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Comment by Dalewyn | Hacker News Reader

I stopped playing LoL and most individualist PVP games in general when I came to the realization they ultimately peddled entertainment at the expense of someone's misery. Like you say: All that ultimately matters is whether you win, the game actually means jack fucking squat.

Once I wisened up and lost the illusion of "fun", I just haven't found any appeal in such games anymore. What kind of a human being am I if my entertainment of all things is drawn from misery? Fuck that, there's enough misery in life without fucking games making it worse.

Team and group PVP games are great because winning (or losing) is just a matter-of-fact consequence, we're there for the experience of playing together as a team and it's hell of a lot of fun for both winners and losers.

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I think this is overly reductionist. Winning is fun, of course; nobody goes into a game with the intention of losing. But equating losing with human misery is a stretch. Most people playing games aren't miserable after a loss, at worst they're tilted after a tough loss or a losing streak. If losing were inherently the cause of human misery, we wouldn't be sending our kids to play organized youth sports for multiple generations. Or played chess for thousands of years.

I've been playing fighting games a lot recently, which is a pure skill-based 1v1 genre, and going up against people better than me who beat me is fun, not miserable. Obviously the ideal outcome is to win, but getting stomped by 6-time Marvel vs Capcom 2 world champion Justin Wong doesn't make me miserable, it makes me want to improve.

I'm not saying it's for everyone, I have friends who tilt off easily at every loss and yeah they shouldn't play ranked at least, but as long as your attitude is "you win or you learn" you won't be miserable.

Similarly, when I played UT'99 (by the definition it was ages ago ;-)), I loved playing against stronger players. Yeah, losing a lot, but also getting better, decreasing the gap, learning new things, and at some point being able to win against some of them (or keep the match close). Lots of them was so good - I played solely Instagib, and a lot of 1-1s - that I was happy with just making some kills. But it was a lot of fun nonetheless.

But I've also seen a lot of players that could not cope with losing - maybe overly competitive, maybe a bit immature etc. etc.

League is miserable to play, for three main reasons. The first is 30min-1hr games are the norm, and second that entire time you are playing with a group who have nearly no experience together, finally the community is genuinely horrible even on a good day. You spent an hour of your life on a team with an external locus of control who spew vitriol at everyone else and who are probably not making optimal choices themselves for nothing more than points on a scoreboard. The only way to feel accomplished in that situation is to win, because no amount of self-improvement will help someone when their teammate is trying to solo lane with Smolder, or whatever player RNG the game throws your way.

Fighting games cannot be compared to LoL in any way shape or form, they are shorter individual competitions where the only real excuse you have is internal.

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