Can you only be REALLY good at a game with no life?

Azureth

Azureth

Supreme [H]ardness
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Often, whenever you see someone show amazing and crazy skill people will say something like "That guy has no life", do you think that is true for most cases?
 
Yes, because I have a wife, kid, business, and mortgage and I am average on my best days! :D
 
I wouldn't go as far as to say they have no life, but they do have an abundant amount of free time. And the fact is, people choose their own way to spend it. I like to read and look through telescopes, and they like to play. It's all about one's interest.
 
There is a number of different factors that effect this,
1. You can't count out peoples natural abilities,
2. Your definition of crazy skill is not someone elses.
3. There is always someone better then that person what does that make him, even less of a life?
4. Amount of games played doesn't equal ones skill.
5. In any case my answer is no, however i can say people have no life when they have recorded a large amount of games. For example i have played a lot of halo, if you add up my total games i have spent a month of my life playing nothing but halo 24hrs a day. Even with that amount of playing i have seen people with 4-6x my games, and they might not even be better then me...
 
If you're better than someone, they're a scrub.

If someone is better than you, they have no life.
 
the "no life" comment doesn't hold up like it used to (10 years ago).

here's my reasoning:

Fundamental game concepts have been around for a while time now. People that started with the original starcraft and earlier (dune II), have a very firm grasp on the rts genre and have noticed that they can pick up a game and dominate other rts'ers without the extensive background. My personal game of choice has always been fps'. I can aim and circle strafe with the best of them, so it's easy to pick up any of them and be "above average". Trust me, I'm lucky to get 4-6 hours a week of gaming... I have a life. The same can be said about every other genre as well. Fundamentally, there isn't too much that is "new". So of course there are going to be a number of people that can just pick it up and dominate.
 
Imbroglio said:
the "no life" comment doesn't hold up like it used to (10 years ago).

here's my reasoning:

Fundamental game concepts have been around for a while time now. People that started with the original starcraft and earlier (dune II), have a very firm grasp on the rts genre and have noticed that they can pick up a game and dominate other rts'ers without the extensive background. My personal game of choice has always been fps'. I can aim and circle strafe with the best of them, so it's easy to pick up any of them and be "above average". Trust me, I'm lucky to get 4-6 hours a week of gaming... I have a life. The same can be said about every other genre as well. Fundamentally, there isn't too much that is "new". So of course there are going to be a number of people that can just pick it up and dominate.
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Hmm I would say that is pretty true!

The fundamentals are roughly the same in each genre, then it just takes a week of casual playing to get familiar with all of the various weapons/units and maps.
 
Really really good -> They might have a life
Elite level good -> They don't have a life


In any sport (Look at Olympic athletes), to be elite level, you really have to have no other life. Natural talent isn't going to cut it. You have eat and sleep between practicing.

There comes a point in gaming where natural talent won't put you at the top if you aren't also practicing. The other guy might not have as slightly less natural talent, but he makes up for it in practice. You're going to loose.


So the real question is.... how good is he? If he's in the top 10 of a high profile game, then he has played FPS's without a life. Top 50? If it's a high profile game, there's a 99% he doesn't have a life. He seems to always get #1 for kills for each round in random games? Maybe a 90% chance that he has no life.

The probability of "no life" per level of skill can be described in an exponential graph.
 
Mister E said:
Perfect makes practice.
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I believe it is "Practice makes Perfect." :D

Fundamentals. Every game has them, and it doesn't really change too much between each game. I mean, I finally just started playing Left 4 Dead 2 (never played the first one). My friend has been playing L4D and L4D2 for quite some time, and I always score/do better then he does. Why? Because I've been playing shooter games since I was 6 (Turok ftw ;)), and only recently started getting into games. Best example I can think of, also L4D is too easy :p.
 
As much as hollywood and made for TV specials would have you believe it's all natural gift, the fact is the more time in, the better you'll become.

Anyone who is really good, and I mean really good, not scrub wasting away his buddies on the couch good, has put a lot of time in the game.
 
I'm sure there's some people who are naturally good at games. However I think the more common thing is the "skilled" people in games are often the ones who have spent far more time playing them. Whether they have a life or not is debatable :p But most have certainly spent a lot of time playing.

Everytime I've played against someone who is clearly vastly superior to me, it always comes down to the fact they've spent a lot more time playing. My friend and I bought COD4 at the same time and he was way better than me, I thought he was skilled... then I found out he had played over 1000 hours in counter strike. Likewise most people I've known who have been good at games I've discovered they've played in the thousands of hours on other games of the same genre.

