Session 6: Several weeks in March and April 2007
Game: Europe Engulfed
Players: Robin and I
Result: Won
My Competitiveness: 8
My enjoyment (based on my attitude): 5
Others' enjoyment (based on my attitude): 4 (1?)
Overall Self-Grade: D-

Well, the game of Europe Engulfed finally ended. The short version is, Robin didn't maintain control of the English Channel, and I completely botched the Eastern Front, but Robin's mistake cost him first, and I ended up invading and crushing England in 1942, ending the game.

The problem really was that Eastern Front, where I thought I had it locked up, and didn't (see previous post). I handled it badly, and unfortunately continued to handle it badly even into the next and final session. That mistake just kept fucking with every one of my moves, and got worse and worse, and it was terribly frustrating. I've already beaten myself up about it a lot here, and just in my own mind, so I'm going to see what I can learn from it.

First of all, the mitigating circumstances. This is by far the most complicated game I've ever played. It seemed impossible to keep all the dozens and dozens and dozens of rules in mind, and we missed more than one as we went on. The game also took forever, probably 6 or 7 multiple-hour sessions. This was the first time I had ever played it, and had no concept of what the strategy should be.

So given that it was my first time playing, I would ideally just be a little silly about it and try stuff. For the most part, this is what I did. But when you don't know the rules, its hard to just try something, you have to really invest a lot of effort into figuring out if its working. You become invested in every move, because its not just try and see, its decide and then work through every arduous detail of figuring out how to derive and enact the consequences of it. And in a broader sense, when the game is this long, you have spent 20 hours playing, you can't help but be annoyed when you are surprised by a catastrophic turn of events that destroys your basic strategy. No matter how good a sport you are, playing a game for 20 hours and watching a misinterpretation of the board state lay to waste your best laid plans, thats frustrating shit.

As I've already been over, thats no excuse in general, nor a good excuse for bitching the way I did. I needed to get over it, but I at least wanted to go over, for my benefit if nothing else, what aspects of the game contributed to this situation.

Now, what did I contribute? Part of this whole exercise is figuring out what I want from games, and why that causes me to act out when I play them. What is it that gets me frustrated, exactly? I think it's these situations, oftentimes:

- Thwarted plans: When I happen upon something clever that I think of to do, I get excited, and extremely focused on trying to make my clever plan work. I become very invested in its success, and I get upset if it doesn't work out. I think this is part of a larger issue, where I assume that my view on a situation is shared by everyone. That is, I assume that everyone knows what I was trying to do, was watching to see if I could pull it off, and is disappointed in me if I don't, and wants to know why I couldn't do what I thought I could, and what they expected me to be able to do. This might play into all manner of deeper psychological issues, including, off the top of my head:
- Delusions of grandeur: subconsciously seeing myself as the star of the situation, thinking that it revolves around me, as if I was Tiger Woods, and the other players are not only not playing at my level, but are mere spectators.
- Fear of judgement: thinking that everyone is constantly evaluating me, and harshly. Failing at a board game is, in my mind, equated with losing face in some very significant way. Which is insane obviously. But this issue plays out in many parts of my life. Just to go WAY beyond the scope of this blog, I'm pretty sure this aspect of my personality was borne by my relationship with my parents, and is part of why I'm not really eager to see a psychiatrist. Like I said, WAY beyond.

As a side note, as I eventually learned via the main incident that inspired this blog, I'm liable to turn this judgement onto others, and be an asshole when others take game actions that I don't approve of. In my defense, I've probably only done this twice, ever, but thats beyond twice too many times. There's no excuse for that.

So anyway, I think that's the main thrust of it. If I allow myself to become personally invested in a game plan I become intensely focused on finding ways to make it work. I mean, in general, this is the way I cope, I am an analyzer and problem solver, and its liable to find its way into games.

Worse though, when the plan falls apart, I assume that everyone knows what I had planned, that it didn't work, and thinks I'm a failure for it. So I get defensive and start making explanations and excuses, and it turns into a situation where my self-confidence is at stake.

This then, I think, is why I started losing interest in games. I don't want that pressure. But the solution is to realize that a game is just a game, not a problem to be solved, or a test to fail. To realize that everyone is too busy focusing on their own gameplay, or ideally just enjoying the game to be worrying about how I fucked up in ways that are completely opaque to them. If I'm losing, somebody else is winning, and they are MUCH more interested in that fact than the fact that I didn't win. So the things I need to remind to myself of are:

- Its just a game. Make decisions, let the story play out, play your part. It's not a problem to be solved.

- Nobody cares if you don't win. They probably don't care if you do win. They're just trying to have a good time. See if you can take the hint, and if you can't join in, don't you dare fuck it up for them.