ORIGINAL: saygame
Except when the flames suck you up
I'm human, I can get my back up like anyone else. I especially get riled if I am dealing with someone who I think is stuck in their position and simply won't listen to any statement that doesn't fit their view. It frustrates me, I become irritated, and say so.
And I usually regret letting my anger get away like that. Not for bashing the other person - I probably still feel they deserved it - just that it isn't constructive, and only serves to weaken my position.
In actual fact - as you likely know - the subset of the internet community known as trolls work hard to get people to lash out at them. They get their kicks out of getting other people angry, and if the person gets banned or suspended because the trolls got under their skin and got them to lash out, its even better for them.
So I try to keep it civil, but despite starting on BBS forums back on dial up (1200 bps!) nearly 25 years ago, I still lose it every now and then.
Big Picture, the urge to win in people and myself is strong. It interferes with objectivity, whatever that is and with listening without formulating immediate and emotinal reactive response. As best I can fathom, winning gets tied into a survival instinct
By our natures humans are competitive. Its why we are the dominant macro life form on the planet (others have argued that micro-organisms and perhaps insects are more successful than humans, so I make a point to include 'macro' in that term). Like you, I suspect its tied into our survival instinct, our competitive nature gets the best of us, we sometimes lose perspective due to a part of our brain concludes "winning is LIFE!" and we start getting silly.
Some people try to keep a lid on that - they know it looks silly and is ultimately embarrassing - but some people forget "Its just a game".
Future developments into creating more realism in games like WiTe will take us to a complex computer coding world of more and more "semi blindings" and loss of full control that move us in the direction of simulating reality: having quite limited or even erroneous intelligence and only slight control, I believe. When one can't locate 4th Pz Army, fear may start to creep in.
While I think there will be some desire for that, and organizations like the military would dearly love that (although paradoxically, with modern communications and GPS, keeping track of units is probably closer to what we have in WitE than not) I wonder - and apparently so do you - if gamers would ever really want that?
While I do note that we have too much information and control, and feel that the game should be programmed to do some things to take into account that the people involved didn't have that much info and clarity of perception (for example, simply driving behind a unit shouldn't cut its supply line, the unit isn't everywhere at once and likely never actually encountered the supply convoy - like in board games you should have to have the unit and the ZOC to block all those hexes, not just one unit that happened to pass by), but I mostly say it to point out that A. its a game, and not a 'simulation', and B. we can do more than happened historically,
In the case of B. some people have complained that it is possible for the Germans to advance more quickly than they did historically, and this is why.
Many players will rue the loss of control we have today as not fun and it may doom those games as economic enterprises. Dunno.
Could we even handle it, or just find it frustrating and thus go off to do something else? FOW was the cause of a number of strange decisions and assumptions in history - especially by people who weren't trained military officers (like Stalin and Hitler) - and in a gaming environment might just be annoying for the majority of people.
Part of games like this is to be an armchair general and thus pretend to be Rommel or Patton or whoever, but without actually having to spend a lifetime in military service, or risk all the nastiness like being killed in an artillery barrage. And as long as none of us conclude "Hey, I'm really good at 'war-game X', I bet I could have beat Rommel!" it's okay to pretend that.
Its when us armchair generals conclude that we are in the same league as the real generals that we are in danger of losing touch with reality.
Its like was suggested for Guitar Hero - Just because you can beat every Guitar Hero game at the highest level doesn't mean you are ready to start a band and make your fortune (actual guitar players have noted that the Guitar hero controller is much different than a real guitar, and its hard to go from a real guitar to the controller).
Or - gods forbid - become good at some First Person Shooter and think you're ready to become a SEAL. Contrary to what some people think, FPS games aren't very good trainers for using a firearm in combat.
And wargames are far enough from reality that we are not ready to take command of troops in the field. We might have the basics of strategy and so forth down, but we are still miles away from being at the level of the generals we represent in these games.
So I'm not sure we'd actually want these games to be that good, even if the ability to code them existed (I think the hardware could handle it, the coding is the hard part).
First I talk myself down from having to win. I try and enjoy the ride and savor each detail and reduce the emphasis on winning at all cost.
Good plan, and we should all aim for that. One of the most enjoyable East Front games I ever played was a Barbarossa to Berlin game (GMT games) that ended in a narrow allied victory. I lost by one point, but it was a close game and was in question right to the end. For that reason I felt it was a good game and I made a good fight of it, thus had no reason to feel bad about it.
Similarly a recent game of Normandy '44 (also GMT games) ended with a German defeat to an Allied auto victory. But again, I had made a good fight of it and held the Allies back so the game was down to only three or four turns left (if the allies hadn't won by then, they lose, so as the German your main job is to just slow the allies down). Again, nothing to be ashamed of.
On the other hand, I've lost my last several tries at Bitter Woods (AH) playing as the
Americans. Oy vey, that game is supposed to be really hard for the Germans to win, and yet... I decided that I suck at that game.
I lose far more games than I win, I am no master strategist, I acknowledge this. Makes one humble - although I remember being
soooo happy when I won a game at a convention once that I imagine my opponent thought I was gloating. In fact it was relief after a real nail biter of a game, and so I was just glad I pulled out the other side on top.
I think though that is why I often prefer to play the AI. You can't get personal with the AI (if you do, seek help [:D]) and you don't risk running into an ass of a player that makes you want to strangle him. [;)]
I guess a summary of all this is the issuance of a hearty "well done" and keep driven on with airing your thoughts.
Thank you. Appreciate that.