Why You’ll Never Be Good at osu!

osu! has an “optimizing the fun” problem. To understand the how or why, we need to quickly explain how the game works. osu!’s gameplay is theoretically very simple: you aim and tap the circles and sliders to the beat of the song. This is called playing a beatmap. Difficulty comes from object placement, the song’s BPM and various difficulty modifiers like circle size, approach rate and hp. Performance points — PP for short — serve as a ranking metric meant to represent a player’s skill (osu!, n.d.). Upon completing a beatmap, you’re awarded PP based on how difficult the map is and how well you performed. The system rewards you for challenging yourself and playing skillfully. On paper, all of this seems fine. But this is where the problems begin.

When you’re just starting out, you’re intrinsically having way too much fun to care about ranking up. You choose to play the songs you like, hear new music for the first time, and meet new people in multiplayer lobbies. You play freely, at your own pace. At some point, though, you perform exceptionally well on a map, and as a result, earn a considerable amount of PP. That’s when you first taste osu!’s forbidden fruit — the top play. It’s a feeling like almost no other. Chasing that high, you’ll quickly come to understand the meta and the quickest way to get another top play. Certain types of maps are favored, either by the players for their ease (for example, aim maps), or by the PP algorithm, which rewards long, object-dense maps. This snowballs into a vicious cycle of grinding a couple of specialized skills at the expense of all others, sacrificing the songs and maps you enjoy in the pursuit of rank. You started off playing for fun; now you’re playing to see your rank go up, craving hits of dopamine like an addict. Players competing for ranks, all doing the same tedious things is quite literally the definition of rat race — and you’ve inadvertently joined it.

Now that we’ve established what osu! is and how most of its player base competes without osu! it necessarily being a competitive game, let’s analyze what that means.

From an evolutionary psychology perspective, competition over scarce resources was essential for survival and reproduction. Even though we’ve moved past that need, the competitive impulse still persists — in sports, school, academics, wealth, social hierarchies and even games, like in osu!. In this sense, competition as a theoretical concept is anachronistic, yet we’re still constructing environments that reward dominance over cooperation.

Competition maximizes efficiency (Pilat, 1996). In osu!, that translates to how effectively you hone your skills. But when efficiency eventually plateaus, who succeeds is determined by margins — genetic factors, like motor coordination, mechanical aptitude or reaction speed, and environmental factors like free time, equipment quality or social support. When you’re just starting off, the distance between you and the top player is unfathomable. Only after climbing for years does the Sisyphean nature of the process become apparent. If by now you still think you have what it takes, know that the problem lies not only in the impossibility of mastery, but in the road to it as well.

In her article The Psychology of Competitiveness, Sarkis (2024) writes: “Unhealthy competitiveness can be driven by a need to outperform others at all costs. It can lead to unethical behavior, such as cheating or sabotage, and can create stress, anxiety, and strained relationships. Unhealthy competitiveness can result from insecurities, fear of failure, or a desire for external validation. This type of competitiveness can be harmful to ourselves and others.”

In osu!, you’re not perceived as a multifaceted individual but as a play-producing machine. Worth is determined by your ability to continuously set plays escalating in performance points. The constant influx of other players setting top plays produces the illusion of personal stagnation. Once you outsource your self-worth to metrics — and by extension — external validation, failure to perform arouses feelings of self-doubt, unworthiness and frustration. Every gain demands a greater one, every success short-lived and nullified by the next player’s achievement. In extreme cases, this culminates in cheating. You become so desperate for recognition of your arduous efforts within a system which only rewards output, that you commit an act which undermines the very competitive integrity that gives it meaning in the first place.

Playing osu! you pay a deep psychological cost. It degrades you in the same way capitalism does its workers: you become a machine for producing quantifiable value rather than a being seeking meaning. You become complicit in your own dehumanization. Not only will you never truly be “good” at osu! — you shouldn’t ever want to be.

References osu! (n.d.) osu! wiki main page. https://osu.ppy.sh/wiki/en/Main_page Pilat, D. (1996) Competition, Productivity and Efficiency. https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/47814776/Competition_Productivity_and_Efficiency20160805-23239-xpwc1g-libre.pdf?1470405705=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DCompetition_Productivity_and_Efficiency.pdf&Expires=1761044882&Signature=f3NacuoUvYgvAN9Gj7o-hB84i3du-yECTHrZWD9eP1JCI39K44lqn2N2zor-waN~Ciqg74w1c3KOXH9aUmrx1ZDEVRXchJ1H6SBvBDgqo4S6FR4z3Vv3RvcUphKr5m3-Z9Z4xL2M4f59S1SHHQwysikdBsmZid7WPK8Qzfx0pb6aoIUC1xR6AzKhTqyQq28QMwwfJGHTgHur5ua39oOmaqqWOqHotjsrma2guqw~xFBtmc~E6BJFE-jpn4gO0qNCxpVDAKr0MEazGNHiSvQtCRreg8UpXWpA2Ox6XGXZ335yeK9DdMVD6gOKE6sfp1A6qTcZZpMKzmhymGRxTXfWww__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA Sarkis, S. (2024), The Psychology of Competitiveness. Psychology Today https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/202408/the-psychology-of-competitiveness