I wanted to say thanks to Wes for the contest, and congratulations again to Barra and Mr. X.
This event was actually extremely valuable to me, psychologically. I have not enjoyed playing this game for a long time, and I realized during the first week the problem with my attitude.
The instant I stopped caring about "getting a score", and just started playing to see boards, encounter situations, jabber into the mic, etcetera, I was fine. I was not playing to get a million points. I was playing for 100K starts and 53K levels. If I could do 17 53K levels in a row, so much the better. Essentially I just had to go back to basics, to where I was in spring 2011 when I first got into this. I didn't think about about finishing the game then, I just wanted to learn and experience the game. Getting new PBs felt good, but they were simply the inevitable consequence of being pulled along by the compulsion to show up and play.
So, in more recent times, whenever I'd step up to the machine with the thought, "just give me my million points" (or 4th place in this tournament, or qualify me for a Kong Off wildcard machine, or whatever), I was setting myself up to be angry and unfulfilled. I was doing it wrong.
For too long, I have been playing solely to "get it done" (a 7-digit DK score) which, to be honest, doesn't mean much to me personally anymore, as opposed to playing simply for the physical/mental pleasure of taking one deep and letting the score take care of itself.
I know it's the standard mentality for a lot of high-score chasers, but the whole "goal" approach not only doesn't work for me personally, it's the exact opposite of how I need to come at this. I don't want to be pushing at the game, I want the game to be pulling at me. If it's not pulling, I should be doing something else. All of that effort/striving/struggle/motivation/accomplishment-based rhetoric seems to be necessary for some, but for me, it's completely the wrong way to think. This is all much more fun when approached as an indulgence. Why turn it into work?
I also just needed to remind myself to accept the game for how ridiculous and unfair it is so much of the time. Which, again, seems to be the opposite approach to the hardline "every death is the player's fault" narrative. I think that emerged as a reactive counter-ideology, to players who refuse to take responsibility for their mistakes. But to me, both mentalities are flawed, extremes that are each harmful in their own ways. The fact of the matter is, the game screws you, a lot. And when it doesn't screw you, it could have if it had wanted to. Every game that reaches L=22 is full of death-bringing situations that could have unfurled if the randomness had gone in another direction. And when the game isn't screwing you, your dumb, silly, crappy, garbage brain is going to do something stupid that you know better than to do.
Some of my viewers noted that (with a few exceptions) I was consistently less ragey these last couple of weeks. That came down to the attitude adjustment.
The reason I game is for the side-effects: stuff like the overall increase in mental sharpness, the high I get when locked into a deep run, and the lessons that I can take into other areas of life. This contest was rich in side-effects. So, thanks!
I posted some stats in my forum blog:
https://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=16.msg24343#msg24343
