Have you ever been influenced to play a game "seriously"?

Dear god, I swear all these threads I posted consecutively are pure coincidence.

Anyway, moving on, I'm sure there's that one game that might require a lot of skills to be good at, if anything too much of a skill. Maybe you didn't consider it, but then you saw perhaps someone you know play the game really well, or maybe a video, and that influenced you try being good at the game too. What is it?

For me, the primary game is F-Zero GX. I played the game for years, but it wasn't until April of 2012 when I saw one particular video where I told myself "I'm gonna take the game seriously and try the harder difficulties". This is the video in question:

I was fully aware of the skill required and saw some video before this, it just so happens I stumbled across a conversation regarding this game in another forum, where they kept mentioning the brilliance of it and linked this video. Looking at it, I was amazed, the sharp turn and consistant speed the player did caught my attention immediately and I decided once and for all I'll try playing the game seriously.

But it didn't stop there, eventually being stuck in some mission led me to watch more videos and see what other people did. I stumbled across a player who goes by CGN, and seeing his videos, I was floored.

Hold on, I just melted my brain. This video...I can't describe it with words. No where, in gaming, did I ever blew my mind in seeing someone play a game. None. But this video, the fact a human (actually no CGN is not a human) could do this...this will sound cliche, but it inspired me. Nevermind the fact he beat the level without killing Black Bull, he caught up with the rubber band A.I. And there's all the techniques I saw for the first time that floored me, which encouraged me to look up a guide. This opened up a whole new game to me. A game that I loved so much already had this much depth....it felt unreal.

Now a year later, I still suck, but I know how to do advanced techniques. I know how to snake, how to MTS, how to use momentum boost. Not consistently in a real race mind you, but I'm gradually improving. Frankly, I'm not frustrated that I'm no good, because despite that the game is still so god damn fun even when you're losing.


God I love this game.

StarCraft II for me. I've seen many tournaments and streams of the game by pro-players and i love how they play the game and thats how i mainly got into the game. Im trying to be good at it, which succeeded in one way, but failed in a other way, but still im trying to get better and better.

Holy Crap!{D:}

Well, for me that would be Megaman X. I watched some Videos of people Fighting Sigma, Without receiving any damage. I've been playing Megaman X for seven Years now and I though Gosh I wish I could do that. Megaman X Is one of my all time favorite Game and seeing people take down the hardest boss in the game pretty much had the same effect that those videos had on you.

Now, I can go through the entire game without losing a life in under an hour and thirty minutes,^^ but I still can't beat sigma without taking damage. :(

Halo. I'm dead set on a positive K/D Ratio. I'm proud to say I maintain two in Halo 3 and Reach.

Pokemon, a few months ago. I used to spend decent time on Showdown before I decided there wasn't much point.

Just to clarify, this isn't a thread about what games you play competitively or seriously or whatever, but rather what influenced you to play it that way.

^Oh, well in that case.

Halo I play seriously because it's really the only FPS I excelled at. So Halo influenced me.

Call of Duty is one game that I play seriously… well, most of the time anyway. What influenced me to play it this way is all the CoD videos at YouTube; by seeing how good people are in Call of Duty, I wanted to become better at it myself. d:

I barely play TF2 but this video does make me want to master rocket jumping... someday. I don't think there's anything else that has inspired me to want to be 'pro' at a game, let alone to actually set about becoming so.

For me, Last of Us. When I first started playing, I was under the mindset of "let's **** up some zombies with a gun", because that's what I assumed most of it to be. If you know anything about that game, you know how dumb that is. At first, I liked to just blow through all my opponents, and in the beginning that isn't too hard. However, when I got around to pre-mid-game and died like 6 times on that section where you have to sneak around all the guards in the trenches and the broken buildings, wow, I was not a happy camper. I was influenced by trying to not die (a difficult task when I first started playing as Ellie, which it still is), so I picked up the game's stealth techniques as fast as I could. Atm, I can take down the entire bookstore in the Pittsburgh chapter entirely through stealth, minus two, so I'm proud of myself at how far I've come.

I still ****ing hate Stalkers and Bloaters though. Stupid Hotel Lobby section.

Not really been any games yet. Closest have been simulation and strategy games where playing them seriously is the only way to be successful and games like Sim City 4 and The Sims, where I play the latter two the right way, only augmented with money cheats because of my lack of patience when it comes to wanting to build a perfect city and a desire to not have to worry about a Sim being too stupid to not set their house on fire. With Sim City 4, it's more a desire to build cities that look more realistic.

I've seen some videos of Brea doing combos in DMC4 and that inspired me to give DMC4 another chance at Legendary Dark Knight.

Then I remembered why exactly I didn't like DMC4 so I just quit playing altogether.

Yeah Smash Bros. I started with Brawl, I didn't start right off of the bat, but then people on online forums started heckling me so I got good and beat them. I still play it to this day, but not merely as much as I used to. Been playing quite a bit of Project M lately, but will probably be super active when Smash 4 comes out. I also play MK7 competitively because I really enjoy it.

Tried playing Pokemon competitively but couldn't stick with it. If I play too long, the battles just bore me. Also tried LoL but didn't really work out.