I'm yet to meet a person who has been vastly superior to me at a game whilst having less "practice" at gaming.
 
Azureth said:
Often, whenever you see someone show amazing and crazy skill people will say something like "That guy has no life", do you think that is true for most cases?
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I'm sure some of these kids that play Halo tournaments with mad skills have a lot of friends. Some people are just better at games than others. Who cares?
 
In my experience this is how it goes:

Skill > "having a life"

I used to be a hardcore gamer but stopped after CS Source came out. Now I do linux/unix work and work on other projects. It makes me feel better then getting the top kill/death ratio and it makes money.

Still people sometime say I "dont have a life" but I do more then most since I currently live in a frat house, so the few times a day im not buried in my monitors I go out and have some fun.

Its all about balance.
 
I've been playing FPS games since Wolfenstein 3D. I played Quake3 and Counter-strike throughout high-school and college, when I had a bunch of free time. I reached what I call a "semi-pro" status. I could compete with the top 25 players (I actually placed ~24th at Quakecon 2000). I used to travel to huge LAN parties in Texas all the time. I must've played some days for more than 6 hours, trying to perfect a certain map or technique or weapon.

A lot of that experience carries over to every FPS, but not all of it as each game differs in goals/strategies. But the basic stuff translates very well.

I consider myself an above-average player. I can best casual players pretty easily, and can compete with most other players. Right now, I'm playing BF:BC2, and I usually finish in the top 3 on my team, but it took some time to figure out the best strategies in each map, and the best class to play for each scenario.

As far the people "who have no life" goes, you cannot compete with them. I'm not saying they don't have a life, but they probably have more free time than you and play a lot more than you.

To me, there are 3 classes of gamers:

1. Casual gamers
These gamers play a few hours a week at most, whenever they have time. They don't really get into every aspect of the game(s) they play. They are just trying to have some fun whenever they can.

2. Hardcore gamers
These gamers play about an hour a day, maybe more. They have a select few games, or even just one, that they play. They are into every aspect of the game and know most of the in-and-outs, if not all of them. They may read forums and/or other competitive information on the internet. They might be in a clan, which competes online, and/or goes to LAN parties on occasion.

3. Professional gamers
These gamers play up to 12 hours a day. They focus on one game only (for the most part). They master every aspect of that game. They are deeply involved in the professional gaming community. They are in a clan that plays in tournaments for money.

There are HUGE skill gaps between each of class of gamer, but the biggest gap is between the hardcore and professional gamers. If you think you are good at a game, try playing against a professional player. I'd be surprised if you were able to kill them or score any points.
 
I like the above post & list. I only play COD4. Have been just about every day, and I usually play 2-3 hours or more. I'm usually on top of the list also. Used to be the same back in the late 90s in Team Fortress, and through the early 2000s in TFC and Unreal Tournament.

I still get out and party though. Not as much as I used to since COD4 came out though LOL.
 
#1
My first time playing NFS underground on an XBOX against one of my bosses (The whole department got treated to Karaoke, and turned out the room you rent had more than just a karaoke machine). I pretty much dominated him the first couple of times, then we switched controllers so i got his car and we raced again, same result. Note that it was the first time i've held an actual console.

#2
I haven't played Counterstrike in two years, then one day i passed an internet cafe with a bunch of kids screaming. I shrugged and thought 'what the heck...' and went in. There was another older guy that rented a PC and i sat next to him. First couple of rounds we got creamed (They have perfect aim, i can tell you that)... they never scored again until our time ended an hour later (it was 2 vs 5). There's more to FPS than just aiming.

#3
I worked as a programmer for another company, i'm known as the killjoy that never cracks a joke. Gamers aren't the only ones that have no life. I.T. programmers can get stir crazy too. I got dragged one day to one of the groups hangouts and got invited to play a game with them. They laughed when they realized i had brought my headset with me (I used it to play music at the office .hack, enya, beethoven, orchestras, etc.). They stopped laughing when i wiped them out without reloading.

#4
New online FPS came out. I tried it out. First game, i picked a random gun and got killed while i was working out the basic game mechanics. Second game, i was working out how the gun works. Third game, i got accused of hacking.


You don't need to play constantly to be good. The same basic principles apply to every FPS, the only variance being the games pacing. You can go without for years, and then jump in and still dominate against regular players.
 
I felt really bad because I've been playing CSS for about 5+ years and I loaded up the AVP demo to check out the game. The first multiplayer I jumped into I took a moment to figure out my weapons and how to make my predator guy turn invisible. After that I proceeded to rape the shit out of everyone in the game for about 20min. I felt bad about it and eased up but I already started hearing the hacking blah blah statements and quit playing.

