Play Matt: Are Competitive Men a Board Gaming Blight?

Can we move on to discuss whether Matt ever thought he would write the sentence " I hope this isn't my vagina essay"?

Yes, definitely... just leaning away silently and deciding to play out the game as quickly and unobjectionably as possible as a coping strategy. I have been there on stuff like that as I don't have a super confrontational personality.

That would have been one and done if I was treated like that. Put the shit down, the game's over.

Monday meltdown!

I’m not participating here because my opinions on this are probably even more inflammatory to the easily jostled and tender feelings of aggrieved white boys. Gaming has a serious white boy problem- gaming has largely been -assumed- to be by, for, and about white boys for too long. When diversity knocks on the door of the clubhouse, they pitch their little white boy fits and shout “leave the politics out of this!”...which is entitled white make privilege at its worst. Easy to say that when you aren’t the one impacted by white boy homogenization.

As for competitiveness, I ain’t got time for that shit. If I wind up playing with some ultra-competitive would-be alpha male...I just laugh it off because it’s pathetic to be so competitive at an activity where the only stakes are to be able to say “I won a game at a social event”. Like I tell my son, play to win but also play to have fun. Fun > winning, no exceptions. I usually have more fun losing games, TBH.

One of the worst experiences I ever had was playing War on Terror. Super squishy rules, absolutely not serious at all. I mean, the bad guy for the round wears a ski mask. I was playing with some good friends (which included my friend’s 12 year old son) and a guy that we called Fred Fredburger because we didn’t know his real name but he was always at this game meetup. Typical middle age, single white boy. Probably divorced or never in a relationship. Some kind of rules issue came up and Fred Fredburger was disadvantaged by it- it basically put him out of winning. He starts frantically flipping through the rules and stands up and starts YELLING at this 12 year old...with his dad at the table. It’s all about how it’s not fair, the kid did this and he didn’t know that he couldn’t do that, we need to relay the last couple of turns because he should be winning, etc. etc. etc. The kid’s dad is really low key so I took up for him. I said “you need to chill the fuck out and walk away from this table right now”. The guy was red, but he did exactly what I said to do and he never spoke to any of us again.

This middle aged white boy was willing to scream at a child in public because winning was so important to him.

Anyway, y’all carry on.

Sounds like being a sore loser. I’m kind of in the win with honor camp — which is just winning and not being pissy when you are getting beat.

I hate losing but it doesn’t bother me...if that makes any sense. I just mean I do my best to win, but also can be excited/impressed when someone else wins. It’s supposed to be fun.

If you are seeking validation from winning board games, there are bigger problems afoot.

I guess some people just don't get enough validation from other parts of their lives? I don't get why they'd look towards casual amusement for it, especially if it leads to groups kicking them out.

I actually like losing. Losing leaves me with ideas for what to try next time. Winning is nice and all, but I'm fine either way. What I really love is competition. Fighting is fun! Trying to outwit/outmaneuver people is fun! Interaction is the soul of play. It's even better when your opponents are actually willing to play again with you afterwards.

Confusing hyper-competitive with healthy-competitive is like confusing carbon-monoxide with dihydrogen-monoxide.

Both end with the same word.
One is toxic and one is sustaining.

Just finished reading the original article, Matt's article, and this thread, though it sounds like I missed out on some deleted posts that might have lowered my opinion of some FAT:ties.

The topic of the original article is excellent, and seriously worth discussion here. The original article is thought-provoking, but I feel it wanders off-topic at times. For example, quarterbacking is generally only an issue in a co-op game, where winning is a very different experience than winning in a more conventional one-on-one or multiplayer competition. Likewise, the paragraph on impatience misses that sometimes a very competitive player will play very slowly because they selfishly value their ability to win over the entertainment value for the overall group. Someone mentioned this upthread, but it deserves to be repeated.

Matt's article goes a little more off-topic. Playing for money is not a good example of toxic competitiveness because the stakes are actually changing the nature of the game, imposing a personal and literal cost upon a loser. But I do agree with the final point that competitiveness is less of a problem than selfishness.

And yet competitiveness should be considered a potential problem worth discussing. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with playing to win, as long as the play stays within the boundaries of good sportsmanship. But too many authority figures continue to reinforce the idea of winning at any cost. Maybe that makes sense in the context of professional sports, where serious money is being spent on salaries, endorsements, etc, but it shouldn't be present when people are simply playing a boardgame for the theoretical reason of fun.

But maybe my problem is that I don't really understand competitiveness. I often push myself hard to do my best at work and at the gym, but I don't give a goddamn shit if I am lifting more or less than anybody else. When I play a boardgame, I enjoy the play of the game, and the interaction with my fellow players. It's nice if I win, and I play for the win, but it's only a slight increase in my overall enjoyment. My all-time favorite game is Vampire: the Eternal Struggle (formerly known as Jyhad), and yet I played and lost on a weekly basis for a year before I finally won a game. And I kept playing because I liked the people I played with and the game itself was extremely engaging. Rich setting, neat art, great game design, and strategic deck design coupled with very tactical play.

