Opinion: Avoiding anger when you fail in a game isn't "losing twice”
It’s not wrong to feel stress and frustration with video games, but it’s more complicated than Ninja seems to think
Image from Epic Games
This past week, affluent Fortnite streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins has added to his list of viral and controversial statements online. While he hasn’t been much of a social media genius in the past, including questionable reasons for not streaming alongside women and a lack of understanding about the physical challenges of sports, his recent words have more concerning implications of skill learning and mental health.
According to Ninja, “The phrase “it’s just a game” is such a weak mindset. You are ok with what happened, losing, imperfection of a craft. When you stop getting angry after losing, you’ve lost twice. There’s always something to learn, and always room for improvement, never settle.” Another Twitter user also shared a video of him making this statement verbally, in a more hostile tone of voice that would honestly just make me not want to talk to him at a party.
While I’m definitely not the first or only person to hold disdain for Ninja, this instance is particularly frustrating given how much anger haunts gaming as a hobby.
To start on a personal note, I’ve enjoyed video games my whole life, but as a child and a teenager I was plenty quick to become visibly anger and frustration, but was hardly due to gaming itself. Simply put, it was a symptom of several other anxiety and stress issues, taking years of therapy and self-reflection to improve. While anger is certainly a natural emotion in many cases, Ninja’s stance feels ignorant to the degree of influence that rage can have over one’s life, and his encouragement is inherently antithetical to improving one’s relationship with their emotions.
Beyond mental health, the idea of its improving your performance fundamentally ignores the effects that occur with stress and productivity. He isn’t exactly wrong to suggest that you need to push yourself, but there’s a concept in psychology called the Yerkes-Dodson Curve that better explains how to do it effectively. Too little stress will cause you to be unmotivated, while too much stress will cause mistakes and poor retention.
From this lens, raw anger at losing a video game is not going to help you get better. Whether you’re a casual or a pro player who wants to improve, the real goal is to hit the window in-between too much stress and too little stress. Essentially, moderation is the key, something that many streamers fail to emphasize.
Skill aside, it’s also worth mentioning that rage includes a performance element that’s quite unique to Ninja’s profession. For a lot of people, seeing someone grow furious to the point of punching holes in drywall is considered funny and fulfilling, and there are rage compilations across YouTube with immense viewer counts to prove it. Unhealthy as it may be for his mental health, anger on stream can add an entertainment value for him that doesn’t apply to the majority of any game’s player base, and shows a separate lack of self-awareness in how atypical his relationship with video games can be compared to others.
Even ignoring all this and taking his skill argument at its word, the logic behind it feels even narrower in scope. Not a lot of us care about getting better at gaming anyway, since most people who play video games are casual players. Streamers and eSports athletes get lots of attention online, but the majority of people aren’t those kinds of players, and don’t require exceptional skills, making Ninja’s skill improvement method even more unnecessary. It’s certainly fun to succeed in a hobby, but success is incredibly relative, and hardly mandatory to enjoy oneself.
At the end of the day, Ninja is just straight-up wrong, as Fortnite and anything else you play is just a game. This is not to say anger is an unnatural emotion; from high stakes to direct harassment, there are countless valid reasons to be visibly or audibly frustrated while enjoying this hobby. But this encouragement of anger for the sake of self-improvement is nothing short of unhealthy, and disappointing to hear from someone with such a large platform.