“My personal history with gaming is a love/hate relationship. I vividly remember the moments leading up to the day I walked away from it. From that point on, my schema was Yu-gi-oh!, a popular trading card game based on the show. I softly turned my back on gaming because of my drive to do Main Course PHL and wondered if gaming was a waste of time or something vital to my life. I would wrestle with this question throughout my twenties, occasionally playing PS3, PS2 and Gamecube titles. Even at those moments, I still didn’t have the true vision I have now. I didn’t see what gaming meant to me in my life.“

It’s one thing to call yourself dumb. It’s another to act on said thoughts. I began noticing a correlation between my thoughts and the gaming world. I began feeling that my intelligence decreased because I didn’t game. During a very bad experience in college, I had the absolute shit beat out of me in my favorite video game of all time – Super Smash Bros. Melee. Weeks ago in years that have come to pass, I prepared for my first video game tournament taking place in Philadelphia. I played my homie Jarrod nonstop on Lincoln University’s campus. It was his Jigglypuff and Ganondorf vs my Samus. I also played my other homie Darren, whom used Falco. Both of these kats were nice and helped me hone my skills to what they are now. Simply put, I had a decent competitive pool to deal with. I trained and trained, preparing myself for this upcoming event.

The day finally comes for the tournament. I enter proudly and lose my first match. I attributed it to not feeling the rumble feature on the controller. I enter the second bout and was beaten by a Luigi player within 1 minute. I could not believe it. I then play a Ganondorf user, which should have been a piece of cake right? Wrong. I was beaten again. My spirit for competitive gaming was broken. I walked away vowing never to play Melee or compete again.

You couldn’t tell me that defeat defeated me. No one could tell me anything. Life was different, vastly. I was hesitant about anything competitive. I unconsciously stopped putting full effort into things. Why should I when I always fell short – the headspace of a person living is self-defeat. Fast-forward to 2020 and here I am again, in the arena. My life experiences showed me that losing was a part of winning. Life showed me that we all have moments where our best is simply not good enough. What carried me here won’t take me further. I failed to understand that in my early twenties. I firmly believed that I was good, that I had trained and put in the time to compete with the best. I was wrong. I was mistaken and I neglected the experiences others had over mine. Returning to the competitive scene forced me to acknowledge where I was with gaming and identify what I needed to do to fall in love with it again.

In my moment of reflection, I learned some things:

1. Time does not denote wisdom, intention during the time does
   • I played a Pikachu player who mentioned that they started playing Melee competitively for 2-5 months, while I had played this game since its release, totally over 10 years. My level of intensity was clearly different in our playing styles. His reaction speed, combos and adaptability was far greater than my experience and I played the game since 2001. He was a true, competitive gamer, while I was the local hotshot. Our intentions were different and it showed.
2. Someone will always be better than you
   • Although I played against a Ganondorf user, his level of experience and application was different from the previous player. I had no way of dealing with my expectations being shattered after believing my training should have been sufficient.
3. Losing helps you figure out how to win and what you need to do to win
   • None of us likes to lose. However, it shows us our weak spots and areas of growth. Mentally, I was not prepared to be a competitive gamer. I was a sore loser and allowed defeat to defeat me. It wasn’t luck or someone else that causes me to lose. I was the reason I lost. Something about my thought process and depth of knowledge prevented me from getting to the win.

This is the life of a gamer. We go through a process of constant reflection, looking at what we did right, what we did wrong and what we should be using to improve our chances of winning. Life calls for us to make sound calls, to see things through and have a level of foresight that reduces risk. Gaming helps to sharpen those skills by placing us in mentally traumatic situations to test our fortitude. We step up, becoming better, step aside becoming a spectator or commentator or finally stepping down, allowing the gaming space to defeat us and in turn defeating everything we ever challenged about ourselves.