Do I not have a life? I wish. I work 8+ hours a day 6 days a week, but I do get maybe 10-20 hours of gaming in a week when I can.
 
itomwisp said:
There is a number of different factors that effect this,
1. You can't count out peoples natural abilities,
2. Your definition of crazy skill is not someone elses.
3. There is always someone better then that person what does that make him, even less of a life?
4. Amount of games played doesn't equal ones skill.
5. In any case my answer is no, however i can say people have no life when they have recorded a large amount of games. For example i have played a lot of halo, if you add up my total games i have spent a month of my life playing nothing but halo 24hrs a day. Even with that amount of playing i have seen people with 4-6x my games, and they might not even be better then me...
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this ^^

To me it's 45% experience, experience really helps a LOT, for example i was able to get good scores and decent kill-ratio from day one in BC2 because i played bf2 / bf2142 / bf1942 in the past, most of my random opponents have never played an older BF game in their life !!

35% is talent / skill I mean if a guy manages to play better than someone who really has no life ( or lots of free time ) and devotes countless of hours in the same game that's really saying something

Then it's 20% setup / cfg / know how, you can play all the hours you want, you can be the most talented fps player ever, but you'll never reach your true potential if you don't

1) get a smooth monitor, 120hz LCDs or old school crts help a lot, hell i wouldn't even play a turn based game on 60hz :D :p 2) get the just right balance of friction / speed in your mousing surface, too slippery and you will overshoot during those critical moments, too much fricrion and you won't be able to do micro adjustments in long range or even firing a good placed rocket at your opponent's feet

3) turn off mouse acceleration, this is VITAL 4) get rid of negative acceleration if you are a low sens player, really important too 5) get a good pair of headphones so you can pinpoint enemies by their sounds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwgkFLvNElY too bad many players overlook sound :( it would make my L4D coop sessions so much easier if every one of my team mates had an x-fi with cmss3d properly configured and a decent pair of mid-fi cans, or atleast regular onboard and a pair with excellent soundstage like audiotechnica AD700

6) having a smooth framerate helps too, especially when playing source games in 66tick rate servers of example, you can't really drop below 66fps or you will get choke, nor you can play with cl_cmdrate 30 and cl_updaterate 20, those settings were NOT intended for high tickrate servers http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_Networking#Optimizations players with properly configured network settings low pings and high framerates will always have an advantage in online games over casual players who don't care about this stuff
 
I know its odd, but I get better scores when I play on a lower resolution, like 1024x768 vs 1920x1200.
 
last year, i had no life and went to CEVO and TWL, XPL and shit for COD4, so i was 1337, now, i have a life, and im still pwntastic at cod4 :)
 
SoFGR said:
this ^^

To me it's 45% experience, experience really helps a LOT, for example i was able to get good scores and decent kill-ratio from day one in BC2 because i played bf2 / bf2142 / bf1942 in the past, most of my random opponents have never played an older BF game in their life !!

35% is talent / skill I mean if a guy manages to play better than someone who really has no life ( or lots of free time ) and devotes countless of hours in the same game that's really saying something

Then it's 20% setup / cfg / know how, you can play all the hours you want, you can be the most talented fps player ever, but you'll never reach your true potential if you don't

1) get a smooth monitor, 120hz LCDs or old school crts help a lot, hell i wouldn't even play a turn based game on 60hz :D :p 2) get the just right balance of friction / speed in your mousing surface, too slippery and you will overshoot during those critical moments, too much fricrion and you won't be able to do micro adjustments in long range or even firing a good placed rocket at your opponent's feet

3) turn off mouse acceleration, this is VITAL 4) get rid of negative acceleration if you are a low sens player, really important too 5) get a good pair of headphones so you can pinpoint enemies by their sounds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwgkFLvNElY too bad many players overlook sound :( it would make my L4D coop sessions so much easier if every one of my team mates had an x-fi with cmss3d properly configured and a decent pair of mid-fi cans, or atleast regular onboard and a pair with excellent soundstage like audiotechnica AD700

6) having a smooth framerate helps too, especially when playing source games in 66tick rate servers of example, you can't really drop below 66fps or you will get choke, nor you can play with cl_cmdrate 30 and cl_updaterate 20, those settings were NOT intended for high tickrate servers http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_Networking#Optimizations players with properly configured network settings low pings and high framerates will always have an advantage in online games over casual players who don't care about this stuff
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Personally I think its more like 20% config, 10% talent and 70% "practice" :p
 
i don't know about competitive level gaming, but some people are just good at stuff and some people just suck at stuff.

