The (somewhat) delicate art of rage in video games
If you know me in real life, you know I am a rager. I hate to admit it, but I am. No, I don’t scream obsceneties at my team like a 9 year old on Xbox 360; however, I have the very financially-heavy habit of breaking things. Just yesterday, I broke my TV because it has a habit of turning off and on again in the most annoying places, and it was clearly a hardwre problem. It has been messing me up in online games for 8 months now, and yesterday was the last straw. In the heat of the moment, my fist flew at the TV and destroyed the lower half of the screen. I had to abrubtly end my gaming session with my friend, and tell my parents. Great. Now I have to buy a new TV as an unemployed teenager. The perfect start to the Summer Holidays.
How did this happen? How can you prevent this from happening to yourself? Well. Take it from me, relax. If you have the habit of wanting to destroy your controller (or your TV in my case) for example, have a stress ball or similar nearby that you can take your anger out on. This worked for me, but yesterday that stress ball I had wasn’t there. See where I went wrong? I promise you this works. If your team is C9′ing on Overwatch, don’t throw that controller - squeeze that stress ball or hug the nearest Minecraft Steve plushie. Maybe in the case of Overwatch, you could maybe hop out of ranked for a while and play quickplay - or if a Creeper blows up your survival base in Minecraft, play some creative. You might just want to take a break in general, I don’t think they are going to fix Elite Smash any time soon.
This brings us smoothly onto my next point - NO JOHNS. We have all heard Reggie Fils-Aime say the famous quote “No Johns.” But what does this mean and why can it help you with your headset-breaking habits? Firstly, the phrase was made in the Smash Bros. community when a player (who was called John) would always have an excuse for why he lost. “My chair was wonky!” “This room is cold!” John would always have an excuse, a ‘John’ if you will. Hence the phrase, “No Johns.”, which simply means “No lame excuses.” But why can this help? Well I have been a John’er for years, and recently I have noticed some of my friends using the ‘No Johns’ mindset, and it has really helped them. Instead of saying: “That person has reach hacks!”, they would say: “They combo’ed me really well. I could have...” etc. This instills in your mind the thought process of “I lost. Why? How can I improve?” and it will help you realise the times when you are at fault and this will help you improve. In Smash, I started reviewing my replays. One time, I got destroyed by a Game & Watch player, so I saved the replay and realised that I was approaching my opponent the same way each time. So, I wrote that down and tried to vary my approach options. This is how the “No Johns.” mindset has really helped me. If you struggle with keeping this mindset, try to breathe and count to ten.
And finally, try to realise that what you break is what you replace, meaning money. I broke a TV! Now I have to replace an entire TV. Oops...
