I'm "lucky" enough to not be very competitive, at least not in the traditional sense. Being mediocre is alright as long as I'm having fun, but I do get a little bothered if I try to do something creative and someone does a better job. It feels like my brain failed me and I should have done better.
Games and stuff though? Nope, doesn't matter if I'm having fun and I don't need to be good to have fun. In stuff like fighting games I'd rather play as 20 different characters and be mediocre than be really great at one of them.

small penises are still cute

Are you referring to sports? The OP image is eludes to that but I am not sure if you are, anyway sports have leagues and such that sort people out by how good they are, so you are always playing against people that are on your level so that skill gap is not actually there so much. So for fun is still quite valid.

I guess many video games do this too now. I don't really play competitive online games though, but that's mainly because I find them to be boring and repetitive. I do play some online games but they are not that competitive and they are the kinds of games where you have progress that is fulfilling to earn and that changes the game, so you are not doing the same thing over and over again all the time. Games like Warthunder for example, though I have not played that for a while but I would have played it a fair amount overall.

>>127023
>Are you referring to sports?
Not really, no. Sports are always fun to play and that was the most fitting image in my folder I could find.
>boring and repetitive
Yes, I used to play them when I was younger ¨competitively¨ for fun with others. But recently I got into this dilemma where it feels like a 2nd job to play them. There are people complaining about Fall Guys being full of tryhards, for example, so I feel like there's no in between. I tried a bunch of them.

Another example >>127021 says it's better to play 20 different characters for fun but I would be frustrated if someone wins convincingly against me not because I'm losing but because I'd think I'm not playing THE game properly at the highest level where I think the real fun is. This doesn't happen to me when I try to do something creative like drawing or playing an instrument at all because I don't view it as a competition.
I get bored of things after getting good at them, that's why poker and mahjong are fun right now, you can get better at them but nothing is guaranteed.

I think even if you're not going to be globally competitive, you can always be competitive in these games amongst your friend groups. That's kinda where I think a fair bit of fighting games lie, played peer-to-peer among friends in private lobbies when they're not going at online.

Why become the best, or among the best, at something competitive if it won't win you your mother's love?

Focusing on the destination instead of the path doesn't seem like the right attitude to me, former will come naturally if you're mindful of the latter. Being mindful of it means playing to improve instead of just playing, and if you don't enjoy playing that way you won't get very far either.
So if you're not enjoying the process of improving and expanding your understanding of the game you might as well stop playing, if getting good is your goal that is. Mahjong would be a good example to compare the two ways of playing: just playing, for fun; and the way you'd do it to improve - by reading books on the game as well as playing, maybe watching replays if those are a thing.

>>127020
could be million reasons
u like gameplay
u interested in the game universe
u support developer / publisher
u u frolicking online
u gont give sh about it just pushing buttons and head is in different place completely
u find it aesthetically pleasant
u wait for certain someone to play with
u trying to grow up in certain game
u seek different
u seek yourself
u developer yourself and watch what others do
u trying a new platform
u had spare money so bought it just because
so much more

the only ppl who always always ruins all the fun is exact perfection obsesses veggies who never rest

I haven't been playing as many competitive multiplayer games as I used to when I was younger. You need to practice to get better, but deliberately practicing on games makes me feel guilty, like I should be practicing some creative skill instead.

>>127029
What makes the difference between (virtual) competition and practicing (craft?) skills in creative area? If the goal is to aound profound u already lost in a game of art

>>127030
NTA, but one is a craft, while the other is entertainment.
Even if you enjoy being creative, the point of it is in the creation.
Even if you are being skillful in a game, the point of it is entertainment.

Whether it is bad to take entertainment so seriously that you would spend significant amounts of energy on mastering it relies on a few assumptions. Accusations of "escapism" or similar are easy to raise.
This is mostly the same for art, except I think that we can agree that regardless of whether or not you think it is a worthwhile pursuit when done in earnest, it is not a worthwhile pursuit if you only phone it in. Art requires a level of earnestness (though artists should not take themselves too seriously either).

It does seem like there is a league for absolutely anything. So yeah, why even do anything if you are not going to be the best?

