A guest writer over at Bastard Numbered has hit the nail on the head and coined a phrase that I think will work its way into my repertoire. Why do certain people fail at certain tasks in games?

“Frosty” says that people have blindspots in games that develop largely through getting accustomed to certain mechanics. In case, years of playing shooters that showed you everything has made him a sitting duck in Half Life 2 when enemies start hitting him from behind.

My blindspot is probably aggression in RTS games. Most of the early ones allowed you to build up a nice defense, amass a huge army and then destroy the opponent. The more recent ones discourage rushing, to an extent, but also make turtling much less effective. This new paradigm in RTS games means that my years of expertise are now useless. This is game design getting better melding with my gaming time getting shorter leading to my total humiliation at almost all multiplayer RTS games.

Anyway, read “Frsoty’s” piece and share your own blind spots.