The whole "gawd, get a life" line is a tired way of saying "I am a sore loser and will be an asshole to save face since, ironically, this crap means a lot to me."
 
JinxyBoi said:
i don't know about competitive level gaming, but some people are just good at stuff and some people just suck at stuff.

The whole "gawd, get a life" line is a tired way of saying "I am a sore loser and will be an asshole to save face since, ironically, this crap means a lot to me."
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Even before you get to the "competitive" level I think it all comes down to practice instead of natural ability. Natural ability only gets you so far, not far enough to be getting top of the podium in a public server. I'd be surprised if anyone who is consistently in the top 3 or 4 of a public 32 man server in an FPS game has less than several hundred hours game time in some form of FPS.

The "get a life thing" is obviously just a way of saying "you're ruining my fun". Having a "life" is a relative term. If you have 20 hours free in a week and spend it gaming, many would consider it wasted time. Personally I consider myself to have no life because once I take into account study, work, shopping, eating and sleeping I only have a couple of "free" hours a week, and I usually spend those on my computer... and I dont even have a girlfriend/wife... that's my definition of not having a life :p
 
All Asians are genetically encoded to be awesome at any video game. So whenever I get killed by someone based off of skill alone, I just make that assumption and feel good about myself. ;)
 
who cares how good you are at a game?

don't you just play for fun?

I can barely be 1:1 at CS Source, and often go 1.5-2:1 at TF2 but I dont' really care about my ratios that much
 
kpedge said:
Yes, because I have a wife, kid, business, and mortgage and I am average on my best days! :D
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Same here, minus the kid. I'm average on my good days, but if I had none of the above I'd probably game a lot more and as a result be a lot better at it. :)
 
Tudz said:
Even before you get to the "competitive" level I think it all comes down to practice instead of natural ability. Natural ability only gets you so far, not far enough to be getting top of the podium in a public server.
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Think of it this way. Natural ability means you don't have to play seriously and just play for fun :D No need for the hundreds of hours you need to keep up :D
 
Sly said:
Think of it this way. Natural ability means you don't have to play seriously and just play for fun :D No need for the hundreds of hours you need to keep up :D
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I think natural ability helps when playing friends at a game none of you have played very much, it wont get you too far online ;)

Actually I just thought of an interesting "study" at Uni. I'm in a club of about 40 people and we bought in a gaming computer for a few weeks and were playing racing games with a wheel. In the beginning there were massive differences between the "naturally skilled" and those who were not. But after a couple of weeks when everyone had a bit of practice, the lap times really levelled out and it became pretty competitive and close. After a couple of weeks more, the dudes at the top of our in house rankings were simply those who had spent the most time playing, compared to in the beginning when it was just a couple of "naturally skilled" people on top.

Then we got rid of the computer because no one was getting any work done :p But yeah, you get the idea.
 
there is natural ability and there is developed skill. the people without the natural ability have to play for hours daily to develop the skill. It is about learning your controls, the maps, choke points, strategies and so forth. Really natural skill will not help with the latter.
 
jiminator said:
there is natural ability and there is developed skill. the people without the natural ability have to play for hours daily to develop the skill. It is about learning your controls, the maps, choke points, strategies and so forth. Really natural skill will not help with the latter.
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To be one of the best at a game it requires both aptitude and practice though. You can still be really good at a game with maybe a lot of one and a little of the other, but to really break through to the next level it takes both. It's hard to say how much of your time that would take up, but I guess it depends on the game.
 
I have a life and I still manage to top the scoreboards in MW2 and almost any FPS I play. It's a burden but someone's gotta do it.
 
Parmenides said:
Really really good -> They might have a life
Elite level good -> They don't have a life


In any sport (Look at Olympic athletes), to be elite level, you really have to have no other life. Natural talent isn't going to cut it. You have eat and sleep between practicing.

There comes a point in gaming where natural talent won't put you at the top if you aren't also practicing. The other guy might not have as slightly less natural talent, but he makes up for it in practice. You're going to loose. .
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Rubbish.

Tell your fairy tell theory to a few select Olympians as pointed out below.


