During my first one and a half months of my works in my current workplace, there are two occurrences that lingers my mind, and uniquely, this doesn’t have anything to do with my professional gig.

The first thing is that given my location is quite near with an arcade with lots (and I do mean LOTS) of rhythm game cabinets, I play more arcade rhythm games (especially Maimai and Chunithm, but for the context of this writing, I’ll be focusing on Maimai), and with the nature of arcade games, you eventually would need to play with other people. And thank goodness for this, people that frequently plays Maimai are absolutely cracked (we talking about 13-15k rating, in which in Layman term, is very skilled and comparable to the professional scene, given the pro rating would be around 16k), and given Maimai is designed to encourage cooperative gameplay (in which 2 players simultaneously playing in one session would get more perks, more songs to play, etc), I have some instances in which I happened to play together with some skilled player in which having 14-15k rating, while my rating (in which around 5k around this writing), which eventually reflects on my skill level, couldn’t even slightly comparable with theirs.

However, the unique thing is that given the Maimai gameplay only consider the individual performances, so no matter if I paired with a pro or a newbie, my score (and theirs) would still only be judged from my performance only, without anyway for them to alter my result directly. Indeed, there is still a psychological barrier that went something like “damn this is a pro, if I play something basic while they played Re:Master 14+ and FC or even AP that I would look dumb as hell”, but still; it’s all inside my head, and if I can just enjoy game, I can overcame that and plays without any burdening thoughts.

The other thing is that I started to play Tetrio more, in which is a web-based modern Tetris client. I played Tetris since my early college days (or even some of my high school time as well), but I haven’t touched Tetrio for a while for some reason (I still plays some Jstris though, which is also a modern Tetris web client as well). However some friends of mine (in which also colleagues) play it, so I joined them and here’s the simplified reenactment of what happened;

😅: Wait, you guys played Tetrio too? Let me join!
😁: Sure sure, let me invite you and... Goddamnit you're level 200ish already!?

I realized one thing after that; in multiplayer Tetrio, skills mattered to your partner (or opponents) experience. You could easily overwhelm your opponents easily if you do advanced setups while they don’t do that, in which the game wouldn’t be really enjoyable for the opposing party after that.

Those two occurrences happened, albeit not simultaneously, happens in such a close time window, in which makes me think;

Why is that given the similar occurrence (a player facing more experienced player), the experience could be really different?

The answer actually already hiding in my writing; Maimai doesn’t allow the opposing player to infer your gameplay, but Tetrio do. In Maimai, you can’t expel additional notes or debuff the other player if you play better like in Guitar Hero 3 boss battles, and vice versa; in Tetrio battle, no matter if you plays better than your personal records, you would still prone to losing if you play against the player that better than you.

And to dig deeper; Maimai actually playable individually (and even there are some pros on doing so), but given the limited cabs amount in a socially setup place (i.e. an arcade), hence it’s quite common to see queues for people to play Maimai, so the game encourage you to play with a partner. And if you come alone? The only option to play with a partner is to join with someone to play. And the chance of that person to be a pro? It’s quite high.

While for Tetrio; it actually also have game modes that rewards individual performance too like 40L (which the player races to complete 40 lines in shortest time) and Blitz (which the player try to get highest score in 2 minutes). But in multiplayer, at least by default, you only able to play with multiplayer rule (in which you would win by inflicting damage to other people), hence the experience you get when you play multi.

And then you have it; why the experiences differs dramatically? Because their gameplay did so.

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I really love (hell, I adore) Maimai (and rhythm games in general) and Tetrio (and Tetris games in general, yes that includes the classic NES version), but their differing gameplay gives me both the two unique perspective of what the game works; one tends to go on merit system in which it purely only judge by your performance, and one tends to replicate some of the things in real life, in which people could alter your experience with their privilege.

But wait, what the hell do you mean “some”? Isn’t life supposed to be like that all the time?

Yes, I meant some. Yes, there are things that you don’t need to race and kill other people to succeed. And no, I don’t think that all things need to be raced to be #1. And yes, this is when the title in the parentheses kicks.

There are lots (and again, I mean LOTS) of things that could be altered by condition and lacks of privilege; your job opportunity could be easily decreased if you don’t have any inner connections, your economy could be easily influenced by the upper people in your corporate and the government no matter how much you worked, and in the bigger picture, the condition of the country you lived in could be easily influenced by the people you don’t know or even voted at. It’s similar to the Tetrio multis, in which it’s basically depends for which party have better skills (and luck too sometimes) on handling blocks and crafting setups.

But there are things that even though you think it closely depended on other people, actually it isn’t; for example, your personal skill progression, no matter if it’s about gaming, programming, or anything personal, mostly (almost entirely even) depends on your willing to learn, analogue to your Maimai score only depends on how well you read the notes and how well you tap, hold, and slide the screen and the buttons.

And that’s what people often mistaken, like I was during my early plays; lots of the times, that we’re under impression about what you’re supposed to do. And the constant misunderstanding of those would eventually shift and alter your end goal of the game. Instead of playing it to enjoy yourself, you play to please other people.

And to be honest, for those things that mostly depended on you, people thought doesn’t matter right? Remember that your life already altered by people in lots of aspects. Don’t let people alter your goal in the aspects they don’t.