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doorplays · 7 months

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Door Talks: Tilt and its Effects in Gaming

This article was made with some help from monocots! She helped beta read this article for readability.

After a long and stressful day, a certain gamer turns to one of the hobbies that give them joy: gaming. They turn on the computer and boot up their game of choice. They play a few games, but they find a certain irritation growing in them. Maybe it’s because of the constant losses, maybe it’s because of unsatisfactory games, but their frustration just grows and grows. They find themselves even blaming their teammates at some points, or worse, even throwing expletives at them!

How could their hobby betray them like this? A hobby that was supposed to give them joy is instead giving them rage!

They come to discover, later on, that they’re actually tilted after all that gaming. And so, they realize that they should take a break and do something else.

Fellow gamers, that gamer is me. That gamer has been me multiple times across the years. And let me tell you, it is so annoying to be tilted when you want to be the opposite of that! So now, I want to talk about the concept of tilt, my experiences with it, and how I try to manage it.

WHAT IS TILT?

Tilt in gaming doesn’t seem to have a set definition, but the way I define it is that it is this feeling of frustration and anger people sometimes get while playing games. Usually, it arises after trying and failing to beat a boss, getting unlucky with rolls, or after a string of losses. It’s a sort of boiling anger that slowly bubbles over, affecting one’s enjoyment of a game.

People react differently when under this state. Some people spiral into self-pity, thinking if only they were better players they could just claw themselves out of this rut. Some people blame their teammates, cursing their fortune that they ended up getting queued with people who don’t match their energy. And some even end up throwing their controllers in rage!

Being tilted is a rough situation to be in. I’ve experienced it many times, more often than not only realizing I was tilted when I’m already deep into the feeling. Interestingly, the feeling manifests somewhat differently with different games. I find that interesting, and it makes me want to see if there is a common point where tilt can manifest. So thus, I’ve decided to explore my own feelings with this article! I’m now going to talk about the different games I’ve played where these feelings of tilt often manifest.

MAGIC THE GATHERING, OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE HEART OF THE CARDS

So, Magic: the Gathering. A game that’s been going since 1993. It’s a two-player card game wherein you build a deck out of cards you collect from packs. You put lands that you draw from your deck on the battlefield so you can cast the spells that you also draw from your deck. Some spells deal damage directly to the opponent, some let you summon minions that can deal damage to the opponent via combat, and others do a wide array of other tricks. You win when you put the opponent’s life down from 20 to 0. The card game has been playable in digital form since 2002 by way of MTG Online, and has once again gotten another digital client with the release of MTG Arena last 2019. The latter digital client is how I got into the game.

The nature of this card game now having a digital client has made it more accessible. It has also given an unexpected replayability to it. Whereas before to find matches you need to find local game stores, now you can just queue up and wait for the game to find you a match. It’s also easier to make decks since the economy in-game is different from in real life as long as you play consistently. You can easily play with cards that in actuality cost $60 or so.

I enjoy the game a fair bit. I enjoy the deck-building aspect, where you can choose a wide variety of cards to play and various ways to win. When you win, especially when you win from what seems to be a bad position, it feels really good. But the losses feel invariably bad. Some of my losses are due to me misplaying and sequencing my plays incorrectly, wherein I should have cast this spell first instead of the other one. Even fewer I feel are the losses that feel good, where both players slung spells and weathered each others’ storms, only for the opponent to draw their winning card. But a lot of my losses are due to plain bad draws, typically where I either draw too few lands to play my spells or too many lands and not enough spells. And losing due to RNG just feels bad.

What’s more, in order to maintain your collection, the game encourages you to win more. The more you win, the more gold you get. Though there are daily quests that don’t rely on wins, there’s still the optional 15 dailys wins AND optional 15 weekly wins. And it gets tiring, chasing those wins when you get loss after loss. With how easy it is to get into a new match, it can be so easy to get yourself into a tilting spiral of a lose streak.

There’s also the limited form of communication MTG Arena has. You can’t chat with other players directly, but you have set phrases you can say to them, like “Hello,” “Good game,” “Oops,” etc. More often than not, however, these phrases are used by players to annoy other players, with them saying “Oops” when the opponent makes a misplay, or right before they win. This is why most players just mute the other player so they prevent the tilt they might cause. Part of me wishes that we can freely chat with other players, but it’s difficult when there’s still the risk of players being toxic just because they can be.

The game itself can be fun, but the way the digital client gives you the opportunity to play more games and reward you for wins and sort of punish you for losses… it feels rather bad.