The point of game could be anything, the point if entertainment could be anything, what bugs me, is this guilt thing. What is the point to cover with fairy dust anything you made, to cover it with gold by skill, to sugar it, if you don't nees to manipulate someone with anything peoplw usually treat as entertainment? What is exatly this guilt? Before whom? And what kind of message need to be justified so much even guilt is messed in it? You got your textbox here, go let it out, just a plain text?

To me competition kills a lot of the enjoyment in something, but I can enjoy watching other people do it sometimes. Speedrunning is a good example. To me I can't really comprehend turning a video game into something so routine, but some people seem to have the drive (or brain problems) to run a game thousands and thousands of times. I'm kind of jealous at the fun people have (had) at the speedrunning events, but there's no chance in hell I'd want to take a game I enjoy and turn it into something so mechanical and devoid of magic.
Speedrunning is an extreme, but really it's the same for competitive games in general to me. The old "final destination" jokes about Smash Brothers kind of encapsulates the whole problem.

>>127034
>the drive (or brain problems)
SUPERPOWERS

>>127034
Speed running can be fun but it's actually the game on easy-mode. I held the world record for Mega Man 9 when it was a new game. Well me and another guy traded it at least twice a week with each other on the various stages (it had a speedrun mode+leaderboard). The levels basically become a series of button presses and holding right most of the time. After you get really good at that you start having to learn glitches to pick up milliseconds here and there. Sometimes you'll figure out a new pattern or a way to go slightly slower in one section to pick up a lot of time later (patterns might change).

It was fun..for awhile. But I eventually got bored with it and it kind of ruined my enjoyment for the game otherwise. I suffer from this with most anything I git gud at. Fighting games are kind of similar. At a certain point you're just doing the same pattern over and over again. The game I play most often I can usually tell within 5-10 seconds of a match if I'm going to win or lose it. Unless the other person makes some dumb mistake the game logic has locked me into win/loss. Such games are far more fun when both parties don't know what they're doing and haven't mapped out all the frame data.

That's the main thing I hate about gaming now. The fact that within hours of being released someone has already gone through the entire thing, found all the secrets and frame data then published it for others. You end up with a bunch of "flowchart" players and any criticism you might have is answered with: Git Gud and "it doesn't matter because everyone is dealing with it. What's your problem?".

Capcom games are particularly bad about this. The latest Street Fighter has so many problems. But you aren't allowed to point them out because people will just assume you aren't good enough to criticize the game if you refuse to climb up the stupid online leader board. Pretty much everyone I know that played pre-SF6 games refuse to play it. While everyone I know that didn't like fighting games in the past loves it. Capcom has spent the last couple of decades trading their long time fans for new fans. Which I'm sure is more profitable for them but still it sucks.

>>127036
The early times when something comes out seems like it would be the only fun time because you're closer to playing it as a game and actually searching for solutions and stuff. I've been watching speedrunning history stuff off and on for a couple years (good second monitor or sleeping material) and the beginning and middle is always the most interesting.
The ideal solution to these speedruns is to instantly win when you hit one button and every strategy and glitch is chasing that goal and that kind of bums me out. I hate it when people do that at speedrunning events, but I guess it's part of competition to take the fun out of things to accomplish a goal in the most efficient way possible.

>>127034
Yes! Disregard this, for me ut depends on how i love the graphics or gameplay, or do a care about the lore/universe/series. For example, metroid, i playes and replayed the first one untill i got the best ending (Samus in bikini) and after all completed ecco the dolphin, but i doubt i will ever get through all the levels of wrecking crew, i really doubt i will ever complete ir play again dream trigger (tori-ga?) on 3ds. speedrunning Sonic games, on the other hand, since the game overall suggest it, is just for fun.

>>127020
it's simple really.
it's to pass the time, isn't that what games are for?
whether be competitive or not, it is to focus on trying to be good and the competitive side is nothing more but an obstacle to make your "end results" even more pleasurable.

>¨For fun¨ is the obvious answer
that's the thing that seperates the best from the casual players. the casual player is more focused on the end result.

i could be talking out of my ass but idk and idc

>>127039
Yeah, fun is important! But from the different point of view, remember times of nes/megadrive and such. Every single game broaded possibilities of what certain machine in certain time can do, how this one or that one broadens matters of attistic value, how the storytelling progresses, how the graphics becomes more and more... Realistic? Realistic too is not the keyword, because even cartooniah games overtime, and really fast too, became more expressive and with better quality. Imagine rnd office in that times, how they was like "i think we can make it do this and that" It's not just fun, is it?

