At an early age,

I was introduced to pc games. One of the games I played was the Age of Empires. I was exposed to more games like Pocket tank, Red alert 3, Civilization 5 and most recently Starcraft 2.

Starcraft 2 Experience

Because playing Starcraft is the most recent game I have play, I will tell you more about it. The game mode is known as player vs. player. When I started playing Starcraft, I was attracted to the 1v1 feature because it pits my skill with another player’s skill within the mechanics of Starcraft.

Plus, it was then my first time to have a real person as an opponent. I realized that I could choose to play an unranked or ranked play. In Ranked play, it lets me play a couple of games to determine my skill level whether it is bronze, silver, gold, and so on. It has a ranking system for one to level up if I reach a certain match-making rating. The unranked play is simply 1v1 without any ranking system involved.

With that in mind, I decided to keep playing and hone my skill in unranked before I would go on ranked so that I would be placed on a high rank. I kept playing unranked for fun and not worrying whether I would lose or win. Later on, I discovered that I could watch the replays of my games! Thus, I used the replays to learn from my mistakes. And I would watch online to learn what other people do.

Soon, I felt like I was ready to play a ranked game. Every time I would click the join queue button, I felt like it was the most important game of my life so I would ready myself and focus. For the first game, I felt so happy winning, but I knew I would have to play 4 more games to be placed in a league. So I readied myself once again.

Not too long after, I won my second game and third game, but my happiness turned sour when I lost my 4th and 5th game. I was strongly anticipating what league I would be placed in and felt scared that I would be placed in the lowest league, which was bronze!

Fortunately, I was placed in the gold league, which was not bad. Then, I continued playing ranked to reach my goal of getting to the diamond league. I won almost all of my games, and I would get long win streaks. Then, I noticed that I felt a hesitation to continue playing because there would be a possibility to lose, and that would end my win streak. But of course, I wouldn’t rank up unless I played, so I had to overcome being scared to hit that button.

I would later on discover that what I was feeling is called ladder anxiety. So some of the things I did to overcome this feeling was to pretend that I was playing an unranked game, and I would not mind or put emotion whether I would win or lose because I if I did, I would get the fear of playing more having in mind the possibility of losing my hard earned points.

I would simply treat a lose by saying to myself, “Okay, I lost; what did I do wrong? Oh, ok I will do this next time” and continue playing. Sometimes i would be like a emotionless robot that is continuously clicking the play button😂.

These techniques helped me find the courage to keep playing ranked. Though the feeling of ladder anxiety lingers whenever i play ranked, i has definitely lessened. And due to frequent playing, soon, I got to the diamond rank! 🎖

One of the features of Starcraft 2 that helped me play the game well was the chance to review the game I played in the past. This enabled me to learn from my mistakes by helping me see what I did and what should have or could have done in that certain situation in the game.

What I learned in Starcraft 2

In playing the Starcraft, there were always days that I won a lot, lost a lot or had a win- lose situation. This situation made me feel annoyed because after I played a bunch of games, I was either close to the next rank or I got further away from it. This taught me not to give up especially in times where I lost a lot of points and sometimes even got demoted.

Extra: Clash of Clans

I also played some mobile games like Clash of Clans. This game is about building a village, raiding other people’s bases with troops to loot their resources, which will be used to create troops, infrastructure and upgrade them. Resources like gold, elixir and dark elixir can also be obtained through the collectors, which mine a certain amount of resource per hour.

Upgrading things in a village lasts a certain amount time like 30min, 1 hour or even 24 hours, and one can speed the process up my using a valuable resource called gems, which can also be traded for resources. After hours of playing this game, I learned to be patient and to hold on to my gems to spend them for more important things like resources instead of spending them to speed up the time for upgrading.

Picture Sources
Ra3
Civ V
Pocket Tank
AoE
CoC