Why Do You Have To Be Good At Video Games To Be a Gamer?

[Luke]

There are competitive co-operative games too, it's not all 1v1/free for all.

Was Streets of Rage the first game ending where you could back-stab your own teammate?

[Menegrothx]

There are competitive co-operative games too, it's not all 1v1/free for all.

Was Streets of Rage the first game ending where you could back-stab your own teammate?

That's not quite what I meant but hey since we're on the subject

[J T]

Was Streets of Rage the first game ending where you could back-stab your own teammate?

If you make it to the end of Double Dragon with a buddy, you have to fight over the girl at the end.

There can be only one.

[ice445]

You don't really have to be good at them, it's just helpful. In some ways it can be a curse too. I was a competitive Counter Strike Source player for a long time, and while I still enjoy booting up the game once in a while for old times sake, it doesn't have the appeal it used to. You can in fact play a game to death. It's part of why I don't like doing competitive gaming anymore. It just ruins the fun factor. CS is a rare exception in that I can still have fun with it, but only for a very short period of time. I also played Left 4 Dead competitively and that game is just dead to me. I learned literally everything there is to know about it. Now I can't even have fun just playing normally. Too easy. Same with L4D2.

Now a days, for me anyway, it's single player only or something constructive (Minecraft with the Technic Pack, Garrys mod with wire).

[MrPopo]

One thing that sucks is when you get really good at something through practice, and then try to pick it up later when your skills have atrophied. That's what's happening to me with my PIU machine. I've grown out of shape, don't have the stamina or the speed I used to, so I can't beat the songs I used to.

[Menegrothx]

I've never played these games at the top level, but after a long DOD:S/CS:S/HL2DM/WoW/WC3 break it usually takes me about a day or two of practice, and after that I'm owning people just like I always did. Many times my skill level hasn't dropped at all when I return to a game after a 3-6 month break.
I dont think that hand-eye cordination and tactical/improvisation skills really deteriorate over time the same way other skills do.

[BurningDoom]

As someone pointed out, I do have a particular skill set I'm good at. I'm good at 2D platformers, action-RPGs, and beat-em ups. I could also say I'm good at shoot-em ups, but not good enough for the bullet-hell sub-genre. Particularly 2D platformers since I excel at games like Mario and Mega Man.

It's the competitive FPS, fighting games, and bullet-hell games that I'm horrible at. And those are the games that really take skill. Those are the games that most people are playing online on XBox Live, so I don't dabble in XBox Live gaming too much.

[WallCrusher]

One thing that sucks is when you get really good at something through practice, and then try to pick it up later when your skills have atrophied. That's what's happening to me with my PIU machine. I've grown out of shape, don't have the stamina or the speed I used to, so I can't beat the songs I used to.

Yeah, that's especially bad when it happens with games with steep learning curves. Have to re-learn it all over again...

[Key-Glyph]

One thing that sucks is when you get really good at something through practice, and then try to pick it up later when your skills have atrophied.

When I was a kid, I would periodically replay final bosses and difficult levels that I'd enjoyed specifically to stay sharp at them. Even so, I'd believed certain feats were like riding a bicycle. I could never get to the point where I was bad at something I'd thoroughly championed, right? Well. Woe was me when I discovered I could no longer cruise through Tube of Medusa in Ecco: Tides of Time in ten seconds flat.

I get a real rush from being actively good at a game -- I love those moments when you realize just how much you've learned and are amazing yourself with how naturally you can pull off some complicated stuff -- but I don't like the focus on beating a game as the defining aspect of the experience, or the proof that you "care." I get the biggest kick out of grinding along in Ultima III: Exodus, and even if I knew the game went no further in plot or point I'd still fire it up every year. I just love it, period, and that's a meaningful thing.

That said, I can never quite convince myself that other people won't write me off as a fake gamer if they see me getting destroyed in an arcade. Even worse is being witnessed playing something for the first time. It's completely ridiculous, but I will sometimes pass up a game in a public arena if I'm afraid my experience with it will make me look too stupid. I'd be mortified if I were trying something out and couldn't navigate the select screens and menus, for instance. I can't tell you when I started feeling this way, or why I care that much about this particular issue. It's bizarre.

[Michi]

Some of my favorite types of games are platformers and fighters.....and I'm not really very good at either of them (I do a bit better with the fighters if I have an arcade stick, but not by much). I play them a lot, but I've beaten very few of them. Doesn't mean I don't still enjoy them and feel a certain swell of accomplishment when I get past a certain spot that's been giving me a hard time (Like in Harmony of Dissonance when I finally won the race with that stupid stone ball to get that damned spell book ).

And if anyone told me I wasn't a real gamer because I couldn't get to the end of a certain Mario game, I'd tell them to stuff it and go sit on a Spiny.