14 DAY TRIAL // I was playing the Collectible Card Game based around the Game of Thrones universe when it dawned on me: I was no longer playing the game itself, I was actually playing the opponent.
This means that I understood the mechanics of the card game well enough and I had a bit of knowledge about the various cards and strategies to no longer be focused on their text, their attributes, or the core mechanics that used each of them.
I was now more focused on the player standing ahead of me, trying to decipher not text or meaning of words on paper, but how exactly he was thinking in order to adapt my own strategy and future actions and defeat him.
Something similar happens in most video game multiplayer experiences and becomes especially important when it comes to the strategy genre.
For me, first-person shooters are too fast and I rarely get the feeling that I can watch another player and start understanding what he might do and how I could counter his move.
But while playing both Company of Heroes 2 and Wargame AirLand Battle, my two current favorite multiplayer experiences, I constantly have moments when my mind forgets the core mechanics and my favorite strategies and only reacts to what my opponent is doing.
Other players seem to work the same way, which means that they are often actually ahead of me in the meta-game and are quickly able to defeat me.
But sometimes I watch as my every prediction about enemy moves becomes true and I can actually see how the ideas I believe he is basing his strategy on translate into action.
And I often don’t want to end those games, even if a win is almost guaranteed, because I know that next match the feeling of playing the opponent rather than the actual game might not return.