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I’ve been thinking about the problems that were reported on SotG between the players, the casters and the tournament organizers where everyone is apparently disrespecting everyone else. Naniwas recent probe usage vs. Nestea churns that discussion up again, this time through a lens focused on poor Johan. I’m in a doctoral program in school psychology focusing on neuropsychological assessment. A lot has been said about recent events but the developmental perspective is one that hasn’t been covered in depth. It’s useful because it relieves a lot of the blame from the discussion.
The assumption being made by the casters and the tournaments is that players will be able to regulate their behavior. What I know about brain development, particularly for males in their early twenties, tells me that this might not be the case. The last part of your brain to finish developing involves long term planning, and emotion regulation. This means that the people that age are more likely to act impulsively in the moment and not recognize the long term consequences of their actions. For guys that age under a tectonic amount of internal and external stress in an important tournament series, the demand of the situation far outpaces their ability to keep their emotions in check.
I’m sure Idra would love to keep himself under control and not tilt and I’m sure Naniwa regrets the probe rush. However, their ability to mechanically play the game is developed out of proportion with the affective challenges of playing the game at the top level. Even mannered players like Sheth can show it in less defiant ways by forgetting a spawning pool. This isn’t all bad news; it’s for the same reason why players like White-ra, Nestea and Sen don’t get rattled or tilted nearly as much as other players. Part of it is their larger body of experience, but also their ability to regulate their behavior under stress is neurologically more developed. This means that younger, more impulsive players will only improve as their mental control develops in line with their physical control.
The application of this information for tournaments is clear cut. If the players are challenged by regulating themselves, then there must be some external regulation. This can be both positive and negative. For example: a player should have the option of a 2 minute break after a game where they can talk to a coach or breathe for a moment. This is only the span of a few more commercials or one more piece of caster banter. There should also be penalties when players don’t utilize supports; more external regulation to compensate for poor internal regulation. Recognize the stress the players are under and give them a choice. Possibly allow coaches to call a quick time out to speak with their player and reground them as in a traditional sport. I’m sure tournament staff could easily come up with many other ways to tweak the flow of events to give this sort of flexibility after this year’s experiences.
This is not to say that there’s a blank check for player misbehavior, but that it should be recognized for a potential deficit in many of the professional player population. There may be situations where players are set-up, which does not excuse their behavior, but should spark the questions of what we, in all parts of the community, can do differently to prevent these unfortunate occurrences.
It’s important to recognize that steps can easily be taken to support the players which require only a small amount of conscientious accommodation by the casters and tournament organizers. Hopefully, these sort of steps should result in a smoother experience for everyone involved.
Thanks for having the patience hopefully read all this.
 
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17082 Posts
Unfortunately, someone who is in a position where they know they'll be scrutinized - especially if you're in an ostensibly "professional" capacity - should know better than to do something like that. The burden falls on the player to behave in a way fitting of his stature. No one should have to baby and handhold someone else because of that person's immaturity or incapability of acting in a mature, professional manner. There are plenty of people who might not be as "developed" neurologically because of age who are perfectly capable in exercising sound judgement in situations like this (think Pokebunny).
Not having finished your brain development or whatever isn't a valid excuse for the type of behavior shown in some recent examples. If someone in his teens can act like a mature, professional adult in high stress situations, there's no excuse why someone in his twenties can't just man up and do the same.
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Regardless of why, these moments of unprofessionalism have happened and will continue to happen. I'm offering a way of framing the problem in a way that's conducive to looking at solutions and different from anything I've read so far. Not to excuse anything or claim that there shouldn't be consequences, in fact quite the opposite. If the events had similar standards for conduct and punishments for violating those norms it would go a long way to shaping behavior.
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If all your suggesting is to take a few minutes between each match and talk to the coach quickly, it seems fair enough to me.
The time will have to be accounted for because it will add up though.
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I like e-sports drama and consequently disapprove of any attempt to artificially "professionalize" the scene.
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The time piece they're already scaffolding around with the back-up casting couch, and the drama will still be there. There's nothing against premature GGs, dancing zealots and passive aggressive in-game banter. There should be things for starting games before people are ready and treating the other professionals with respect.
