This article has been reposted from RTSGuru.com, which appears to have been recently decommissioned. I’ll be periodically reposting some of my best writing from that site, in the efforts to preserve it. Thanks for your patience if you’ve already read this!

I love real time strategy games. To me, nothing in gaming is quite as fulfilling as going “mano-a –mano” against another human being in a 1v1 match in StarCraft (or plenty of other titles, to be honest). The thrill of executing a strategy and in so doing outsmarting my opponent can be a huge thrill. But, of course, there’s a flip side to this. There’s the fear. Literally, when I queue for a match in a game that I am trying to master, I can end up shivering, keyed up and full of adrenaline as the matchmaker searches or the match itself loads. It can crush my will to queue up and obliterate my confidence going into a match. I’ve told myself before that it’s excitement, but really, it’s fear.

Ladder anxiety is an affliction of many gamers, but there are methods for combatting it. This is the story of how I developed mine. Read on to see how it has affected me and how I’ve attempted to gain control of myself when playing competitive games.

Silencing the Critic

In college, I took a course in creative writing. I’m not sure how well it’s served me since, but that’s not really the point. During the class, I was introduced to the concept of the “inner critic” – that part of you that’s never really content with the story you’re writing. If you’ve ever written a story, perhaps you’ll be familiar with this: you have a great idea in your head, and at first you can’t wait to write it down. But then, maybe as little as a paragraph in, you stop to re-read your work. Maybe you think it’s terrible, or maybe you just notice one or two little things that need fixing… that’s the start of a slippery slope. Before you know it, you might end up deleting everything in disgust and browsing Reddit for the rest of the night. And, then you never do end up making progress on that story.

In that writing class, we were taught to not heed that internal critic. Our advice was just to write. To get everything out of our heads and onto the page, in its entirety, before anything else. Getting a terrible story on paper, we were told, was better than writing nothing at all. Terrible stories, after all, can be fixed. But you can’t do anything with an unwritten story. Get it over with, and then let the critic do their work. Once they have something to edit, they can be made productive.

Learning that was kind of a revolution for me. I mean, it sounds so simple and straightforward, but it really was an eye-opener at the time. At the time, my philosophy for most things was “if I can’t be perfect at this, I won’t do it.” As can be imagined, I missed out on a lot of good things that way, including much of the wonderful world of competitive gaming. For some reason, it completely passed me by that to get good, I’d have to write some bad stories, to use the parlance I’ve outlined above. That is, not only would I need to research and watch gameplay to understand the game, but I’d need to actually play it, to get my hands dirty, to actually feel the pacing and the mechanics, and to see how other people did the same.

You see, in so many parts of my life, I was so afraid of failing that I was actually robbing myself of the opportunity to succeed.

StarCraft 2

Once I picked up StarCraft 2, I knew it was time to try and break the cycle of fear that kept me from playing RTS games as they were meant to be played. Oh, I’d played WarCraft 3, Universe at War, Supreme Commander, Command and Conquer 3, and Dawn of War 2 a little, but always to the same end. I’d win a couple games, then go on a massive losing streak which would crush my confidence and would have me heading for the hills. I’d always end up playing a couple of hours, and then letting fear keep me from actually doing the right thing, and learning how to play.

So, when StarCraft 2 launched in 2010, I made the commitment to overcome this fear. But it was bad. It was so hard in SC2. Blizzard gave you so many things to care about: your league, your win to loss ratio, even your APM were all sitting there in the open for me to be concerned about. Perhaps I was lucky – I originally placed into the Bronze league, so there was nowhere to go but up in the ranks.

Losing in StarCraft 2, or any RTS is bad enough, but those who suffer from ladder anxiety might agree with me when I say that it can often feel like being ranked by any game’s Elo can feel like an objective measure of their overall competence or intelligence. It is skill, knowledge, execution, and ability to capitalize on the mistakes or weaknesses of one’s opponent that often is the determining factor of a StarCraft 2 match, after all. Losing in StarCraft, and seeing a permanent record of your skill as compared to the skill of everyone else in the community can be maddening or even depressing.

