arkham City. I only recently finished Arkham Asylum, so it was a bit of a treat for me to get a chance to play Arkham City so soon afterward. I only played for about a half hour before I died and didn’t feel like playing games anymore, and to my surprise, he admitted that I was already farther than he was in the game - and I had barely even started! Obviously, he is not a gamer, or this would likely not have happened - I play a lot of games, but it doesn’t mean I’m particularly good at them, I’ll admit it.
What really made me think about how strangely competitive I am is that while I was teasing him afterward that he was beaten by me in every game we tried, he said “I beat you once! I’ll hold onto that for the rest of my life.” My response? “Good, because that’s all you’re gonna get!” Is it me, or did I go beyond gentle teasing and into the territory of being a gloater, a ‘bad winner’? I was honestly just playing around, and he didn’t seem to think anything of me teasing him for losing, but I can’t help but think that was a slightly mean way of ‘strutting my feathers’, so to speak.
