Back to the Game

by Davor Miljkovic

Original article on MeetYourMakers.com

Before I cut into the topic it is my duty to describe in few notes what I will write about, so you can decide more easily to read on or not to read on.

All of you that play Starcraft, as well as other games respectively, surely remember the beginnings and how you enjoyed the game, yet with time the feeling is lost and so are we lost to the game. How to get the "feeling", the "fire", back is something that is a problem in many things in life, but I will focus on my own experience in this one specific area, sc:bw gaming. As I said before, the text isn't strictly related to one game, or even games at all.

I still remember my 1st days online, getting 100th game online, then 200th, etc., the joy of reaching each next 100th game; then came the time when good stats meant everything to me, playing ladder and enjoying seeing positive stats. Once I reached 1k wins on one account I stopped caring about the number of games I've played. Shortly afterwards I realised that in order to improve you gotta lose and stop caring about the "gosu stats", that was the moment I stopped caring about wins/losses. The next thing I drained joy from was winning vs "good" players, taking games that "really mattered", but soon the well of joy went dry, filled with sand, sand we gave name time.

Thus began the age of struggle, the only thing that kept me going was the fact there is much more to learn, even though joy was taken away from me by my own hand. I was in such state for some time until few days ago when I won a game, a game vs someone I was inferior to, a game that really mattered to me, one of those that you wanna celebrate right there in that moment, but I was all alone, old friend with whom I explored this forsaken game no longer plays it, with nobody to share glorious story with I left that victory behind me, that was until today...

After a game vs fellow countryman I've recieved a comment "don't pretend like you don't care, I know you're happy because you beat me, because you beat me easily and we both know who is better". Those words went straight into my mind, bypassing my senses, going deep into my subconscious. In that moment I realised that I really didn't care, the game was insignificant to me, but one game didn't leave me emotionless afterwards, that was the victory only days ago.

With this in mind I realised that I've felt the joy once again, the sweet taste of success. With feeling the joy once again I found new source of motivation, putting 100% myself into every game like it's vs that one person that granted me the priceless win. So...if you find yourself losing that fire, your victory will come, just keep on playing and one day you'll play a game that will return what you've looked upon as a lost thing to you.


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