Hm... I feel like I've already written this. But I guess there's other things to write about that go with this title.
Well how do you answer that question? And I don't mean accurately, or absolutely, or in a justifiable way using some definition of good... What type of response do you give?
If you say something like, "Aw I'm really good," that can be kind of insulting to the people who are better than you. But if you say something like, "I'm no good at all," and you happen to be way better than the person who's asking you, you'll be making them feel bad.
I used to always answer either neutrally, or negatively, barring the extreme circumstance that there was some guarantee that I really was good at the game.
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| Something like this, I guess. |
Otherwise, I would just say, "Oh, I'm all right, you know, I'm- I'm pretty good." I mean, Super Smash Bros? I was good enough to beat most casual players, but I had never been to a tournament and never had much experience playing anyone else, so there were going to be a lot of people better than me. And Guitar Hero? I knew a few people better than me at that, and that's just out of the people I knew pretty well. And, after I say that, I've had people say, "I'm good at Guitar Hero," or "I'm good at Smash Bros," and then I play them. Win every time, not even close. I guess I could have laughed, at the irony of the situation or at humbling other people, but that wasn't my intent. I didn't really want to make people feel bad.
So, maybe I should try a new strategy. No matter what, just be like, "Well... I'm actually really good at this game." And if I'm better than the person asking, then they won't feel that bad cause they'll just say, "Man, you really are good at this game." And if they're better than me, well, I'll be the one to be embarrassed, but it won't bother me because I didn't actually have that opinion of myself to begin with.
But I can already imagine a response of, "But you're not that good at this game, I mean, I've seen a video of a 9 year old getting 95% on Through the Fire and Flames, so." And then I'd want to say, "Well I was actually just saying that because I just didn't want to make you feel bad if I happened to beat you, and I don't actually think I'm that good at the game-" but that's already much more than I'd actually say.
Which brings up the next point. How good is good? I can do a few songs on Another difficulty on Beatmania, but that's not that good, is it; there're people who can clear the hardest Black Another songs on hard mode. And then am I good at DDR or not? I mean, I can pass Paranoia Hades with no bar, but there are people who could do the same and almost get a AA. Come to think of it, although I had a world record on Mario Kart Wii, there were people who had WRs for longer, and there were people who were on multiple top 10s and even had multiple WRs. Maybe I wasn't that good at that game.
But why would you use such a strict definition of good? If you're going to be like that, then essentially, no one is that good at anything. But I think, if you're better than most people, you ought to be able to say that you're good. Maybe not good at the world class level or at the tournament level or whatever, but you're still good. It's as if people sometimes feel as though, when you say you're good at something, you believe you're great. Amazing. Best in the world, or something. Sometimes you don't even have to say anything. You could put a video up on Youtube, and someone out there will assume that you believe your video is really good. And not just really good, but great. Fantastic. Best in the world, or something. I feel like I should note on every video I make that I don't believe myself to be particularly amazing at whatever is in the video, I'm not that good at it, I mean, I know that there's such and such people who can do this and that, which is much more impressive, but, I should also note that I am really good at whatever it is, so you shouldn't feel bad if I'm better than you because you're probably also good. Yeah, I'm not gonna put that on every video. It's long, it's awkward, and it's kind of a joke.
Anyway, I guess I'm sticking with my neutral answer. Yeah, it's predictable. If you ask me how good I am at something, you can bet on a reply to the effect of, "Well, I'm all right."
This is a really interesting topic, and it's one that's bugged me for a long, long time.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it has to with my upbringing, but I've never really considered myself "good" at anything. That's not to say I have no self-esteem, but rather, I've always had a pretty high standard of "good." No matter what I do, I always eventually begin judging skill on a global scale, with "bad" at the casual level, "good" at the "competitive" level (so probably still the top 5% or so), and "great" at the world-class level (top 1% at least, well-known within the skill's definitive community, etc).
Like you, I used to always respond neutrally at best, and I virtually never flat out said I was actually good at anything. But then I realized I was probably insulting people who weren't as good as me, so I started trying to respond a little more objectively. Still, it was hard, partially because I didn't want to hype myself to the point I wouldn't live up to peoples' expectations, and partially because I honestly didn't think I was that good.
The better you get in anything, really, the less confident you get in your skill. You start reaching out, and finding out there's a whole community of people who could stomp you without a thought. There's actually a specific term for that point where you've done something long enough to think you're really good, but not long enough to understand you could be so much better (the name of the term, I can't recall).
I used to think I was pretty good at Guitar Hero. I'd 5-starred the Expert setlist on GH2 a few months after I got it, and because I was better than most of my friends, I'd gotten it into my head that I was really good (even though I would probably have responded neutrally if asked). Then I found Scorehero.com, which is pretty much the definitive community for GH/RB. All of the world's best players frequent the site, there's a score database where you can manually upload your own scores, and a number of tools to calculate all sorts of things (your rank, the proportion of 5-stars/FC's to total scores, etc). And it wasn't until then that I realized how much I actually sucked. Most people might not be able to even play Expert, sure, but here, FC'ing half the expert setlist was barely worth a glance. A really difficult FC, like Jordan or Through the Fire and Flames, might get a couple pages worth of congratulatory remarks (although now, even for such songs, quite a few people hold FC's for those songs). It really inspired me to get better, and now, I can push into the top 500 on any GH2 song over Xbox Live if I try (out of hundreds of thousands of recorded scores). If someone asks, I say yes, I'm good at Guitar Hero (albeit a little rusty). But personally, I still considered myself an above-average player at best. If I'm ranked 100 on a song, that might be a million people I can beat, but that's also 100 people I can't.
Guitar Hero's the first game I've ever tried to play at a competitive level, and since then, anytime I start playing anything seriously, the first thing I do is go online and find the best players. Not the ones that upload decent videos to YouTube and get lots of views/comments from people who don't really know anything, but the ones that are really at the top, who often don't publicly upload videos except to those elite sites. On one hand, it's kinda depressing, because somewhere, I know I'll never have the time to make myself that good. But on the other, it's inspiring, because it assures me that I have so much room to improve.
I really wish I had friends like the ones I do now back in high school. I'm not saying I hated my high school friends (I enjoyed spending time with them), but they all had a very casual mindset towards everything. Hobbies were just hobbies, and they were only willing to pursue them so long as they remained fun. They weren't willing to sit down and research, practice, and fail for hours long after the fun stopped. Often, I'd pick up a game because my friends were playing it, and a few months later, I was the only one still playing. And eventually, without any real competition or drive to improve, I'd drop the game. Then I came to Mines, and found guys like you, Gene, Steve, and Chaeha who weren't just okay - you were good, even great, and you knew what that meant. You guys knew what "good" was, and you knew what it took to get there. When people would be impressed with my piano, or my Guitar Hero skill, or whatever, they'd always say they wish they were that good, and ask me how they could get that good. And I'd always shrug, put on that disarming smile, and say "I don't know, practice?" And inside, I'd always get a little irritated, because I highly doubted any of these people really understood the effort and time that were behind my abilities. Now I wish I had the kind of time I did back in high school, because if I did, I would totally try and compete with you guys on all sorts of things.
ReplyDelete/ramble
I didn't know you were that good at Guitar Hero. When I was watching you play, I was thinking, "Wow, that's pretty impressive." Now it makes sense...
ReplyDeleteI understand you on the not wanting to overhype yourself stuff. Sometimes I feel like people just expect me to be good at everything and, maybe I can do something like play a new game and be good at it in one try, but there's a good chance I can't do that too.