When Is Someone Too Good At A Video Game?

Everyone plays video games with a goal in mind. The goal is usually very simple: “Even though it’s three in the morning and I have to wake up for school tomorrow, I just want to beat this stupid flash game before I go to sleep.” Goals based around skill of video games usually don’t aim higher than looking for a sense of accomplishment. So it’s easy to determine when someone is too good at a video game: it’s when they can no longer complete their goal because attaining it is not a challenge.

Out of my five friends I played video games with in eighth grade, I was the only one with a Nintendo 64. We’d all get together and play GoldenEye 007 and Super Smash Brothers, but the difference between my friends and me was that I would continue to play at home by myself, constantly improving. Although my friends improved through the dozens of hours we played, I was always much better. It became common for them to get upset when I demonstrated that I had been playing by myself, through the use of a new trick or new character I hadn’t used before. I would try to use the handicap settings in Super Smash Brothers to turn myself down from the default nine to five or six, but my friends didn’t want me using it. If they beat when I was a five, it was no accomplishment, and if they lost to me it was even more degrading than if I was at the default. It got to the point where I wouldn’t feel a sense of accomplishment if I won, only extreme disappointment if I didn’t win. This is an indication of being too good at a video game.

However, the ability to play a game online versus millions of other people makes this scenario much less likely. While video games used to be played just against people sitting next to you, almost every new game these days can be played online. This isn’t a fact, but I would argue that it’s impossible to be too good at a game that you can play competitively online, simply because there will always be people just as good as you, that, when beat, can give you a sense of accomplishment.

For one-player games, the goals come from you. You decide whether you want to beat the game with 100% completion, on the hardest difficulty, or just want to get halfway through it before you return it to the video store. The only way someone could be too good at a one-player game is if they aren’t being entertained by the game, are feeling no sense of accomplishment while playing it, and are completing no goals by playing it—yet they still play, because they’ve invested so much time in it and feel a need to continue even though they don’t necessarily enjoy it. This is called a compulsion.

You might be too good when you are this guy.

A lot of players these days will play a game with their friends and, when alone, they play online competitively, making it so they can be too good in one situation and not in another. When you’ve played all three Halo games, play Halo 3 every day, and look for a match online against thousands of other people around your ranking, you are bound to find a challenge. But when you are playing against three friends who have played no more than ten to twelve hours of Halo 3 in total, you are bound to be too good to find entertainment or a sense of accomplishment in the competition, and you usually end up pissing off your friends. Ironically, determining whether or not someone is too good at a video game is often based on the skill level of the friends they play with.

So when is someone too good? Well, it depends on the game type and who you’re up against. But if you’re winning all the time, chances are you might want to invest in a new game. Lose once in a while, so you know how others feel when you kick their ass.