The Video Game Revue

Sportsmanship

In case you missed it, Gabe posted an inspiring story of sportsmanship on Penny Arcade the other day. The following short excerpt is only a portion of his tale:

Each of these kids when they lost shook the others hand and thanked them for the match. The winners complimented the losers Pokemon and strategies while impressing on them that it really was a very close game. I know they weren't my kids but as a thirty year old gamer with a kid of my own I could not help but be extremely proud of all of them. Their passion for the game was totally infectious and I've decided to throw away my spreadsheets.

It's pretty freakin cool that Pokemon inspires that kind of sportsmanship. Unfortunately, according to Gabe, there are also those players who equate taking the game seriously with sanctimoniously crushing lesser opponents to inflate their own fragile egos. This is hardly surprising--I can't think of any multiplayer activity that doesn't suffer from this dark flip-side to the sportsmanship coin. Some people simply don't try hard enough to balance the demands of the game against being a considerate person.

I can't tell you how many times, for example, I've joined a party in World of WarCraft and quickly noticed that one of the players is loud-mouthed, bossy, and ultimately incompetent. One starts to suspect a problem when something isn't quite right about the tone with which the guy demands to be summoned, or perhaps tries to volunteer somebody else to run to the instance with him to summon. Maybe he asks for party leadership so he can invite his friend; maybe he even gets it and neglects to offer it back. Maybe he starts making sloppy pulls, or fails to let the tank draw aggro. Maybe he's even single-handedly responsible for a wipe. The cherry on top is always when, at the end of the instance, this guy needs a BOP that obviously isn't useful for his class, and then claims to be a noob or simply falls silent to the cries of outrage from his party members. I wish that I were merely inventing this example, but those of you who play WoW know that I am not.

One thing to realize about WoW is that a character's abilities are not solely determined by their level, talents, and gear: the attitude and alertness of the player can count for more than all of those other things combined. I've out-healed Priests five levels above me simply because I was paying attention and they weren't. People tend to forget that being arrogant can actually seriously cripple a player's abilities in any multiplayer game if that player fails to be a team player because of their attitude.

I've also had experiences playing Magic the Gathering where conceit and self-righteousness have hindered the process of players learning from each other. Here we have a very information-rich game with great potential for players to express themselves and be constantly forging new territory, and yet I find that something about the culture of it tends to drive egos towards their most fragile state. When everybody is bitterly defensive and out to put others down, a game is bound to have a dysfunctional culture surrounding it. As is the case with WoW, some of the coolest people I know play MtG, but there is also no shortage of petty assholes playing it as well.

I just one to make one quick point, and I know with every fiber of my being that it will go unheeded, but nevertheless it is a simple point to make: if one really does fancy oneself as being a "hardcore" player of any game, then one has no burning need to prove it--least of all, to prove it by acting like a dick. There's a world of difference between simply being a great player and frantically scrambling to get other people to acknowledge one's greatness. However, by the time that any given player grows up enough to realize this, somebody else has already been born to take up their old habits, so I guess we're perpetually stuck with shitty sportsmanship.

Too bad there aren't more Pokemon fans out there; they would probably make great WoW players.

posted by Parappa @ 12:10 PM