I went to a couple Halo 2 tournaments when I was younger. This is when I discovered that I’m not that good at the game.

I participated in a Nintendo held MK8 tourney. It was that Play nintendo thing or somethin

Never joined a computer game competition. :( Won a few pool and poker tourneys tho 😬

Went to a Halo CE LAN tournament in the 4th grade. Got placed on a random team and my team sucked ass and I had to carry them each game. We lost the first round of games 2 matches out of 3. Went to a Halo 4 tournament my Senior year in high school and beat a bunch of little kids in a FFA tournament. I won $60 out of it. I wanted to be a Starcraft pro when that game dominated esports but there was literally zero chance of that happening because of how godly the pros are at the game.

While anything that someone wins can be a competition, I think something is only really "competitive" when you see time and investment made by someone being measured against the time and effort of someone else. It carries an actual sense of danger with it. Obviously, the loser of most competitions isn't going to be maimed or killed these days, but the risk of putting hours, days, or weeks into something only to have all of your efforts fall apart really adds a sting to losing that doesn't happen in casual play. And the risk of being stung is what I think makes something actually competitive. I've gone to a couple of LANs for CS:GO. I was on a mix of globals and main players against a bunch of MGs and novas. You can imagine the results. I don't think I'd call it competitive because while I might have felt pretty shitty to lose to those people, there wasn't any realistic possibility of that happening. I also went to a small guilty gear tournament earlier this year, but Sony decided to release an update that made my stick timeout repeatedly an hour beforehand. I probably wouldn't have won anyway, but it kinda sucked to be stuck playing on a pad and being unable to do anything but spam fireballs and pokes. I tend to be a big believer in the idea that externalizing failure really prevents growth as a player, but that was definitely a circumstance that made it hard for me not to externalize it in a way that sort of took the sting out of losing. Sometimes I wonder if gave up and just needed to "want it more," but eh, what can you do? Beating a bunch of random people in a competition can make for enjoyable experiences. I recently "won" a trivia night at a local bar despite getting the fewest correct answers because everyone else bet all their points on the final round. I "won" a team pinball tournament because I was on a team with someone else that was really good. On both occasions, I fully expected to lose, so losing wouldn't have stung, but the fact that I won was hilarious. Both occasions have made for great little anecdotes, but I'm not fooled for one second into thinking of either of them as being "competitive." As for making a career out of it? That was a thought that I had for maybe a day or two when I started to rapidly improve at CS and imagined that my highlight moments would eventually become the norm, but it didn't take long for me to realize that the curve starts to becomes exponential at a certain point. What's more, unless you're good enough to be in the absolute highest percentile of performance, which requires not only skill, but also luck and good career decisions. Being just below the highest percentile of performance means that you're going to put more effort to make less money than you could have made if you had simply learned a trade, you're going to find yourself hating what used to be a form of enjoyment, and you're going to set yourself up for a much less stable future than you could have had with a more traditional form of employment.

I think it was a smash bros tournament for melee and I made it to semifinals but got knocked out by some guy using Kirby... I’m not even salty about it it was a really close match and he won fair and square. Granted I was angry at the time because I was slightly drunk but that’s not the point

My only competitive experience was a Pokémon gaming contest a few years back. I got sent up against a guy who got to either the top 4 or the top 8 (out of 500 players). In the first round.

I tried to enter an Overwatch tournament once. The salt and sweat in the air blinded me before I could register.

Honestly, there's no better rush in gaming than offline competitive. The hype crowd, intense gaming, all the new people, being side-by-side with your opponent. My first experience was when I was an early teen at a local cyber cafe. It was a pretty tight knit group in general, but there would be tournaments every week. I attended the Warcraft 3 almost every time. I got my first ever win there, and I won two or three times in about a year... Really miss that place. Since then I've entered WoW arena tournaments, Team Fortress tournaments, Starcraft tournaments and a few other games. But my best experience comes from fighting games - and most importantly TEKKEN. That game has given me experiences in gaming I'll never get from anywhere ever again. I'd like to have made a career out of it, but it's not even nearly as simple as you might think.

COD MW2.

I wanted to go so bad!! I haven’t had the chance to do any competitive gaming, I’ve done a few Pokémon TCG tournaments though and those were amazing!

I had fun with competitive BO2. I never understood making a career out of it though. I feel like I would get bored pretty quick. I used to be really into it, but now it's pretty much unplayable because of mods.

The only competitive gaming experience that I had was in early 2000s. Counter Strike game was booming and a few of my friends played competitively in 4 vs 4 format. I played a little and on a good day I was above average. The competition was in winter, it was early morning on a weekend, in addition to all this I had a hangover!!! My friends called me up, and asked me to join their team because one of their team members got sick. I took a few aspirin pills with beer and went to compete! I sucked, dragged my team so we finished 7th out of 30 something teams.

When I was a teen, my local arcade would host tekken tournaments. Pretty intense.

Played one GB match in Gears of War with the worst team available in Finland. Never again.

Halo wars match against my best friends cousin at a local gamestop days before the game came out. Our match lasted over 1.5 hours. I won and learned not to choose covenant as warthog rushing would've been much quicker.

Idk, I might've fought in the Halo 3 ranked playlist.

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