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Gaming pleasantries

In online gaming culture it's customary to type "gg" for "good game" to your opponent after every game, and, to a lesser extent, customary to type "glhf" for "good luck, have fun" at the start of a game.

While I was in the Prismata community I disliked the glhf practice, because do I really want my opponent to have good luck? I want to win. I feel upset if I think my opponent has a luckier starting position than me, and luck is zero-sum, therefore it's dishonest for me to say glhf.

One can just say "hf", and some people do, but it's far less common than glhf, and anyhow it feels rude if my opponent wishes me good luck and I don't wish it back.

gg can also be dishonest, if you don't really think the game was good. Speaking of which, what does it mean for a game to be good? As someone who watches games as well as plays them, I definitely have a sense of what I feel is a "good game", but it's not very objective. I consider games good if they're close, feature exciting comebacks, or if the player with worse luck wins, or if I think I learned a strategic lesson. I consider them bad if they're won due to unsatisfying things like luck or a small oversight or miscalculation that has a huge impact, or if I'm frustrated because I don't understand why the opponent's strategy worked.

So gg is basically saying "I feel good about this game", which shouldn't be considered polite because it's a statement about me, not about the game or about the opponent's play. And it definitely shouldn't be customary - I should only say that when I really feel it.

So, anyway. I didn't really like these customs while I played Prismata, but later in life when I played the Age of Empires Definitive Editions (2 and 4 mostly), the community was so toxic - so common to run into people who would insult their opponents or teammates for being bad - that I started saying these phrases sometimes, not because I felt they were literally true, but to communicate "I'm not one of those toxic players, and you shouldn't be either". I also say glhf at the start of games I don't have a big emotional stake in, like unranked games or team games, since then I genuinely won't be upset if my opponent has better luck than me.

So that's where I stand right now: I don't like customs of saying fixed things because they encourage you to say them even when they aren't sincere, but I've found times when I feel there's a good reason to say them insincerely.