When Games Matter: A Tale of Two Crafts

When Games Matter is a weekly exploration by Drew Dixon of meaningful moments in games. Operating under the assumption that games do in fact matter, Drew seeks to highlight those moments that have much to say to say about who we are and the world we live in.

I recently started playing Starcraft again with some friends. Several years I ago I was fairly decent at it.  I never memorized “build orders” or developed intricate “rush” strategies but I was fast and I knew most of the key board shortcuts. Realizing how unfair it would be to play against my friend who was just learning Starcraft, we decided to play together against the computer. In our first two games, I managed to almost single-handedly save my friend from a Zerg rush and defeat the computer with a swarm of carriers.

These victories gave me a little confidence. Enough that I thought I would try my hand at Battle.net where Starcraft players go head to head in online multiplayer matches.  I started a 2v2 game thinking that since I had only recently got back into Starcraft after years of not playing that I probably needed to try to recruit a veteran to be on my team. My teammate had some really weird name like Pattycakes or something.

The game was a disaster. Pattycakes was obviously a good player and though I was able to build faster than anyone else on the map, I was horrible manager of my units and consequently failed to defend myself from being flanked by both our opponents leaving Patty to have to fight two enemies by himself.

Queue angry rant from Pattycakes. My teammate seriously went nuts. Due to the nature of this site, I cannot repeat to you the insults Patty heaped upon me. Its considered a pretty big faux pas to quit before a game is officially over. It was clear that we were not going to win but it was also clear that it was going to take our opponents a while to finish us off. Thus I endured what seemed like an eternity of harsh insults from Patty.

I would like to say that I am mature enough that it didn’t phase me at all but by the end of the game I was feeling pretty lousy. To put it mildly, Pattycakes was skilled in the art of the insult.

This was another reminder of why I play games online almost exclusively with friends. Later that I night I loaded up Minecraft where I found 4 of my friends. We chatted about our days and talked about what each other had been building. I showed off the art gallery that a friend and I had been building. Everyone was very complimentary.

Games have the ability to divide us against others as much as they can bring us together. Acknowledging this is paramount to having meaningful experiences playing them.