Passionate Gaming

Now I'm hardly the first to kick this ball on the green, hundreds if not thousands of far more capable minds have probably pondered this issue already. I've decided to throw in my thoughts anyway, as recent events has made me think about it more than normally.

People that know me personally, also know that I've never been big on competitive games, unless it's been along with people I actually enjoy spending time with. I've often soffed at the idea at actually putting out the money to play on Xbox Live because of all the reported problems with the service. That being the community. Communities build around and for games can be awesome, I've had some great experiences with the Civilization, Ninja Turtle, and Sonic The Hedgehog communities in particular.

Notice how none of those communities revolved around a fairly competitive game? While I love the Halo games or Team Fortress 2, I've never once considered venturing into their part of the jungle. People on the internet can be mean, sore losers. The crazy thing about it is, none of them are particularily dignified losers either. Now, most readers have probably noticed about now that I've been very judgemental about a group that I actually count amongst. And yes, I'm sad to say that I too can become far too involved in what was originally meant to be simple, time consuming, fun. Of course some of these games doesn't really count as simple fun anymore. Entire companies seems to have dedicated most of their resources to the rise of eSports.

Which brings us to the core of the subject, Why are there more sore losers in online gaming than elsewhere? And it's not limited to FPS's either. Recently, I had the pleasure of moderating a game of Werewolf on Board Game Geek. The whole thread is readable for those interested HERE Take a look at it, I'm actually rather proud of the Flavour text. In any case, one of the players in this game got rather frustrated, to the point of swearing never to play the game online again. I don't have any ill feelings towards the player, Werewolf is a deceivers game and I've always found such games to be best amongst friends. My point was, Werewolf is a board game. It's essentially about talking to people and deducting their roles from the conversation. So why can people be passionate about such a game the same way they would a First Person Shooter? The action isn't immediate, yet it appears to give you a feeling of absolute loss either way.

The most common answer to the question of why people are so angry online is the anonymity. Once you're anonymous, you don't really care about your fellow man. That I find to be wrong, I and several people I know are able to be perfectly friendly towards strangers. I think some people needs to think about what they actually do when they're online. If someone is mean to them, they bring the bad energy into other conversations as a direct result. Give the world a favour instead, if you have a bad day stay out of the public chatrooms. Don't go spamming up a storm in a groupchat in League of Legends just because your teammates might be doing worse than you. I can put myself in your stead, you might see yourself as a decent player, constantly put alongside bad players that you feel lose the game for you. The frustration of feeling you can do much better than that is common, but this is where you should show yourself as a better man/woman and maybe offer friendly advice. And please, word the advice in another way than "Go buy Aegis of The Legion N00b" or "Force of Nature plz". Likewise, if you find yourself constantly being blamed for failure, maybe you should listen to your teammates, don't get mad when somebody offers advice or tells you what would be a good idea or maybe even crucial to buy in a given situation. I've seen tons of players stating "Don't teach me" or "Get out of your moms basement, fag" in those situations. Knowing when you should just shut up, sit down, and be taught can really win the game for you. No matter how much of a champion you might think of yourself, there are always, Always, ALWAYS players that are better than you. And that's despite if you won some kind of tournament.

Sometimes, people just gotta be humble. Now if you excuse me, I'm gonna tell this Newfag Medic how to properly heal a Heavy.

- Later Days.