rev0lver
Come On Die Young
So, a few months ago I did a bit of thinking about tournament play. When I started going to tournaments around October of last year, I was always focused on reaching that top spot and getting the prize. I tried as hard as I could, but during tournaments I would get so anxious about failure that I would always fuck up. I wanted a top placing so bad but just couldn't reach it. Let's look at my tournament placings during that year (just locals/regionals): 8bit tournament: 2nd to last, first salty battles: last, second salty battles: 2nd to last, first VSM tournament: 2nd to last.
Around January, I started to rethink things. Back in high school, my Psychology teacher showed us a TED talk about motivation, which is here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
I highly recommend that people watch it, as it involves broader economic and political implications, but if you don't have the time, it basically deals with extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation. Pink discusses a classic experiment which shows that on rudimentary tasks, extrinsic motivators (monetary incentives) work very well. However, when you go beyond rudimentary work, money WORSENS performance. Mortal Kombat, as in all competitive fighters, involves many aspects of high-level thinking: strategy, creativity, memory, and the ability to read an opponent. Since last year, my style of play has basically stayed the same. What changed was the way I approached the game. When I go to a tournament, I act as if the money/prize isn't even there. There should be no difference in how you play in a casual tournament vs how you play in a real tournament. The prize is a distraction, you should just play the game. So this year I went to 3 tournaments (excluding Winter Brawl because I just purely fucked up there lol), and this is what I got: Rage in the Kage: 2nd, my second VSM tournament: 4th, Flawless Victory: 9th.
tl;dr - Don't worry about money and prizes in tournaments, it will just make you do worse. Compete because you love the game and just love competing.
Around January, I started to rethink things. Back in high school, my Psychology teacher showed us a TED talk about motivation, which is here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
I highly recommend that people watch it, as it involves broader economic and political implications, but if you don't have the time, it basically deals with extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation. Pink discusses a classic experiment which shows that on rudimentary tasks, extrinsic motivators (monetary incentives) work very well. However, when you go beyond rudimentary work, money WORSENS performance. Mortal Kombat, as in all competitive fighters, involves many aspects of high-level thinking: strategy, creativity, memory, and the ability to read an opponent. Since last year, my style of play has basically stayed the same. What changed was the way I approached the game. When I go to a tournament, I act as if the money/prize isn't even there. There should be no difference in how you play in a casual tournament vs how you play in a real tournament. The prize is a distraction, you should just play the game. So this year I went to 3 tournaments (excluding Winter Brawl because I just purely fucked up there lol), and this is what I got: Rage in the Kage: 2nd, my second VSM tournament: 4th, Flawless Victory: 9th.
tl;dr - Don't worry about money and prizes in tournaments, it will just make you do worse. Compete because you love the game and just love competing.
