Better By Being Beaten

As a semi professional gamer, I take my video gaming seriously. That is why I like a good challenge and sometimes I realize I can't win them all but I can get better by trying and giving it a go.

When I was first getting into gaming I used to play in this tiny arcade in Cabramatta called TimeGone. In between TimeGone and visits to Liverpool to play at their local arcades, I feel like I was a local legend. People knew about me and people knew I was good at the game I was playing. At that time it was King of Fighters '96 (ahh the good ol' days!). I felt like I really was good at the game I played until one day I was in Sydney for some business. I went up to the KOF '96 machine, put in my monies and expected to own up. To my utter surprise I was one that was owned and owned badly. I was surprised. I thought I was good at the game but it wasn't the case. People in the city, used characters I never seen before or they used characters I was used to in ways it made them foreign to me. For sure it was a reality check and it made me go back to where I lived and played harder and better.

A couple years later, the same thing happened. Again at Cabramatta/ Liverpool I was the proverbial big fish in the pond in Tekken Tag. Then one day I decided to go to the city and play Tekken Tag with the Sydney players and again. Owned, not only was I owned badly, some people even beat me with my own characters which was a bitter pill to swallow. Again I left my city trip dis-satisfied with my performance and puzzled. Where was I going wrong? It then occured to me that it was because I was restricting myself to the local talent in my area that I was not getting any better by beating them to a pulp. If anything I was picking up bad habits that made me a worse player. With this epiphany I started to travel more and expand my horizons. I eventually got better but by the time I became really good, Tekken 5 came out and everyone was playing the latest game.

With Tekken 5 I really had an advantage I never had before. By now I was working in Sydney full time so everyday I was able to play everyone at their peak. Sydney is where all the good players played out so for awhile it was a steep learning curve but I eventually got better and wiser. It was the gaming equivalent of living in New York or LA. The best played the best and like how steel sharpens steel, everyone gets better. One of the things I also did was travel outside of Sydney and find other local gamers, none of them were as good as the talent in Sydney but it was still a good experience to play different styles. In the end I got better by being beaten not by staying in my own bubble and focusing on conquering my own little part of the kingdom.

pP

P.S I don't think I will share with you the massacre that occured the one time I actually went back to Liverpool/ Cabramatta to play Tekken 5 with my 'old friends'. It was not pretty.