Do you consider yourself to be good at video games?

yeah. my mum says i'm amazing.

It kind of depends on the game. "Competent" is probably the best overall descriptor though.

I mainly play story based games and I play them for the story so I never cared about getting good, I play on normal and never really have any problems so I guess I'm good enough.

No, not at all.

I fight for leaderboard placings in games only very occasionally, but when I do it's because I can push into the top ten slots. That's still in service of enjoying the experience though, I would never be like that with a game that I didn't enjoy even if I was the most skilled player in the world. I look at it like this; they're video games, we call it playing for a reason.

On the average, yes.

I'd say I'm above average at most games.

Not really, I don't play much multiplayer or competitively in any way so no I am not really "good".

Depending on the game. In CoD4, Quake 3, and SOCOM 2 I was pretty damn amazing. Other than that, not much better than average in most games. Pretty bad in a lot of them, actually.

Yes, my tombstone will read "TheVeteran13 : Professional Gamesman"

I chortled to myself as I voted that I'm skilled then saw that if only I'd hit the option above I'd have been the only one saying they could go pro. I'd have been number one, the best, Chesney Hawkes! But damnit, now I'm just like the other 57%. A liar. =P

I put "no," but I probably should've said that I'm competent. I've never really played games to be good at them, though I think I might start trying with Dota 2.

I would just say I'm competent. However (although this is gonna sound like a backhanded brag.. ?) if I'm honest with myself and try to think of what sort of top percentage I'm part of, the number is probably much lower than I'd think. If I look at certain things I've done in games some of it is stuff the vast majority of other players haven't been able to do. Compared to the people I subconciously compare myself too though, I suck.

Competent is by far the best descriptor for me. There are some genres I'm great at, and some that I suck at, but overall it evens out.

I'm somewhere between competent and very skilled.

Depends on the genre. I'm competent in regards to most turn-based RPG's, MMO's, etc but find myself more skilled when considering FPS', TPS', Racing games, Action, Sports.

I'm probably slightly below average in most games, at least if I judge by multiplayer leaderboards. In FPSes I tend to gravitate towards the the middle of the score board. RTS games are probably my favorite genre, but there I don't stand a chance online, so I'm probably quite a bit below the curve there..

Broadly speaking, I guess I'm competent. I've always been oddly skilled at wrestling games, but other than that I vary between above average and poor.

No.

Except for racing sims. I'm good at those. But even in racing games, my standard difficulty setting is sim physics/all assists off/manual shift and AI set to easy. I set the AI to easy so I can pass them all in the first lap and never have to deal with them again for the remainder of the race. I will take racing game AI seriously when somebody writes some halfway decent code for it. All racing game AI sucks.

I'm gonna drop out of school and do speed runs for a living and get those max CPMs at 10 cents per viewer and become a god damn millionaire from vidgamez.

2pro4u

Nope, I play for the story like a movie, music genre was the only one I ever cared if I was good or not and considering I was a top 100 drummer in the world....I think I succeed

I'm quite good, yes. I used to play a shitton of TF2 (well over a thousand hours) and crush servers (like this, for example):

but I haven't played TF2 in close to a year.

I've also played several thousand hours of both DotA and HoN, and I'm closing in on 600 games of Dota 2. I think that if I got a team together and dropped everything else (i.e. work and school) and focused solely on practicing Dota for a couple years I could maybeeeeeeeee be a low-tier, entry-level pro. There are obviously many, many, dozens of thousands of players that are currently better than me, but I think I could hang if I had the time to devote. Maybe in another life.

EDIT: Oh, I guess I was also part of that 1% of the 1% that had Inferno Diablo on farm status before the 1.03 Inferno nerf, but that's more of a product of me playing Diablo II for several hours every day with astounding regularity between 2000 and 2011. I don't find it particularly impressive because it's a PVE game, though.

EDITEDIT: Oh, I guess I was in the top raiding guild on our WoW server during Cata and now Pandas, but I got pretty tired of the schedule pretty quickly so I didn't raid all that much. It became a job instead of just raiding to have fun, like it was when I was in a casual raiding guild during Vanilla and BC.

