this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
124 points (98.4% liked)
Gaming
30579 readers
91 users here now
From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!
Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.
See also Gaming's sister community Tabletop Gaming.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Can you think of a game that exists in a gray area? Most games I would consider competitive multiplayer games are pretty obviously so. Maybe something like a BR game where you're expected to not win. Or Elden Ring where the competitive multiplayer aspect is de-emphasized. Do those games even have casual and ranked modes?
Smash Bros? Plenty of people play it as a competitive fighting game while others just like to goof around with their friends.
Funny enough, the two modes for Smash 4 were "for glory" and "for fun"
MTG Arena - there's a regular play queue and a ranked queue, and people definitely play to mess around and try new decks for fun. This of course doesn't cease to induce salt from sweaty gamers in the play queue.
Even ignoring games that you consider "in the gray area," who are you to say someone can't find a way to have fun in a game that doesn't align with your way of having fun? Not everyone is playing the game hoping to land on an esports team.
Edit: I'm mostly referring to casual queues - ranked queues being hyper competitive does make sense. I've just seen the same argument made that casual queues should be the same level of competitive.
Co-op games that let you troll your buddy?
Things like L4D's primary mode and Portal 2's co-op mode.
Those are multiplayer co-op. Can you even compete in those games?
You can compete against each other for points in L4D while not actually playing the adversarial/competitive mode.
You can kill each other in Portal 2's co-op by being a dick with your side of the portal.
They're the only things I can think of that are a gray area and not pretty well defined.
I said something similar in another reply, but I can't think of any games where winning/losing is possible but doesn't change my enjoyment. Even elden ring invasions feel better if you win the encounter.
The only thing that could come close is an encounter like that or in something like DMZ where you can talk it out and join forces, but maybe that's just another form of winning.