The Journey

There are many resources for learning to play StarCraft 2. In fact, you probably know more of them than I do. I’ve always stuck with a couple of the more popular streamers and commentators, and have only dipped my toe into the tournaments scene.

But as for understanding and overcoming ladder anxiety, that’s a personal journey. Day[9] and TeamLiquid have some great mechanical resources for understanding the psychology and working with the symptoms. But ultimately, it’s a personal journey you have to make. Like I said, it’s not just about knowing what to do: for me, it was about actually screwing up the courage to step up and actually play the game, come what may. And for me, that was not easy.

There are many suggestions that people will give you to fight ladder anxiety: one of the main one’s I’ve heard is (if you’re not willing to purchase another copy of the game) to throw a long series of matches and get yourself placed a league back. This way, your WLR will already be ruined, and your precious league standing won’t be an issue any more. This, in turn, is supposed to put you up against a series of easier opponents, helping build your confidence and have some less stressful games to boot.

I was never able to do this, as sensible as it might sound. Even at my best, I was still pretty firmly tied to my win ratio, and the idea of falling back into the Silver League was uncomfortable, to say the least.

But, here’s what I did: essentially, I put myself on a training regimen, like I would at a gym. First, I committed to playing 3-5 games at a time. At my worst, I’d sometimes jump on and play a single game. If I lost, I would move on to something that would improve my mood. If I won, I’d take it as a mood booster and get out, again in favor of another title. But, this wasn’t helping me learn the game. It wasn’t really a productive or even terribly enjoyable use of my gaming time. So, every time I sat down, win or loss, I’d take the lumps and just play it out. This was my version of thwarting the inner critic, from my writing class.

Also, despite my shame from some of my more embarrassing losses, I watched the replays of every loss I had. In fact, often I made it a habit to watch 3 times: first, from my opponent’s perspective, to see what they did right, then, from my perspective, to see what I could have done differently (lack of upgrades, poor timing, poor scouting, et cetera). Finally, I would watch it all together, for the gestalt picture. This served the dual purpose of forcing myself to confront my mistakes and my unwillingness to face them, and to actually review how my opponent could have been bested; it was good from a psychological and a mechanical standpoint.

It took a long while, but I finally got to a place where learning was the most important thing. But, just like with writing a short story or novel, losing weight (something I still struggle with) or sleep training a baby, I found that controlling your ladder anxiety was a matter of discipline and time. Just like with learning to play the game, I had to practice playing it for the right reasons. And just like with sleep training my son or dieting, I had to realize that a loss isn’t an excuse to give up. It’s something that has to be taken as a bump on the road to a better state.

Relearning…

I spent much of 2012 playing games other than StarCraft. From learning the very basics of the MOBA/ARTS genre to participating in End of Nations Beta weekends, to a brief foray into Guild Wars 2, to an intense nostalgia dive that saw me reinstalling Red Alert 2 and Dawn of War: Soulstorm, I had a busy year as a gamer from the perspective of a married father of a young child.

But, as intimidating as StarCraft 2 is, it can be rewarding to the same degree. More rewarding, certainly, than single player RTS gaming, and more rewarding in some ways than victory in MOBAs (this is personal, your mileage is sure to vary on this one). So, I came back, and quickly realized that control over anxiety could slip from me just as easily as timing my expansions or executing decent Warp Prism harass. Now, I’m more or less back where I started from that respect. It’s been frustrating, feeling like I should be more collected and more in control of myself (as well as my units).

I’m once again on the journey to conquering my inner critic as a StarCraft 2 gamer. I’ve fallen from Gold to Silver again, which is frustrating, and mechanically I’m far behind where I was. I once again get jittery before pressing that Find Match button, and make excuses to play other games. But I’m on the road again. Join me won’t you? You can’t rid yourself of ladder anxiety, but with discipline and dedication, you’ll be able to better enjoy StarCraft 2 and any other competitive game you might play.