Competitive games, on the other hand, are typically played on a daily basis for years.
Not by me. After trying to become good at the original Tribes, Quake, and UT for about 18 months, and never making it past the middle of the server in ranking, never getting anywhere near a 1:1 kill/death ratio, I just basically decided competitive MP is not for me. I only play deathmatch (and then only occasionally) with bots, as in UT3, and I have MUCH more fun.
Things got a tad better with the introduction of team games with support classes, as in BF 1942's medic, but I still would die 8 to 10 times for every kill I might score, which is flatly not fulfilling for very long, even if I was able to help the team in other ways.
I play coop virtually every day, whether it's in Global Agenda, L4D, Borderlands, Killing Floor, Half-Life's Sven Coop, Doom 3 (with the coop mod), Swat 4, Half-Life 2 with Synergy, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Joint Operations, Operation Flashpoint, Arma 1 and 2, C&C Red Alert 3, Supreme Commander, and most recently, Portal 2 and Sanctum. I haven't played a competitive MP game in at least 6 months, and pure Deathmatch in over 2 years.
Say what you will about Coop, but competitive MP is just too much effort for way too little fun for me.
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
- Mahatma Gandhi