OVERWATCH 2 (DEAD GAME BTW)

I got into Overwatch around 2016 or 2017. I enjoyed it a lot, and I found some good friends because of it. Then I stopped playing because I disagreed with Blizzard’s politics. I found myself playing it again earlier this year however, and played it more when some friends invited me to play with them.

I can describe it as like… a MOBA, but in FPS form. You play as your hero of choice, and each hero has abilities unique to them. You work with 4 other players so that your team can achieve victory.

I like the variety of heroes. I like how explosive some fights can be. It can be exhilarating to play with how fast it is. However, it is somewhat reliant on you and your teammates being in sync with each other. You can’t just go off on your own and save the day (though there are times you can if you’re good enough).

Blizzard implemented team chat and all chat in this game so that you are able to communicate with not just your team, but everyone in the match. You can use just team chat to coordinate strategies, and use all chat to, well, chat with the opponents. There’s also voice chat so that you can freely talk without having to type, since it’s hard to shoot and type at the same time. While this kind of setup lends to more robust chats, it also allows for more toxicity.

Playing this game, I realize that not only do I need to be in a sharp mindset to be able to frag out and deal with the opponents, but I also need to have a positive mental attitude, lifting the spirits of my fellow teammates when needed. Because when they get tilted, it affects their play, and affects our team’s overall chances of winning. What’s more, they can take their tilt out on the whole team, which would then tilt us too! A sort of vicious cycle…

Let’s pretend to get into a game. So here we are, you go queue up in the night on Quick Play queue. You get matched with 4 people against 5 other people and you brawl out. Your side gets annihilated. No matter, you all respawn, but end up losing again. What’s happening? You think you’re playing okay, so maybe it’s because of the other players! How dare they affect your fun with their sub-optimal play!

But why is it such a crime to be sub-optimal?

I’ve been in this situation a fair amount of times wherein I know in myself that I’m doing good, but if only the other players can just capitalize on the openings I give them, or if they were just able to confirm the kills… This is unfair though. I’ve just met these randoms, I can’t expect them to read my mind. I can only control what I myself can do.

And it’s easy to forget, but I play this game to have fun, not to win. Those are two different things!

Nonetheless… why does losing in itself feel bad? Maybe I should play a game that isn’t competitive…

FINAL FANTASY XIV (WHICH IS FREE UNTIL LVL 70 AND STORMBLOOD)

Which leads us to this game! FFXIV is a game I’ve been playing more of recently. It’s really fun to play with friends and experience the world! I’m done with the main story, so I’m just levelling my classes right now, since with this MMO, you can become every class and level them all up to the level cap instead of just being stuck to one class.

Fights and content in FFXIV are typically done via duties. The term “duty” is what FFXIV uses for most content wherein you explore a different area, fight bosses, etc. Duties are instanced content, meaning that the game whisks you away from the overworld and into unique areas so that you can do certain fights, dungeons, and other quests. There are many unique duties in FFXIV, which speaks to the volume of content its team has managed to churn out over the years!

While I’ve been having a lot of fun recently, there are still points where I’d get tilted. More often it’s while I’m doing hard content like EXs, Unreals, and Savages. These are the terms FFXIV uses to denote duties that are more difficult than usual. The rewards for completing them are 1. the satisfaction of clearing the fight itself, 2. better equipment, 3. better fashion items, and sometimes 4. miscellaneous collectibles like mounts and minions.

The way tilt manifests in this game for me is in these difficult duties. It’s either I try to learn the fights and invariably make mistakes, or when I’ve mastered the fight and am in the farming phase, and for some reason, keep being beaten by the boss. The former feels bad even though I should be kind to myself: I’m still learning! I should cut myself some slack! But there’s always this nagging feeling that I’m not good enough, that I need to be better than I currently am. It’s a terrible feeling.

The latter, however, is just plain RNG sometimes. It’s another case of me cooperating with other random people, though this time it’s 7 other people who should have an idea of the fight itself. In FFXIV, you have the option of making in-game lobbies inviting other people to beat a fight, then have everyone roll for the loot fairly. It’s just, in some cases, you all just plain don’t beat the fight. It feels bad because of lost time, but that really is part of what you sign up for in some cases, and you just have to take the L and move on.