Yes. If I truly want to become good at playing a certain video game, I will. I'm above average at pretty much all multiplayer games, but I've done pretty well at the two competitive games I've dedicated myself to (Master league in StarCraft 2 and SSS in Persona 4 Arena being one of the top S. Labrys players in the world online). Of course, there's always people that are better than you. I feel as though if there actually was a scene for competitive gaming where I lived, I'd have more motivation to do better.

It also depends on the game. I tend to die a lot in open world games because I'm always too reckless, for example.

I wonder how many people are going to be subject to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Essentially, people who are highly skilled tend to believe other people also have this knowledge/ability, while those who less skilled tend to overestimate their ability. We're probably going to see a lot of middle answers.

I'm awful but good at Starcraft 2 and Dota 2

Specific kinds of games, sure. Good at all games? Hell no.

i could beat my flatmates at halo, but in matchmaking i couldn't stay above 30 out of 50.

i play games on the hardest settings, but it's mostly rpg's where it's about planning and learning the systems rather than skill. and i prefer pause combat and turn-based so i can take my time figuring out what to do.

i can't even play fighting games or rts's, too fast and too much going on.

If don't play a whole lot of competitive games anymore, but when I did I considered myself good. When I played Halo online a lot, I had like a 1.8 k/d.

I'm pretty good at most games i play, sure.

I am bad at videogames, there, I said it. Most of you people seem to have a high opinion of yourselves though.

I've never been "good" at any multiplayer games, but then again I very rarely play those kinds of games. I mostly play RPGs, and I have no idea what it means to be "good" or "bad" at those kinds of games.

I know everything there is to know about Baldur's Gate 2, so at least I'm kinda good at that game...?

But no, I always die a LOT more than the avarage player when gaming, and I straight up can't play RTS games because I'm just so fucking awful.

I'm competent enough to beat most games on the normal difficulty and I get a few kills in if ever I play multiplayer.

Things is, just the fact that you play games enough to hang out on a gaming forum on internet probably means that you're better than average at games purely through experience. It's sort of the problem with the question. What is just time investment/experience and what is actual real skill.

I used to be really good at Halo 3, but these days I'm just competent enough to finish pretty much anything on Normal and then move on. I could probably go for higher difficulties but I generally don't have as much fun as I do on Normal and I don't get that "sense of satisfaction" from beating games on their highest difficulties in most cases.

Just how does a thread full of people saying "yeah, I'm competent" come across as a thread full of people having a high opinion of themselves?

I'd say I'm more than competent. Either that or all my friends are terrible at video games, because that's the metric I'm judging by.

I am able to finish most current gen games on normal difficulty, but I'm terrible at multiplayer for anything.

I used to, but most of the games I've played lately I've had to bump it down to Easy at one point or another and I never used to have to do that. I also used to have at least a 3-1 W/L ratio every year on NBA 2K online but this year, for the first time, have a losing record.

Uncharted 1 / 2: Gameplay became annoying in both instances during the third act due to enemy changes, and plain too hard in the second.

Bioshock Infinite: Though to be fair to myself, I NEVER noticed that you could take zeppelins down manually. Had I known that, I likely would have beaten that final battle at least fairly easily on Normal.

Bioshock: I actually am only a couple hours into this game but I'm already totally done with it unless I can let myself switch to Easy. The combat is terrible; I'm shocked people love this game as much as they do.

I voted competent, because I still feel frustrated when I watch other people play games (not in a let me play way, just a why aren't you playing RIGHT way, haha) and that's a trait I think can only come from innately understanding how a given game works or just not enjoying video games at all, so I'll put myself in the former camp.

I miss the days of my 6:1 K/D ratio in SOCOM II, but they don't make games like SOCOM anymore.

I'm willing to put the time into getting good at certain games sure, wouldn't go pro though. The infrastructure for competitive gaming isn't there yet.

Yeah, the more I think it through and read the responses--the question is flawed. The biggest problem with my question is that we all tend to think about 'good' in the context of 'compared to others'--which usually is easiest to quantify in multiplayer games. But how do you measure being good at Journey or Proteus or Minecraft? I don't tend to play the multiplayer portion of games, so I don't often think about my experiences in a competitive way.

f this poll

"ONE GAME'S NOOB IS ANOTHER'S MASTER" - some developer

I'd say I'm competent overall. I'm average when it comes to pretty much every genre but two. Fighting games, and racing games.

