Blog 11/14:🎮👎Skill Issue 🎮👎

I have never found a game I was good at. From Cooking Mama to Valorant, mobile games to first-person shooter games, I suck at them all.

I first realized my lack of talent for games in middle school. Every Sunday afternoon, my friends and I would hunch over the monitors in my church basement, playing Minecraft for hours. My friends would go mining for diamonds and defeat the ender dragon; I would just die every so often, losing all my inventory in the process. At some point I gave up, switched from survival to creative mode — but even then, the houses I built were shabby compared to others. Switching over to Nintendo Games, I wasn’t the worst at Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros — but while defeating CPUs, I would always die when competing against my friends. Cooking Mama? I’ll let my impatience say the rest.

Don’t get me started on League of Legends. I played for one game and promptly logged off, knowing I would never be good enough. Even mobile games, while relaxing, aren’t really something to brag about. After that, I stopped playing video games for the rest of high school. In college, after getting a hand me down gaming laptop from my cousin, I impulsively started playing Valorant. Watching all my friends’ streams on Discord, I felt major FOMO and I wanted to have fun with them too. Yet again, I soon realized that my friends were too good for me to play with and I felt like I was only dragging them down.

After playing for several months, although still not good, I noticed that I was slowly improving. I started playing ranked games more often. Though not the best, I still enjoyed playing the game with my friends. Even though I whiff every shot and die every round, spending time with my friends and escaping everything going wrong with my life is enough to keep me glued to the screen. I’ve made new friends and memories through this horribly addictive game. While I may scream at my screen the majority of the time, (I think) I’m still enjoying it on the inside. I’m never going to be good at everything, or even anything — even if I keep practicing — but I’ll still keep trying my best to get better and hopefully find something I’m just better at.

I still haven’t found a game I’m good at, but that’s okay. I’m still here, still sucking away.

Tina Oh

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