Gamers need to learn positivity

I absolutely love this post. I think I disagree with a lot of it, but I still love it. And I think a lot of people would benefit from taking it to heart.

My personal feeling though is this: I'm one of those strange people who does NOT believe that the purpose of games is to bring joy to the player. Some games, maybe. But shooters? Competitive multiplayer shooters? Competitive multiplayer Battle Royale shooters? They are designed to crush your spirit. And the way they do this is exactly as you said: getting lost in the maze of the illusion. It's why I game. For the immersion. If a game feels to me like a game then I probably won't give it five minutes. A game that will keep my attention is one that pulls me in and makes me believe. That's what I want it to do. Otherwise it's just pac man. So once I'm in that space then my brain kicks in with what I think of as the real game: How to play in such a way that I feel immersed but can also keep the game from making me feel terrible about bad outcomes. Which is tough because bad outcomes are inevitable. In battle royale they're typically 95% of matches. Those are tough odds if you're trying to maintain the illusion. But I have found ways to do it. My squadmates don't like those ways, but anybody who ever thought they were gonna play in scrub lobbies in an unranked mode in a free-to-play game and then get the likes of aceu or Timmy for a teammate... well, they're dreaming. So it is what it is.

I guess the part of all this where I agree with you 100% is this: I may take the game seriously, maybe too seriously, maybe I put too much value on immersion... but my character is such that there is almost no situation where I would ever blame on someone else what I've done to myself. And it's also such that I would never belittle another player for doing something that I know FOR A FACT is destined to fail. Even when I could, if inclined, describe to them beforehand almost exactly when, how, and why their tactic is doomed. It's my nature to let people make their own mistakes and learn from them. Or not. It's the only way I ever learned anything in life. By doing and failing. Not by being told what to do or by being ridiculed for trying.

So I agree wholeheartedly that we should all approach each other with a lot more tolerance and compassion. Deep breaths are never a bad thing. I'm never so immersed in the illusion that I wouldn't want to offer a teammate a pat on the back or a "sorry that happened," or a good old fashioned "gg."