There have been psych studies that have drawn a link between winning and a testosterone spike in male subjects. Testosterone has acquired somewhat of a negative reputation in recent decades, but on a medical level, testosterone level is positively correlated in men with libido, mood, and physical strength. This testosterone spike can come with directly winning a competition or even if you are just a sports fan and your team won. I think this spike is a factor in certain forms of toxic masculinity, but it's comprehensible how someone might compete harder in a subconscious desire to get another spike.

The remnants of my old Jyhad group resurrected our weekly game in recent months, because a new company got the rights to reprint old cards and publish new ones. I quit that group several years ago, in part, because there was one very competitive and obnoxious player. He was a sore loser who would sometimes rage quit in the middle of a game, except for the times when he was instead a very ungracious winner. I took him aside one time and directly asked him if he could try to be a more pleasant player for the sake of the rest of the group, and he flatly told me that he couldn't because of his PTSD from the invasion of Iraq.

But now he is back and playing Jyhad again, with a much better handle on his emotions. He is rusty at the game right now, so obnoxious winning hasn't been an issue. But he has significantly improved at his ability to gracefully lose a game, which is crucial in any multi-player game. He will even sometimes offer very helpful advice to less experienced players during a game. I still think that he might be too competitive and is just doing a better job at hiding it. Maybe I could get him to try a co-op game sometime.

That reminds me of something. We are all assuming that only competitive men are a problem, but I used to play Jyhad with a woman who was painfully competitive. She was an average quality player, and I don't mean that in a dismissive way, just that she was in the middle of the pack in our local metagame. She played really hard, and was somewhat insufferable when she won. But it was worse when she was losing, because she seemed to take a loss as a direct threat to her self-esteem.

One time at a local sealed deck tournament, she got stuck between myself and a great player. I'm not a great player, but I'm very experienced and often difficult to eliminate from the game. To make matters worse, four of her vampires were out of play because she was contesting two with me and two with the other guy. Mid-game, she broke down into literal tears. Not because we were being mean to her, but because she was so frustrated. A few years later, she broke up with her boyfriend and stopped playing Jyhad. Shortly after that, I noticed her at another table at the local game shop, playing The Hobbit (Knizia) with some other group. I did a double take because she wasn't tense and unhappy, she was relaxed, happy, and laughing. I was happy for her, because she finally discovered the joy of letting go of competitiveness and simply enjoying the game.

Although I certainly don't forgive them, guys that lose their patience and pop a gasket are not the same thing as guys that step into the room with overt plans to emotionally intimidate opponents, and then declare that it's a fair strategy. The former is a personal shortcoming in a heated moment, the latter a calculated use of anti-social behavior to press an advantage in a situation where the only real positive feedback is the submission of their victims. Both are unsavory, the second is calculated.

At times, the latter can rise to criminal behavior, where the pertpetrator immediately claims oppression and discrimination when confronted over their actions. They hide behind a cloak of victimhood, as if they've just been misundersttod. This is rare in-person (common on the net) but it does occur. On one occasion I took the step of calling the police after someone threatened another player with violence in the parking lot. As one might expect, the troublemaker became more agreeable to backing down in a big hurry when assault charges were on the table. "I was just kidding! You're going to arrest me over a game?"

Like it or not, there is a physical aspect to this where men have an advantage. Men that have had the advantage of the benefit of the doubt all their lives seem more willing to press their luck, at least in my experience.

This is all about socialisation. When you are really young, for both boys and girls, play is about learning to cooperate (even if you compete in the play) and dominating behaviour can get you along way. Boys and girls learn to develop different strategies for that.

For adolescent men and women, most social interaction is awkward. They all have to learn to adapt to new standards of behaviour and it doesn't make it easier if you are mixed with adults. So they experiment with types of behaviour. Never mind the chemicals rushing through their bodies. Not for nothing 15-25 is the age where young men are most criminal and violent. This is not something 'of these times'.

I hope that in a decade, or two, there will be enough female players so we can discuss their toxic forms of behaviour too.

What it comes down to is that other players need to teach youngsters how to play. Set boundaries, give feedback. That means sometimes taking a step back from playing the game, and winning the metagame.

You are right that women are rarely in that position now, which is why I think it will not become a common topic for discussion in the near future.

But women in all-women groups have toxic ways of exercising power too. Not so much through physical intimidation but there are processes of social exclusion, gossip and shaming that work just as effectively to police behaviour in all-women groups.

One of the advantages of having mixed gaming groups is that both these power structures are less effective and toxic behaviour is less socially rewarding.

In some groups, one person outside the demographic (think also race and sexual orientation) will already alter the dynamics. Sometimes it won't and the experience for that person could be very unpleasant.