Gamers...no matter the game

Many of my thought experiments start with something presented by someone else. This time it was on Kotaku, a gaming blog site.


The Hardcore Gaming Myth

I find the biggest difference in gamers...as opposed to games...is in the goals behind why you play, and it doesn't really matter what the game is. I have seen it myself, both in a Martial Art I participate in, and in an online game I played for several years. I had a friend describe it to me in a cycling club that he was part of.

Humans are competitive, and it is natural for us to turn almost any endeavor into a competition, but not all people are driven to compete. So, here you have the difference, what is the goal or participation? Do you play to win, or do you play to enjoy yourself? The problem arises when people with these two different goals intermingle in the same environment.

In my friend's cycling club, he encountered both types. Some of the members were racers or at least wannabe racers, and others were there for the love of cycling, and had no wish to compete. The problem that my friend saw was that the intensity of the competitive cyclists tended to be a big turn off for new enjoyment cyclists. Literally, it scared them off, because they just wanted to get out occasionally and ride, while the competitive cyclists wanted everyone to agree to ride several times a week, and long rides, and try for certain time goals.

This discussion came up because of my participation in Armored Combat in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). My friend was also in the SCA (still is, as a matter of fact). At that time, we had a small group of very competitive, very driven fighters, and we were trying to find more opponents. Having different people to fight not only makes the practice more enjoyable, but it also helps in not developing bad habits. The intensity with which we fought could have the effect of driving off new fighters, at least that was my friend's contention, and after a time, I came to see his point.
Now, in neither of these examples, nor others that could be provided should it be assumed that those who play to win don't enjoy themselves, nor, that those who play for fun don't like to win. What would be more correct is to say that who play to win don't enjoy themselves as much if they aren't competing and those who play for fun don't have to win to have fun. Both agree that winning is more fun than losing.
I primarily play RPGs. I very much like playing out the storylines, and exploring the character choices. I spent many years playing Neverwinter Nights (NWN) on Persistent Worlds (PWs). While there, I found a distinct dichotomy among the players. Casual and Hardcore isn't really adequate to this situation, because it was all people who were spending 5-20 hours a week playing, and generally in blocks of at least a couple of hours at a time.
One term used negatively for one camp was Powergamers. These players were definitely hardcore about the game, they spent time studying various character builds in order to learn how to make the strongest builds. They could tell you exactly what they were going to do with the build from the first time they played. They reveled in player-versus-player confrontations.
The other camp preferred the Role-Playing aspects of the game. They preferred to let the story that their character played out to influence (possibly even control) their character build. Often, these players did not seek player-versus-player confrontations.

Now, it isn't that the Powergamers were unwilling to role-play, in fact many of them were quite excellent at the role-play elements of the game, but their characters had to be very powerful, and they used that to push other players around from time to time, all the while claiming that this was the appropriate role-play for that character.
They were competition/goal/victory oriented in their gaming, while the second group was not.
The author brought up basketball. Ever participated in pick-up games, and run across someone who only cared about making the perfect shot? They weren't driven to win. To them it was almost like performance art, and as long as they made that perfect shot, they didn't really care who won or lost.
Some people need to win to have, others don't, participation, the action, not the result is the goal. To me that is the fundamental difference between gamers, whether the game is basketball, golf, or computer games.