My gaming tilt experience

written 2025-07-24

I'm a competitive gamer, and I love competitive gaming but it also gives me much pain. It's been bad enough to make me question whether competitive gaming is really good for me.

Tilt is a state of mind that happens to me mostly when I lose games in certain ways. It's very unpleasant and makes me play worse, leading to more tilt. Sometimes it also makes me more want to play, hoping that a win will un-tilt me. And that's not entirely unreasonable, since usually nothing else really will. Taking a break can make my tilt subside partly but not completely.

There are a few different types of losses that tilt me.

Rating thresholds

When I've been over a rating threshold for a long time or very far over it, I feel like I'm entitled to it, like I should never go back below. The first time I get to 1300 elo I think it's a peak, but when I've been over it for a dozen games or been to 1350, I feel like I must genuinely be a 1300 elo. When I first get up to 1390, I feel like I'm about to ascend. If I then fall all the way down to below 1300, I get tilted even if none of the individual losses are tilting.

A statistic is my "fall depth", which is the amount I'm currently below my highest previous rating. One time in AoE 2 I was tilted because I'd fallen from 1599 to 1457, but looking at a graph of my rating over time I saw my maximum fall depth had been 147, and that made me feel a little better.

This can happen in games without rating systems too. In Cobalt Core (a singleplayer roguelike) I once got a bit tilted because I thought I was at the skill level where I could usually win on hardest, and then I lost several in a row.

Not understanding why I lost

Strategy games are intellectual. I mean, so are action games, but strategy games more so. Playing them is science, making and testing theories about what moves are good in what positions. When you lose, it indicates your theory is wrong, and if it's something I thought I knew for sure, that upsets me because I'm losing knowledge.

When I get tilted from this cause, reviewing the replay and figuring out why I lost fixes it, though I'm often too upset to do that immediately.

Also, sometimes I get tilted from this cause even if I won, if it was much closer than I thought it should've been, or if I feel like I was losing and only won because of a blunder.

Throwing

Losing from a winning position. It feels like winning and then having it snatched out of my grasp. And it makes me nervous the next time I think I'm winning.

This only hurts if I knew I was winning at the time. If I didn't, finding out later helps because it feels like I won a portion of the game, and gives me a clear idea of what to do better next time.

Losing to blunders

In Prismata, losing because I miscounted the amount of chill that can be used and got my Centurion breached, or because I forgot I needed to buy an Engineer to keep a Tesla Coil powered, or tried to set up a big purchase next turn only to find myself one gold short. This also makes me paranoid about it happening the next few games.

These are especially tiling in pure (turn-based) strategy games like Prismata, because I feel this stuff isn't the point of the game.

Making mistakes that I feel are beneath me

This overlaps with blunders, and all the examples come from AoE: idling TC or getting housed in dark age, failing a boar lure, forgetting to build barracks in time, etc. With these, it's not just that they're blunders, it's that they happen very early in the game which I've practiced a lot and is very easy to play well compared to the rest of the game. I'm 1500 elo for god's sake, I should be above fucking up the dark age like this.

Sometimes these tilt me even if I win the game.

Losing to players much worse than me

Like rating thresholds, this is about entitlement.

Losing too many games in a row

Similar to throwing, this very affects my confidence, I start assuming I'm losing all the time when things aren't going exactly how I want, and I start resigning earlier. And my memory is short in this way, if I've lost 4 games in a row, I feel like I've forgotten how to win.

Prismata in particular

Prismata is in some ways extra tilting because matches are short, which means I play a lot of them quickly. Losing one 30-minute game that had some back and forth isn't so bad, but getting out-strategized 10 times in 30 minutes... that's tilting. It takes away all my confidence and makes me start thinking I must be losing any time the opponent does something different from me.

Not tilting: unfair losses

This might be surprising, but losing for out-of-game reasons, such as losing internet connection, or blatantly due to bad luck, do *not* tilt me. They're very upsetting of course, but they don't inflict *tilt*, the special mental state that makes me play worse, because they aren't my fault.

Not tilting: being taunted

Surprisingly, being taunted about my losses doesn't hurt and can even help. There was a time I was tilted in Prismata, I lost vs someone like 6 times in a row and then they typed in chat "MORE FREELO PLZ". That lightened the mood.

Being taunted in toxic ways doesn't lighten the mood of course, but it shifts some of my anger from myself to them.