High Scores And Egos: There’s Always A Bigger Doodle


‘Bloop bloop bloop’.

‘GRUMBLEGRUMBLEGRUMBLE’

‘PEW-PEW-PEW’

BOOM.

‘Bloop bloop bloop’

‘POOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo’

——–

My wife is a psychologist. One day she made me take a personality test and the results surprised her. She thought she had me pegged — but she was wrong.

“Why do you have to be so competitive,” she always says — or screams — usually after I’ve launched Settlers of Catan on its arse because someone refused to trade wheat for wood. Apparently when I was younger everyone had to pretend to let me win at Monopoly or I would literally start shoving monopoly dollars down my throat in protest.

But I’m not competitive. That’s where my significant other is completely wrong. And that’s why the test I took surprised her.

Apparently I have absolutely no competitive urges. None-whatsoever. The only reason I care whether I win or lose, and the only reason I flip tables in protest is ego. Fragile, precious little ego. I have to win at all costs, because if I don’t… well, that is completely at odds with my own silly idea of myself being the absolute best at whatever I turn my hand to. Because if I’m not the best, what does that say about me?

It’s completely pathetic, but I just can’t help it. I’m a self-worther. It’s the worst.

——–

‘Bloop bloop bloop’

‘GRUMBLEGRUMBLEGRUMBLE’

It feels as though the ‘high-score’ is back. I suppose it never really went away, but now it’s really back. High scores on Xbox LIVE, high scores on Game Center, high scores on bloody Edmus. This means I can enjoy video games on a level I haven’t since high scores sort of went away — but it also means that I can hate them, and that — once again — video games have the strange capacity to make me feel a bit sad.

Nowadays because I am a human adult, I’ve learned to suppress my ‘competitive’ urges, but they hang just beneath the surface. It can be seen in the all-too affable way I admit defeat. The robotic manner in which I shake hands after a contest. The smile that reads as a grimace. Tantrums have been replaced with a solemn determination. I have to win. I must do everything in my power to win. When I lose I just clench my stomach and swallow it down. Then agonise over it later.

Doodle Jump. It goes…

‘Bloop bloop bloop’.

‘GRUMBLEGRUMBLEGRUMBLE’

‘PEW-PEW-PEW’

BOOM.

‘Bloop bloop bloop’

I know this because I quickly realised that to succeed at Doodle Jump, I would need to wear ear phones, and I would have to be aware of the audio cues in order to anticipate my actions. When I jump I go ‘bloop bloop bloop’. When I hear the ‘GRUMBLEGRUMBLEGRUMBLE’ there is a bad guy and I must immediately ‘PEW-PEW-PEW’ so I can hear the BOOM. Only then can I continue about my normal, everyday ‘Bloop bloop bloop’ business.

——–

Doodle Jump was a game that taught me a harsh, harsh lesson. It taught me that no matter how good you think you are at something, there is most likely someone out there who is better than you at that thing.

I had heard this lesson before and scoffed at it. In high school my teacher said, “no matter how good you think you are at writing, there will always be someone better than you”. I said that sounded like loser talk.

“Someone has to be the best at a thing, why can’t that person be me?”

That was what I said to myself when my brother in-law first handed me his iPhone with Doodle Jump installed on it. I quickly ‘Bloop bloop blooped’ my way to 30,000, that was enough to beat my brother in-law’s best score. A month later I bit the bullet and picked up my own iPhone. Mainly so I could play Doodle Jump all the time.

All of my friends had Doodle Jump and we all played. My skills evolved quickly. I learned techniques and internalised them. Tilt as little as possible, pre-shoot and pre-shoot fast. Doodle Jump had patterns — they became increasingly difficult the higher I went, but ultimately it was a cycle I could memorise and perfect.

Friends got left by the wayside. My closest competitor had a score of 70,000, my scores were now exceeding 120,000. There was nothing I couldn’t anticipate, nothing I couldn’t manage. Soon Doodle Jump became a kind of Zen meditation, a way for me to focus my own steely resolve. If I fell, if I died, it was simply because I wasn’t focused enough. Doodle Jump became a pure exercise in core mental strength.

——–

Incredibly, as I played, I could feel my brain finding reasons to fail.

‘There’s a bit of glare on the iPhone screen Mark… why don’t you look at that —

‘POOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo’. That’s the noise Doodle Jump makes when you fall to your… DEATH.

“You can feel your wrist start to ache, can’t you Mark…”

‘POOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo’. DEATH.

I would go into solitude. I’d close my bedroom door, turn off all the lights.

‘Bloop bloop bloop’

‘GRUMBLEGRUMBLEGRUMBLE’

‘PEW-PEW-PEW’

BOOM.

‘Bloop bloop bloop’

Then one day I beat my highest score. I’ll never forget it.

‘Bloop bloop bloop’

30,000. Feeling comfortable.

‘GRUMBLEGRUMBLEGRUMBLE’

‘PEW-PEW-PEW’

BOOM.

And then…

‘Bloop bloop bloop’

100,000 and I am zen. I’ve been here before. I simply try to breathe and empty my mind. The minute you become conscious of your movements at this level, you will fall. You just have to trust in your muscle memory. And move as little as possible.

150,000 and I am no longer in control of myself. My heart beat is racing like PEW-PEW-PEW and there is an intense pressure in my chest. My stomach is rotating like GRUMBLEGRUMBLEGRUMBLE and all the while I’m bloop bloop blooping as the numbers continue to rise.

My hand is shaking uncontrollably. How much longer can I last? Is that a bit of glare on my iPhone screen?

‘POOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo’

——-

182,000. I feel like a Golden God. I have surpassed my own limits. I have completely obliterated every score my friends have posted, and I’ve beaten my own previous record of 147,000. By miles.

It was at this point I decided to hop onto the global leaderboards, just to see how I stacked up against the rest of the world.
182,000. It didn’t even come close.

I can’t remember what the Doodle Jump world record was at the time, but it was in the millions. MILLIONS. At this precise moment the Doodle Jump world record is 16,128,481. The best score recorded this week sits at around 2.3 million. Today someone managed to score 824,347.

That day, my gargantuan effort — the score I’d spent weeks building towards didn’t even crack the top 100 high scores for that day. If I practiced all day long, dedicated every single waking hour of my time to Doodle Jump, I most likely would never be able to take any kind of record in the global Doodle Jump pantheon.

No matter how good I thought I was at Doodle Jump, there were thousands of people who were much, much better than I could ever be. Ever.

‘POOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo’

——–

It’s a harsh lesson to learn. When I was 15 years old I truly believed I was the greatest Goldeneye player in the world and I could not be beaten. I simply had no perspective. When Halo 2 was released in 2004, I hopped on LIVE and truly believed that I would completely dominate everyone online.

‘PEW-PEW-PEW’

BOOM.

I got headshotted so badly and so frequently, that I seriously considered shoving my Xbox S controller down my gob, but I didn’t expect anyone would care enough to let me win.

High scores are back, but they’re different. They almost lack that perspective. Online high scores seem so unrealistically elusive that we can only hope to sort of beat some of our friends times and perhaps boast on twitter. That’s about as good as it gets.

I guess someone has to be the best in the world at Doodle Jump, but I don’t think that person could ever be me.


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