I shall start by linking to the recently finished Alias 3 contest thread.

I find it somewhat puzzling that on a website with a couple of thousand listed members, only EIGHT people bothered to try their hand at the contest. I mean ... competetive games built this frigging industry! When PONG exploded into the world's consciousness, it wasn't because it was the tale of a ball and it's epic struggle against the mighty bat empire. Nor was it because you could invest hours of your life customising your bat before taking it into a raid against the evil bat-overlord with 40 of your friends.

No, PONG was the simplest form of game. Mano á mano. 1 vs 1 combat, with no prize for second place.

Then, we got Space Invaders. Again, this was nothing more than a straightforward battle. And, the only reward for being good at it was to have your three letters at the top of the score table. No satisfactory conclusion, no epic weapon, nothing. Everybody who played the game ultimately died, and yet they kept coming back.

So, why does a contest on this site not whip the entire community into a frenzy? Competition is why you even play games. (You might be one of those weirdos who expounds the virtue of story and character development over gameplay, but you wouldn't be able to play those games if Space War hadn't gotten people into the idea that computers could do games, too.)

Microsoft cottoned onto the idea that gamers have an in-built competing mechanism when they came up with the whole gamerscore system. Interestingly, there are 3 schools of players when it comes to gamerpoints. There are the scorewhores, who will do whatever it takes to have a higher gamerscore. (A perfect example of this is in Galaga, where even though I have been top of my friends leaderboard since the game was released, I do NOT have the full 200 points, that can be earned by simply continuing from the level you last reached, that some of the people on my flist have.)

Then, at the other end, are the players who just play whatever, and don't honestly care about the score. And then, somewhere in the middle, are players like myself. I honestly apply no value to a person's gamerscore, but I ALWAYS look at their achievments. To me, certain achievments say infinitely more about a person than the figure attached to them can ever do. I know people with 5 digit scores who have them by virtue of playing every game ever released on the console!

Not sure where I am heading with this. I just have words in me that need to be released tonight, I guess.

I suppose I should just throw a general question out into the universe, in the hopes that it lands on those who chose not to compete. WHY?

Or rather, why not? I'm not saying you are wrong not to, even though it may sound that way. I am genuinely interested in knowing the motivations of any and all gamers, as part of my quest to one day the world's premier games designer. Really, why didn't you join in? What about the contest made you decide "I don't think I will bother?" I know there are some of you out there with skills, and some of you out there who will compete. I am just wondering why you didn't on this ocassion.

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Genj - February 23, 2007 (08:38 AM) I only jumped in near the end but frankly I wasn't that motivated due to the fact that the game didn't really appeal to me. Recently though I downloaded Guilty Gear X for PC since I'm without my DC or PS2 copies at school and couldn't stop playing. If we were competing with a game that really appealed to me, I'd probably play a lot. For other people I dunno what it is.