Actually YES I would argue exactly that.  I would bet that for a large contingent of those who play Chess the fun is in the besting of a worthy opponent and no longer derived from "the game" of Chess anymore.  Some video gamers don't want to play games at such a level, we just want to blow off some steam and ENJOY ourselves at the end of busy/stressful day/week, not immerse ourselves in yet another JOB of finding (or as Brad said "scouting" out) the best strats / build-orders so that we don't god forbid lose a game or worse get told (quite uncerimoniously I might add) to "...go fucking learn-to-play before you come back online nooooooob!    "

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an allowed/appreciated seperation of the "competitive" and "fun/casual" gamer anymore.  It seems we've all been lumped into one large cesspool.......now those of us who would rather just "play for fun" (yes......dammit.....there is such a thing......FUN!) can't do so for fear of being harassed.  Public online play is a cesspool of harassment and e-peen competition.  Noob-stomping has become a sport all of its own and really shows off the worst in our society as a whole. 

Games are made with LESS attention to actual gameplay but MORE attention to gimmicks and game-mechanics that can attract and addict players.  Those same mechanics make the allure of cheating almost unbearable.  I swear "cheating" in games has become it's own sport too.  It's like cheaters ignore us non-cheaters now and look to play against other cheaters to see who's cheat is better?  Look at COD with it's "perks" and "killstreaks".  I've been playing FPS's since before the first COD even existed and I have to say COD4 and the introduction of those "perks" and "killstreaks" ruined the franchise for me.  I haven't bought a COD-game since and I never will.  The interesting thing is.......their sales figures are the best they've ever been.  So where is the disconnect then?  The problem is me......the "for-fun-only" gamer is a dying/dead breed.  You translate that into society as a whole.  Nothing is done "for-fun-only" anymore.......everything MUST have a goal. 

Thanks a lot COD-generation........you owe me my "casual-gaming-fun".......where can I go to collect?  

the Monk

You should never make a blanket statement like this. People play games for different reasons, and you certainly don't have a direct line to all their thoughts.

If you carefully reread what I wrote, you will see that I made no claims about reasons for playing. I will repeat what I wrote: Every gamer gets enjoyment out of getting better at a game. This is a universal trait shared by every gamer.

This truism is not, however, a reason for playing a game. I agree with you that everyone may have different reasons for playing and I can't speak for everyone in that regard. For example, a player may have fun getting better at Starcraft but nevertheless does not like to play Starcraft because he is bad at the game and does not like to lose.

It is NOT a truism. You have no clue what other gamers think, what traits they have, nothing. You don't get to decide what is true and what is false simply because you say so. You cannot possibly have anything backing up your statement about a universal trait about gamers. You think you have some sort of "in" and you do not. I don't need to carefully read your blanket statement to know that.

I don't agree with you.

You mentioned 'worthy'. What kind of reasons would push a person to seek a 'worthy' opponent? One reason is that worthy opponents provide a player with an opportunity to improve their play. I hardly believe that players would waste their time finding 'worthy' opponents just to beat them. Instead players seek worthy opponents because they love chess as a game and want to get better at it.

Why are you so concerned about your online record or what people say to you? If you enjoy playing the game "for fun" as you say, then these things shouldn't matter to you. I don't see any reason why you can't blow off steam while playing games like Starcraft or CoD. Just because a lot of gamers play competitively in those games doesn't mean you have to.

You raise several peripheral points here that don't quite touch on the topic at hand. All I will say is that if there is no goal then there is no purpose and if there is no purpose then there is no meaning.

So far you haven't backed up your argument with anything other than rhetoric and empty claims. Until you do, there is nothing to discuss.

The first game where I scouted was WOW... with scouting I went from losing to 3 levels below to beating 3 levels above. (thats for both other players and mobs btw) as well is vastly improving in other aspects of the game (wealth generation, xp generation rate, etc). I looked back to a lot of games and found how much "better" I was with that application... but I wasn't playing the game anymore. I would spend much more time on forums scouting then I would actually playing, it was a tedious chore but the alternatives were either not to play, or be curb stomped when I do (which is not fun). And curb stomping those that don't scout is a hollow and empty victory that brings me no satisfaction.