There’s also the in-game PVP mode. FFXIV has a fair amount of PVP duties you can do. There’s a game mode called Crystalline Conflict (CC), with similar gameplay to Overwatch except that you’re still using your class skills. A game of CC feels immensely shorter than a game of Overwatch, though, which is probably a reason why I experience less tilt with this game. Communications in this game mode are similar to MTGA, so there’s also less opportunity for toxicity. I do get annoyed when people spam “Good match!” even if the match isn’t finished, as I usually interpret this as them already thinking the game is lost. There’s also another game mode called Frontlines, where 3 teams, each team comprising of 24 players, fight for victory. The utter chaos and utter volume of players is a bit overwhelming, but once I got used to it I have lots of fun. It does get annoying sometimes though when stuff doesn’t go my way, but there’s something about this game that is rather… chill?

While I rarely get tilted by the casual duties, there are times when I do experience getting tilted, though usually because other players decide to be toxic. In FFXIV, there are daily duties you can do to level up your character and get other benefits. Early on in my playthrough, I had this party in this dungeon. I decided to queue in as a healer since I wanted to practice the role. But there was this player who kept criticizing my choices without giving suggestions. Why am I doing this, why am I doing that? In the end, I accidentally got disconnected, and while I was still willing to continue when I got reconnected, I found they already kicked me out of the dungeon. It was very disheartening.

Ultimately, though, FFXIV in my opinion isn’t as tilting as the other games I’ve listed, but there are some instances of tilt nonetheless.

SO WHAT DO I THINK OF TILT?

Now that I’ve examined these games and how they tilt me, I found some commonalities.

While competitive games can be fun, their competitive nature really incentivizes winning. Even in sports, games have always had winners and losers. So much so that when other players see you aren’t playing optimally, they may accuse you of “throwing,” or intentionally losing a game. It makes me want to ask: is winning really the goal, or is it to have fun? Would the effort you made in a game only matter if you win? Would the fun you had be poisoned if you lose?

This win-lose dichotomy is interesting because as much as I hate to admit it, it matters to most people. Wins feel good, and losses feel bad. I think it would be good game design to make it so that winning doesn’t matter as much, and that players still get to be satisfied even when they lose. But it’s hard to write this when the very DNA of competitive games rewards winning.

And what of the games that aren’t competitive? People still tilt when they farm for hours and they still don’t get that item they want. They tilt when RNG does not favor them in some fights. This leads me to think that tilt is less a win-lose thing and more an expectation thing: when despite all odds, what you want to happen does not happen, you get disappointed. When it stops happening over and over, you get tilted. It seems as though tilt is a factor of patience: how much time are you willing to spend to try and get what you want?

Tilt is also something that can be caused by other people. When people intentionally anger you and troll you, your own emotions can rise against them. Being tilted is an emotional state brought about not just by the misalignment of expectations, but also by unexpected factors like this. It feels like tilt is exacerbated by a loss of control in one’s games.

I think, with all of this, I would define Tilt as an emotional state brought about by the stress of both unmet expectations and unexpected outcomes in games.

HOW DO I DEAL WITH TILT?

Now that we’ve defined Tilt, I think now I want to talk about how I manage it.

I certainly think that when playing games, I want to have fun most of all. I’d like to think winning doesn’t matter as much for me, but on some level, it still does. I’ve realized all the more that your mindset is important when it comes to your games and even your hobbies. You have to be aware of your own mental state and you have to know what you are aiming for when it comes to your games. Are you out here to farm specific items. Do you just want to relax? Do you want to get wins? Know your goals and expectations. Try not to let things get to you too much.

In the course of playing games, there will be some bad apples who sow discord for the sake of it. They’ll try to tilt everyone they could just because it’s fun for them. When I encounter these people, I try to discourage them from doing their thing. Sometimes they’ll still continue being disturbances, however. It is an annoying part of gaming, but you can’t control everything. You can influence your team's strategy, but you can't control their aim and shooting. You can build your deck, but you can't control the cards you draw. While you can try and influence your surroundings, you can’t force the outcome you want. You can only control your own reaction to outside events.

I try to remember this, but sometimes tilt still gets to me. Maybe I played one too many games, maybe I’m chasing that one win that would give me satisfaction despite a chain of losses. Maybe I’m just in a bad mood because of the day’s events. It might take me a while to realize it, but when I see that I’m too tilted, I just stop playing and take a break. If something isn’t giving you joy, you should stop interacting with it for as long as you deem necessary. It might take days or even weeks before you get to play again, heck, maybe you need to stop entirely. In the end, you have to prioritize your own happiness.

Being tilted is difficult. But with enough emotional awareness and patience, you can combat that feeling and enjoy more of your games. Enjoy your day, gamers!!

#door talks #tilt #magic: the gathering #mtga #magic: the gathering arena #mtg arena #overwatch #overwatch 2 #ow2 #ow #ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #final fantasy 14 #ff14

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