there's this one Daigo quote I can't be arsed to dig up so I'll paraphrase: instead of focusing on winning, make continual improvement the goal. Focus on what you did better than last time, try to identify mistakes and treat learning from them as the real victory condition.

recommend reading David Sirlin's book Playing to Win to get a deeper dive into that kind of mindset and common pitfalls. The book focuses on 2D fighting games, but the lessons apply to ALL competitive games. It's free online: https://www.sirlin.net/ptw

For shooters (halo series in this case) that are team based, yeah. For solo/free-for-all for a moment and then i think about how i could have done things differently or how i was bested

when watching the replay from my enemies POV after i die, i an in awe and honestly admire them for their skill

unless they use or the noob combo or vehicles, i have way less tolerance for that

You know how Kauffman did humor, where the real punchline isn't the joke, but your reaction to it?

Try seeing games like that. Yes youre trying to win, but that objective is just a vehicle for the real objective of having fun. See if you can pull weird shit and win with it. There was a pro StarCraft player who played like this; I forget their name. Basically, find the weird shit that shouldn't work, and find ways to make it work, instead of standard sensible builds/loadouts/strategies. See if thats more fun on balance. Certainly makes the world weirder for everyone around you.

I struggle with the same thing, I play online card games and it's very easy to get super tilted since it's heavily luck-based by nature. I don't like feeling like I've wasted my time when I lose, I don't like feeling like a failure when I lose because I consider myself a good player.

I often wonder why it winds me up so much. It might be that I put too much value into my performance, or it might be because there aren't a huge amount of things in my life that feel like they're in my control - and when I lose in a game, it's like "fuck, I can't even do this" and I lash out.

Point is, you're not alone comrade. I've considered giving up these games altogether because they feel like poison for my mental health, but I believe that the anger is almost certainly coming from somewhere else. It's not the games.

This is like the opposite of your usual heated gamer moment.

I get it, though. With me, I feel like my mentality is that losing at a game makes it feel less fun in a way. I've had moments of playing multiplayer FPSes, and if I had an off-day where I struggled to get frags or do anything productive for my team, I'd get this sense of blues and feel that I'm wasting my time doing something that should not feel like the waste of time that it's feeling like. I feel like it should be fun, and it should take my mind off of any stress, but it stops being less about the fun and more about stress at that point.

This usually just gets me to "ragequit," which might not be the most appropriate terminology, though.

Oh me too - mine seems to stem from my anxiety and a deep fear that I'm not good enough or not trying hard enough or something. Totally irrational, but I get locked in to those thought patterns and it's hard to get out.

Does this also apply to other contests? Sports? Trivia? Some people experience competition in general intensely.