Usain Bolt - Breaking all the short sprint records and makes the others look as if they are standing still - natural ability.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usain_bolt

Michael Phelps - 8 gold medals in swimming? That's natural ability.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_phelps

Dean Karnazes - Ran 30 miles in a druken frustration after not running for 14 years, and now is considered the most amazing runner perhaps of all time. Ran a 200 mile relay marathon by himself and finished 8th, Ran 360 miles without sleeping, Ran 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days. Ran a marathon through Death Valley, and in -40 below 0 temps. Feats that would kill an ordinary man.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/ultraman.html



Anyone who says natural talent can be caught soley by hard work is dillusional. If the guy with natural talent trains half as much as you they'll crush you. We had a guy on our high school track team who won all four State of Missouri gold track event medals (the maxiumum events you could compete in) all four years. He was the football star as well. The coaches couldn't even get him to stick around for practice. He goofed off all the time and never took anything serious. He didn't do well in school and as far as I know never made anything of that amazing raw talent. I have a friend who picks up a controller at an xbox 360 LAN party and bests every single person at our party and the entire online player list as well the second match after not playing xbox for a year. He stopped attending and quit playing at our monthly xbox LANs about a year ago. At the time he attended regularly he could beat five us average players in 1 on 5 matches in Halo3 or Gears of War. We intially thought he had to be cheating or have a modified controller or something, but we made him switch consoles and he could do it on any console with any controller. Any twitch game he played he absolutely excelled at. His name is kdogsage on Xbox 360. Look him up, play with him once. See if you don't think that's some unnatural skill, practice if you like and try it again. You'll just embarress yourself. For example, some of us have clocked in 10 days of time on MW2, and the second match and there after he beat us all, and not just beat, but doubled the score of anyone in the match online or local. Everybody in the room came over and watched him play after only a few matches and just shook their head in amasement. The guy has got some precision motor skills, perception and fantastic hand eye coordination.

I take the reverse opinion and say practice can only get you so far. The real natural talent people are going to always be superior when they take some time to practice.
 
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I really don't think so. For people who play a ton, there are some benefits like knowing the maps in and out, learning tricks and gameplay nuances versus those of us with constraints on our time. Some people just have a natural ability to be awesome.

Reflexes, manual dexterity, better perception and other internal abilities some folks just have. A few of the people I game with just dominate in everything they play from day one, and they are far from having no life and doing nothing but gaming.
 
Tudz said:
I think natural ability helps when playing friends at a game none of you have played very much, it wont get you too far online ;)

Actually I just thought of an interesting "study" at Uni. I'm in a club of about 40 people and we bought in a gaming computer for a few weeks and were playing racing games with a wheel. In the beginning there were massive differences between the "naturally skilled" and those who were not. But after a couple of weeks when everyone had a bit of practice, the lap times really levelled out and it became pretty competitive and close. After a couple of weeks more, the dudes at the top of our in house rankings were simply those who had spent the most time playing, compared to in the beginning when it was just a couple of "naturally skilled" people on top.

Then we got rid of the computer because no one was getting any work done :p But yeah, you get the idea.
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Pretty much the whole point. You don't have to obsessively play the game for hundreds of hours to reach the level of skill you want, regardless of the game's learning curve. They can just pop into a new game and start having fun, with minimal time going through the 'cannon fodder' phase ;)

Me: <Sidestraffing my heli into narrow buildings with two lane roads and shooting rockets into windows>
Clanmate 1: You said he didn't know how to pilot!
Clanmate 2: Well, he sucked yesterday.

If you're constantly aiming for #1, you've got a real challenge, but if you're willing to settle for the top 5, the skill requirement drops significantly. Check it out yourself. Next time you play, try looking at the scoreboard at the end of the game, at any one game, there're usually only 3 or 4 players with good scores, the rest are cannon fodder.

Kahnvex said:
I really don't think so. For people who play a ton, there are some benefits like knowing the maps in and out, learning tricks and gameplay nuances versus those of us with constraints on our time.
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There are enough commonalities between games that you can apply the same principles to all of them. Those nuances are too subtle to have a significant effect, and if they're significant enough, you'll pick up on them quickly anyway.

"Where the heck did that shot come from?!" runs to the same area two more times until he figures it out "Hey! That's a good spot!" integrates the new spot into his path and works out a countermeasure route.




If you don't have the talent to learn fast, you can join a multi gaming clan. They usually have practices that explains the mechanics to the newbies. When they try out a new game or map, they go into a private game and starts exploring. Sniper specialists will focus on spots they think will help, vehicle specialists will work out exactly how the terrain-vehicle interaction works, infantry will work out the safest routes and every little cover. After a few rounds, they'll have every glitch, polygon breakup, graphical anomalies, etc. 16 heads are better than one.
 
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