Losing is learning

>>127041
To become better and better in what?

>>127042
Pretty much anything I suppose

>>127043
In a game thread u wanna became better and better IN ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING wow that's huge

>>127037
The longer a game is around the less skill is involved to speedrun it. It's much easier to speedrun a game when other people have done all the hard work for you and the later runs manage to avoid most of the complex parts of the levels. Mega Man 9 was fun to speed run because it was hard and the weapons could be combined in unique ways to navigate things. I wouldn't even want to do it now. I haven't checked in a long time but I bet you anything to get a record now involves zipping through walls to avoid half of the platforms.

>>127045
Don't some speedrunners do glitchless runs? Or is that scene dead?

>>127046
I don't know. Probably. I was mainly into speed running Mega Man because I liked doing TAS runs. Then I'd take what I'd learned playing a game frame-by-frame and try to apply it to normal speed.

There is a lot of debate about what is and isn't a glitch as well. For example, in Mega Man 2 you can modify falling speed using the pause button. This can allow you to take a route you couldn't normally reach. It isn't really considered a glitch since pausing is a normal part of the game. But some people might argue otherwise. So most of the rules are made up and arbitrary.

Mega Man 9's offical leaderboard for speed runs didn't list your actual time either. It only counted time when the game was actually running. If you were sitting at the weapon select menu time was frozen. So a lot of people would pause and unpause over and over again to make the platforming portions easier. They changed this for Mega Man 10 by adding a feature from the SNES games where you could switch weapons without using the selection screen. Which was more "fair" but kind of ruined the fun for anyone that was used to the NES games and didn't like that feature. You could still select weapons from the menu like normal but now the clock ran the entire time you were in that menu. Which pretty much forced you to use the SNES way (shoulder buttons) if you wanted any chance of posting a good time.

I was going to show you some runs the guy I used to trade the record with did. But the originals are no longer on youtube. Someone edited them to remove the pause screen which is stupid because now the music is all screwed up. Most of the strategy isn't shown anymore because most of it revolved around when you paused and unpaused.

>>127047
>It isn't really considered a glitch since pausing is a normal part of the game.
It's a glitch if the manipulation of your falling speed is unintentional behavior, or if the availability of the route was an oversight on the part of the developers.

But yeah, the important thing is that the community agrees on a specific set of rules, and if somebody discovers a new trick, the community needs to come together and come to a consensus on whether or not that is part of the accepted gameplay or cheating. That's what playing games is about: a shared set of rules.

>>127048
It isn't considered a "glitch" in Mega Man 2 because they have what's called a "zipless" category. Which basically means any glitch outside of zipping through walls is okay. It's by far the most popular form of the world record.

The pause trick was so well known most people don't even bother to argue it since it isn't a massive advantage and people have discovered ways to get into those areas without it (excluding where it helps you zip). It's basically just re-starting your fall. It halts all momentum you've already built up and makes it so you're falling off an invisible platform. Most people avoid it now because it's much slower than just jumping normally. Since now we're down to timing this stuff by frames instead of seconds.

>>127046
Yeah, they exist. It seems like it's a mixed bag and most people simply want the "best" at events and such, which leads to stuff like THIS where they enter a debug room and just teleport around scenes and it's the most boring thing imaginable. FF7 has been a buggy mess in these events for a long time, but this is a new low if you ask me. Yeah, it's faster than the runs where they actually play the game, so congratulations to them I guess.
Glitchless runs seem like a niche when compared to people simply wanting to beat it the fastest way possible.

>>127050
I can't find it anymore because they take down old TAS runs off youtube now. But there used to be a really cool run of Rockman 1 where you're literally reprogramming the ASM as you play. It's almost impossible to do it on a real console because 9 times out of 10 it'll lock up. But with save states you can try thousands of times and sometimes get through.

By the time you get to Wily 2 the game is so fucked up it can't even render sprites anymore.