Facing the Fear

I don't much care for rankings. In the games that I've played that have leaderboards it's so frustrating to see your rank go down because of a loss. When I've reached the point where I'm at a reasonably decent level the anxiety of losing gradually becomes stronger with every game I play. It reaches the point where the game just ceases to be fun.

As it turns out, the fear of failure isn't that uncommon. Loss aversion is a very real tendency. The specter of doing something wrong, of failing, of maligning the pristine whiteness of your canvas with uninspired gobs of paint - it paralyzes us. It stops us from creating, from exploring the possibilities of the form. One thing I've learned, a large part of Mastery hinges on gaining enough familiarity with our field that we aren't intimidated by it anymore.

Take Hitman, for instance. In the beginning it seemed like I'd always trip the guards. Later, when I figured out approximately how wide the vision cones of NPC's were, they ceased to be such annoying challenges. Now I'm confident in doing maneuvers like the following:

Here's the thing about mastery, though - the mountains you think you've climbed, turns out they're actually just plateaus.

T_T