To the sufferers of gaming frustration

It's funny that I should start thinking about the idea for this post during a time when I feel like I have little touble in the way of gaming frustration. Nevertheless, you can be assured that I understand gaming anger probably better than most people, being myself an easily-frustrated person.

To better understand this issue, let's break it down and examine it piece by piece. What is gaming anger? It's the process of becoming upset, frustrated, or angry due to some unfortunate game-related occurrence. What kinds of occurrences could trigger frustration? The most common and easily acknowledged answer is pure game difficulty. And it's in this instance that you might hear stupid comments like "Wow!!!! Mario really doesn't want me to succeed here!" from the player. Why then, when we know that "it's just a game", do we take it so seriously it drives us to anger? "It's just a game" only causes me to get mad all the quicker. There's an evil little voice in my head that says, "It's just a game, so you should be the master of it!" I want to beat the game, not see it beat me! So I get mad when I can't beat something.

How can you combat your gaming anger? Though I didn't like the DS game Professor Layton and the Curious Village very much, I allowed it to teach me something worthwhile. When it comes to games, I am a perfectionist. Playing that game, I hated spending coins to unlock hints, because I felt like it tainted my perfect file. I came to understand that many games aren't meant to be easy, and so some will offer assistance. You can see that assistance as a slap in the face and then scream at it, or you can see it as part of the game and embrace it whether you chose to use it or not.

For the moment, I guess it seems I'm taking my own advice! Comments? Questions? Derogatory remarks? You know where the comment box is!