Like many other girls, I wasn’t encouraged to play video games growing up. My mom always had the mindset that video games were pointless time-sucking activities that caused violent thoughts in young boys, so I was never gifted a console (besides my 3DS and Wii U which were used exclusively for non-violent Nintendo games — the most “violent” being Super Smash Bros). Because of this, I didn’t spend much time gaming, especially not online. I never had access to servers where people fought each other in FPS-style games. Instead, I spent my time reading and writing, which are hobbies I still enjoy to this day. Unlike me, my boyfriend basically came out of the womb with a controller in his hands. Seeing as he’s been playing for such a long time, he’s gotten so good at many video games. Normally, I don’t have much of a desire to play what he’s playing. However, my feelings changed when Marvel Rivals came out.
Marvel Rivals is a first-person shooter game, where you play as a Marvel character of your choosing. Each character comes with their own “kit” (a set of special abilities) that you can trigger by pressing different buttons on the controller. You team up with four other players online, and you compete against the other team to be the first ones to reach the “point” (a glowing circle on the opposing team’s side of the arena). That’s the game from my understanding. I was never interested in Overwatch, which is apparently really similar to Marvel Rivals, but the familiar Marvel characters that I love caught my attention. I’d been watching my boyfriend play for about two weeks when I finally decided to ask if he could teach me. He said yes, and my gaming experience began.
For my first time playing, I decided to go with Starlord, since he’s one of my favorite characters in the MCU. My boyfriend put me in the practice range and explained some basic controls to me. Now, I’m not used to having a controller in my hands, so I was struggling just to get used to the names of each of the buttons. My boyfriend pulled up the kit menu (power descriptions for each button) for Starlord, and I was honestly overwhelmed by all of the options. Each button had a power aligned with it, and I was having a hard time remembering which was where. For a while, I practiced aiming at the robots and tried my best to remember what buttons I should press in which succession to deliver the best attack. After about 10 minutes of learning, my boyfriend took the controller and put me in a real game. I was so nervous, but I tried to remember what I could from my training. After a few seconds, I was loading into the spawn room with my new team. My hands were literally sweating. I know that no one in the game knows who I am in real life, but I still didn’t want them to judge me for the terrible performance I was about to give. 30 painstaking seconds passed by and the door in front of us opened. We were about to face the enemy team. I followed my team in their run forward and began shooting immediately when I saw an enemy.
I’ll spare you the details of my tragic gameplay. The point is that I panicked, and began pressing random buttons in hopes of shooting my targets from afar. My boyfriend did a good job of guiding me (I got turned around on the map) but I was a lost cause. After 12 deaths and revivals the game ended, and my team won! This was’t because of me, obviously, but I was happy for us. I did feel a bit bad that I contributed literally nothing, however. So, I went back to the training room to practice some new characters. I tried learning Wolverine and Scarlet Witch, but I felt the best playing Starlord because I like using in-game weapons. I played one more game with him but to no avail. I could not for the life of me remember what button did what, and there was so much happening on the screen that was distracting me. After the game ended, I felt pretty bad. I’m competitive by nature, so I take losses pretty seriously even if I’m still learning the game. I gave myself some time to relax, and then I watched my boyfriend play.
From this experience, I learned that I definitely prefer watching competitive games be played rather than playing them myself. Sure, the characters are from a fandom I love, but the actual gameplay itself is too difficult for me to learn. Maybe my gaming-free childhood stunted me for life, or I’m just not very good at quick thinking. Either way, I think I’m going to stick to non-competitive games such as Minecraft, or just watching Let’s Plays on Youtube.