I am proficient in fighting games, but I know quite a few people who are much stronger than me in my local scene. Still, I love that my non-fighting game playing friends believe that I am an exceptionally skilled player, even though I know I am nothing of the sort. In reality, I'm really just slightly above average. Which is actually pretty awesome considering that I was absolutely awful when I first started out. I had absolutely no talent for fighting games. It took me a particularly long time to learn fighting games 101, and even longer for the games to "click" for me. Despite playing these games for nearly five years, it was only a year ago when I finally "got" fighting game pressure. I am happy to say that I have grown exponentially since then. I'm just glad to know that I can go from zero to hero when I really apply myself.

As for racing games, I'm pretty bad. I am notoriously bad at racing games among my friends. Unless it's a kart racer, I usually do not place highly in these games. I would like to better myself in this genre, but I lack the passion for racing games. I fear that driving just isn't my thing. I simply am not interested.

I'm average in other genres. Though, I may have indirectly become stronger in other genres now since I last dabbled in them because of my time with fighting games. I would definitely say that fighting games have improved the quality and speed of my decision making.

I'm pretty good at video games guys. I'm not going to say I will beat you at the fighting games or the call of duties or the League of Legends or what have you, but I will probably hold my own. For single-player games, Eh. I play on normal most of the time and do fine.

I wouldn't say I'm the greatest or anything absurd like that, but I'm fairly competent with most games. Over the years, you eventually learn a somewhat universal skill set and language that can apply across genres. Hand eye coordination, macro and micro problem solving and tactical advancement are a few things you just get better at over time. Aside from that, It really just depends on the game. For instance, I almost always have a positive KD ratio when I'm playing COD, but I outright suck playing racing games against other people. With games like tactics ogre or Xcom EU, I'm pretty good at planning several steps in advance in case my plan goes to shit, but when I play a game like starcraft I'm absolutely terrible.

Hmmm, it's kind of like everything else in life.

I used to be but as I've noticed lately, I'm shit now. I honestly don't know what happened...as a teenager, games were my bitch :(

Scratch that, I totally know what happened. I play less and I almost never play any reflex intensive games anymore. I play like one shooter a year, tops.

I'm usually somewhere between skilled and competent. Only rarely am I bad at a game ( Guitar Hero and Rockband come to mind).

I'm pretty average at most games but I enjoy specialising in some skill-based ones and getting "good" at them. I'd say I'm pretty good at Smash Bros Melee and Brawl, played competitively for a while and fared OK; I put a lot of time into the Skate series and I find myself winning most online games I have on Skate 3. probably my best game is Rock Band, since I played a bunch of GH3 before it and got up to expert pretty fast, then since I play real life drums I play expert drums too. with games like rock band it's pretty easy to be above average, since I imagine the average player doesn't play Rock Band with a means to get really good at it.

as an aside, I have played a bunch of portal 2 single player and can beat that game in 2h 30mins pretty easily now. it's just representative of how much i've played it. there was one week where I played it every night in that week. I just love playing through that game

I'd say I'm pretty skilled. I'm not some sort of genius, mind you, but 9/10, I can get the job done.

This. Better at some games then others.

I'm not good. I'm...

I don't think I'm good or bad. When I play a new game I'm usually near the bottom half of a leaderboard for the most of my first few games. After I spend a few hours with the game I usually hover around middle of the pack with a few good games scattered in and abouts. When I get really into a game and play it all the time -like I do with TF2 for a few months every six months to a year- I'm almost always in the top three to four spots each game. I have never considered the idea of "going pro" as I have never liked a game enough to want to dedicate myself that much to it.

As for non competitive games, I think I'm pretty good too. I have been playing games long enough that I'm really good at figuring out how games are designed to be played so it makes learning and getting good at them easy for me. I actually hate it though. I find I can rarely ever just enjoy a game for what it is and no matter how hard I try I fall into the mindset of doing nothing but min/maxing and thinking through every aspect of a game by approaching it in the mindset of "What would I do here if I was a game designer".

Take that how ya will.