I will be talking about behaviour in online competitive games. I have played a lot of different games with a lot of different people but I always come back to games that have a ranked system or some way to make it competitive and compare yourself to others. I don’t know exactly why but I just get bored of games eventually if there is no way to measure up against other people. However all these games have a certain type of behaviour in it. Due to the competitive nature people can get frustrated or mad if they feel like they lose because of other people, online this behaviour is called toxicity or flaming.
I started fairly young by playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with a friend, I was 10 or 11 at the time. CS:GO is an extremely competitive tactical shooter, the game revolves around strategy and reflexes. The game had a voice chat system so you could easily make strategic calls for your team and communicate, sound like a good idea right? Except it wasn’t. The voice chat was mainly used to yell at each other for making mistakes and cussing out the bad players on the team. As a young boy I didn’t really talk but I did listen to all these insults. I wasn’t hurt a lot or anything cause I wasn’t the one being cussed out most of the time but it did desensitize me to toxicity online.
I got into overwatch sometime during high school, I think I was around 14. My friends found this game and we thought it seemed cool so we tried it out. Overwatch also had a ranked system with a voice chat but for me it was a nice upgrade. You’d have only 1 toxic guy per game on average. My friends for whom this was their first competitive online game were not used to this at all. Another big thing I noticed while playing overwatch was the rank. By playing ranked mode you would get placed in a certain “skill tier” that described how good you are at the game. In our group of friends this rank would mean respect. It was so weird to me that the rank in a video game mattered for the social hierarchy.
This idea of rank started mattering even more when I got into League of Legends a few years back. The higher rank you are the more respect you get. What’s even weirder is that your rank doesn’t even affect the toxicity you get. League of Legends is notorious for its toxic community. The games last up to 45 minutes at times which can really piss some people off and they lash out at other people. However even if you are the highest rank and proven yourself to be good at the game, people will still say you are bad at the game and insult you in many other ways.
In conclusion, as fun as I think they are competitive games bring out the worst in people, especially online. The frustration and anger that can come from losing something you feel like you deserve combined with the anonymity the internet gives you makes people act like they never would if you met them in real life.
Interesting blog Victor! I agree with your perspective, and I also think that a ranked system is much more attractive than games that have no way to measure up against other people, since quite everyone feels the necessity measure their abilities and to show them to others. I never experienced the so-called toxicity, but my brother is a good example of that. He loves to play videogames, however sometimes I hear him while he is playing, and probably due to his competitive character, it is not infrequent that I hear him screaming against other online players. For this reason, even though I believe that that online games are a great tool to take the mind off all bad thoughts, I agree with you when you say that they sometimes they can become a source of stress and frustration and “bring out the worst in people”.
I think this is a very good example of how we let ourselves get caught up in the moment especially if you are in a near isolated environment and playing a videogame with intense focus and the only interaction you have is with other people online. I would believe that it is then easier to overstep, and not have the same reflex to think about our reactions as we otherwise would do in a normal face-to-face conversation. I have, however very little experience with these sorts of games, but I can definitely see the appeal of wanting a ranking system as it feeds our competitive side, and its interesting to see what kind of status that can give in a friend group, while in a different social setting it could not matter at all.
I haven’t played any shooter games that were online, but I have played a lot of online FIFA in my days at a pretty reasonable level and some of the comments you receive after you beat someone is crazy. I think the fact that you know you are battling against someone else in the world, and they are also putting their all into winning makes it more of a mental battle. And losing a mental battle probably hurts often.