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Sisyphean Snap

The perils of ranking in Marvel Snap.

I recently learned about german11, one of the most prolific online chess player and loser, a man who plays 140 plus games of chess a day, 40 plus hours a week, just to lose most of them. One must imagine Sisyphus happy with his 84% loss rate. What a dream, what a chad, what it would be like if I could be that happy with my loss rate at Marvel Snap.

I know I could be better, should be better. I hit Infinite rank two seasons ago, a testament to what I thought was skill and instead more likely was a bad meta. Early last month, I hit a roadblock at about rank 75, but wasn’t too worried then; I’d made most of my progress in the last week before. And then it was the last week. And I kept losing. And losing. And losing. I built muscle memory around bad tactics, snapping when I shouldn’t, playing games out I should’ve quit. I pushed the lever to keep playing. It makes sense when it’s sugar water, but this didn’t even feel fun; this felt masochist. I hated it. And I kept playing.

I ended the season at rank 67, lower than I started. I want to imagine a world where I’m happy with losing, where I don’t feel like I wasted hours of my life and instead just spent time enjoying myself. I want to imagine the game being enough for me. But this isn’t that game. Sisyphus hates this fucking boulder and hill.

By Nigel Faustino

Nigel Faustino writes about games, television, and internet culture, with bylines at Polygon. He lives in New York. Find him on Twitter @notfaustenough

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