Mental Strategy

Mental Strategy #27: Apologizing For Errors..

    Ok. This one I bet some of you saw coming. When I read a post on Battle.Net hearing about someone apologizing for his error and being treated as a hero. Me, I wrote 2 nice articles and was treated like a bitch for months.(I hate swearing). Anyways, the purpose of this mental strategy is coming from two different points of view. Your playing a team game, and you made an error; this strategy will tell you the best way to approach telling your team about your error. The other point of view; is that your the teammate and how you should react to his error that he made.(No swearing is not the correct answer.) So, thus begins Mental Strategy #27: Apologizing For Errors..

    Everyone in life makes mistakes, correct? In Starcraft, everyone makes twice as many. Let us assume that you and your team were going to do a triple rush on Brown. Instead you decide to tech-up to prepare yourself for later in the game. This ends up costing your team the successful kill of brown. It puts you in a decent position but hurts your partner's positions in the game. Your partners probably won't be as happy as "Santa Claus" on Christmas Day, they'll probably yell at you for your mistake or if they act properly they won't! Apologize for your error and tell them what you did. Hopefully if these people have enough sense they'll understand your logic and you'll continue up the tree. Remember, a team that works together will beat a team in shambles. The mentality that your team should maintain is that what you did could end up helping them more then hurting them. If you end up losing the game because of this simple error quietly tell them that it is just a game and it's not a matter of life and death. If it was a matter of life and death I wouldn't be playing SC. However, because it's a game for fun. Always remember that! It'll save you some games and some headaches.

    Now, let us assume that you are not the one that made the mistake but your partner did. What you need to do is console him gently talking about the problem and keeping him in the best of spirits. Even though he might of made a mistake now, he might not later. You never know. You always want to keep you and your team in a good mood, even if that means sacrificing yourself and something of your own. It's important to understand that you and your partners are a team. You need to do all of your motions as one. Apologizing for your errors is one of the most simple things you and your team can do but it is also one of the most necessary.

    The only errors that you need to apologize for are not necessarily just run in the games that you play in Starcraft. The errors you can create could also come through Battle.Net. If someone tells you to create a game and you forget to create it for 10-15 minutes but then you do finally create it be sure to apologize about it. Tell them what happened, tell them why it took you so long and apologize. Act civil. The more civil of a person you act the better of a person most people will generally take to you as a better person to play with. True if they can beat you a lot too, then they'd also like you in a different way! However, remember that errors always do occur in Starcraft and everywhere you go. Just make up for your mistakes and apologize. Hopefully they'll take it the right way and appreciate you admiting to your mistakes. Or in my lucky biast case I just got nailed into a coffin too quick. Anyways, apologizing is the way to go and I felt a lot better for doing it. Though I'm sorry the rest of our community didn't feel the same way.

    In Conclusion, Apologizing in a game, Apologizing on Battle.Net are two great ways to make friends. It's more on the order of being a civil person and making life more enjoyable for you and everyone on Battle.Net

-SpaceDominator