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The problem I see with this explanation is that the vast majority of players do behave themselves. It's a small minority who seem to rely on these types of excuses again and again. Showing some basic respect for your peers is not something that requires the absolute highest levels of cognition; teenagers are capable of it. And the same goes for other sports, where many of the athletes are of a relatively young age, yet maintain a level of professionalism. I think a much better approach would be to focus on those with identified behavioral problems, and address them specifically.
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There's definitely a piece of addressing specific players. What I'm doing is looking at the isolated behavior of a few, and trying to determine what in the environment is allowing that to continue. My question to the tournament organizers is how could the needs of these few players (or more popularly, how to quash the un-professional behavior of these few players) in a way that would make the environment more supportive to both the players and the casters. Part of this is that the professional scene itself is young and evolving, and tournaments are still working out how to ideally arrange events so they work for players without behavior problems.
Outside of the tournaments, I'd hope that players on teams would have specific goals that would cover all aspects of play including manner where predictible. However, many teams have different ways of doing things, and suggestions in that area are much less likely to be applicable / implemented.
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I hope when you grouped Sen with WhiteRa, you weren't implying that Sen is very mannered by grouping him with one of the most mannered people, WhiteRa. I got the notion that Sen is not very mannered by Day[9] referring to this in two separate occasions. I don't know from personal experience though, for all I know, Sen could be perfectly well-mannered.
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On December 23 2011 07:19 Stalkman wrote:
The time piece they're already scaffolding around with the back-up casting couch, and the drama will still be there. There's nothing against premature GGs, dancing zealots and passive aggressive in-game banter. There should be things for starting games before people are ready and treating the other professionals with respect.
Novak Djokovic is the world's current top player, he breaks a racket every other tournament, he receives warnings for it (read "fines" - it never goes to penalty points in tennis), but I'm pretty sure nobody is interested in seeing him forced to receive coaching between games.
So yes, there should be penalties for bad behavior. Depending on tastes, penalties that are not specified in advance (e.g. Naniwa's code S revocation), so that we may enjoy more e-sports drama, or pre-determined penalties, so that we can strap one more "professional" epithet to e-sports. But mandatory coaching ? Come on.
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On December 23 2011 05:13 Empyrean wrote:
Unfortunately, someone who is in a position where they know they'll be scrutinized - especially if you're in an ostensibly "professional" capacity - should know better than to do something like that. The burden falls on the player to behave in a way fitting of his stature. No one should have to baby and handhold someone else because of that person's immaturity or incapability of acting in a mature, professional manner. There are plenty of people who might not be as "developed" neurologically because of age who are perfectly capable in exercising sound judgement in situations like this (think Pokebunny).
Not having finished your brain development or whatever isn't a valid excuse for the type of behavior shown in some recent examples. If someone in his teens can act like a mature, professional adult in high stress situations, there's no excuse why someone in his twenties can't just man up and do the same.
Not everyone develops along precisely the same timeline. Sean's point on SotG of recognizing the mental fatigue only compounds the capacity for 'silly' things to occur in the heat of the moment. I haven't seen Pokebunny under the same level of stress guys like Naniwa or Idra have experienced lately. If there have been times it'd be interesting to gauge how his level of mental fatigue and maturity compare to theirs. People have a limit to what they can handle, and that's exactly the reason we've seen some people mess up. Taking their ability to mess up out of the equation by using proper regulation would go a long way to fixing the problem. The less room there is for someone to make a mistake, the less likely that mistake is made.
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Thank you for that misanthrope.
Being purely punitive isn't the solution. There should be a clear list of norms and consequences for violating them, but only imposing limitations on the players has the potential to create a nasty recursive cycle between player behavior causing organizational retaliation causing player resentment leading to other bad behavior. What I'm urging isn't a black and white solution, but more an awareness that there's thing that can be done on all fronts to make the tournament experience less grueling to both players and casters by giving them small amounts of wiggle room when they need it. I think it's widely recognized by organizations the degree of stress that the players are under, and they're still working out through trial and error the best ways to accommodate that. I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself, so I'm going to stop for now.
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EPT
