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Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Competitive Father
I assumed competition was normal; now I’m learning to lose…
While listening to the audiobook of by Jason Schreier, a small anecdote caught my attention. It was about one of Blizzard’s former employees, Rob Pardo’s childhood:
He took pride in being the best at anything he played — a trait inherited from his father. “He’s probably competitive to a fault, and instilled that in me,” Pardo later said on a podcast. “He’d never, ever let me win. So if I beat him, it was legit, and if I started winning at some activity we’re doing, then mysteriously we would stop doing that activity.” (Schreier, 2024)
At first, it didn’t hit me — why mention it at all? It felt like someone simply stating a fact of life:
- Water falls from the sky.
- You’ll get old and die.
- Fathers are competitive with their children.
But then it hit me, they mention it because it’s out of the norm, it’s not how things should be.
Mario Kart 64
Growing up, our first console was a Nintendo 64. There’s a story about me beating Super Mario 64 when I was four. It seems I was…