Chess isn't a fun game, chess is very much a build order game, scouting and meta-game is how you win, painstaking research is how you win. You study and study and then you go take a test on what you studied... If I am going to study, I might as well study something useful and get a degree and some scientific knowledge out of it. Games for me should be about blowing off steam, this means a relaxing romp that does not require you to study for it.

Throw in re-balancing patches into the mix (which requires that you restudy everything from scratch)

As for "enjoy getting better as you play more"... Playing more hours to gain more levels isn't getting better, its just doing work to avoid punishment (ganking), playing a game is not half as effective as scouting to getting "better" (simply because no one person can come up with all strategies and knowledge, I invent original and useful ones myself, but there are so many great tactics out there).

The best multiplayer game I played was unreal tournament gold edition. it is skill based, no levels, no vastly unbalanced classes which you have to research... you pick a purely cosmetic skin and after that you and your identical clones duke it out in fast paced action. For everything else, there is single player.

ummm.....taltamir....I think you're quoting the wrong dude there....I didn't say the above....marlowwe did.   

I am not the one making the claim; you are. This means you need to back up your claim, not me.

I love it when someone gets Nesrie all aggressive, great drama! Also she's right if you make a claim like that you have to back it up. We all have opinions but no one can say anything is 'fact' without evidence, and then a lot of logic to show how that evidence means anything.

Well John, you can play me in multiplayer and we can team up in the begining for about 2000 turns and then, once all AI's are crippled, we can have a cold war that eminate into a series of 30 turn wars followed by peace and then war again. Volcanoes will litter the earth! Massive armies will roam seeking total destruction and I will unleash the Titans on your lands.

Now that is multiplayer!

Wow, seriously? This whole post is just a bunch of unfair generalizations and stereotyping. You really think we all grew up with $5000 computers? No one I grew up with had one and none of us even have one now. We grew up with the N64 and Playstation, but I guess those are probably too newfangled and complicated for Generation X to use (see, I can make unfair generalizations too ).

You want to guess how many characters were in those five sentences? 384. I guess those last 244 just typed themselves, because I don't have an attention span past 140 characters. And guess what? I was never given Rittalin.

You know what the average age of a gamer is? In 2008, it was 35, which is a birth year of 1973. The average gamer is from Gen X, not Gen Y. In 2007 the average age of a video game developer was apparently 31-35. You should be blaming yourselves for the sorry state of online multiplayer. But I'm sure it's much easier to pass the blame on to someone else.

Generation Y certainly isn't perfect, but neither is any other generation. You can't blame us for every problem, especially when you use a bunch of unfair and untrue generalizations to stereotype us.

Who is forcing you to go on forums and read up on a game? Why don't you just play the game and have fun for what it is? On one hand you don't like losing because it's not fun but at the same time you don`t want to learn and get better because it takes too much time or is "tedious". If that's the case, fine, don't play. But don't say that people who want to win aren't having fun or that the game isn't enjoyable. Throughout this entire thread I have explained how, by getting better at a game, people can have fun with the winning mindset that is so often derided here. Draginol was right, it is a player problem and that problem is with you.

Well WOW is complicated enough that you pretty much do need to go online and read about how to effectively play your class if you want to participate in the end game. But the actual time it takes to do this is not very long, so saying that your spending more time on the forums then playing the game is a pretty gross exageration. To be a good player you might have to spend an hour reading about and understanding the details of your class, but then your done. You don't need to back and do it again until they massively change your class again in another year. If your spending more time then that scouting then your doing it because you want to and not because you need to.

The existence of PvP.

I explained exactly why it is and isn't applicable to various games. Any game with an XP factor? you are not getting better you are just getting an unfair advantage, and games with massive sprawling unbalanced class types which are CONSTANTLY tweaked for balance is the same.

Studying for a game like it was an exam isn't learning to get better.

no you didn't, you just claimed it to be fact. And my point is that you aren't getting better at the game, you are getting better at meta-game and in exploiting inherent imbalanced in an overly complicated and unbalanced system.

pfft, about at level 30 you must go to contested areas if you want to continue playing. This is when the gankers get you. Unless you are playing a PvP server, then its level 1.