EPT
First of all a few things about myself as a video game fan so that you might understand my
background. The first game I finished was Command and Conquer Tiberian Dawn at the age of 6 from then on I started playing mainly (J-)RPGs on consoles and strategy games on my computer.
Though as I was living on the countryside with poor internet connection I was playing single player most of the time so I've never gotten in touch with competitive play until I started playing DotA and as this wasn't ladder based and not organized at all back then I'd rather not count it.
In university I started playing SC2 a lot more thanks to a good internet connection and some friends
who played as well and made it into Platinum league. At this point many might already start mumbling "what a scrub" somewhere, but to change that performance based view on people (at least in the gaming scene) is what I shall try with the following text.
The first step towards understanding my judgement on people is to understand that people are not equal.
People are different and they have different interests and different abilities. Sure everyone can climb a tree, but some are faster than others. That doesn't mean that the slower ones are worse as humans, right? Same goes for games. Only because some players are worse in playing Starcraft that doesn't mean they are worse gamers. They just might be better in playing Battlefield.
Read that paragraph as often as you need to to understand it. It's meant to prepare your way of thinking for changing your way of judging.
On a sidenote: I have to admit that I was inspired to changing my view on this by hearing some interesting stuff from Sir Ken Robinson. Check him out if you're interested in educational matters.
So let's start with the main part:
I think the main problem of the ESports/Gaming branch to find acceptance in society is not the mindset of the previous generations, but the intolerance of many players to accept others in their circle. What many have forgotten is that we all started as newbies and some of us are still, let's say, less skilled. But that is not a bad thing as long as you find joy in what you do and we should rather help them to gain a foothold, instead of saying things like "Fuck you! you better deinstall the game!" (LoL [ingame]), "Damn feeder ruined the game l2p noob" (DotA [ingame]), "lol bronze crub l2p before posting" (Sc2 [Bnet forums]), and any mixture of the above in CounterStrike. These comments demotivate people to try again in the game and they start turning their back on one game and then on another game and so on and so forth until they dont want to participate in ESports or gaming in general.
To support this statement: Imagine you go to a football club and you're new and everybody tells you to pass but you can't hit the ball the right way and everybody blames you for weeks continuously without giving any good advice. At some point you're just frustrated and quit the club. But you try to give sports another chance and try a 1on1 sport this time: Tennis. But again your opponent is only making fun of you. At some point you will quit again, because this is your freetime and you dont have to go through that negative environment, freetime should be used for fun and stress relief obviously.
So here's the most important statement of the whole text:
A "good gamer/player" is not defined by how well he actually plays but by a positive attitude.
By that I mean people who can laugh and have fun even when they lose and can accept that someone is better, people who want to improve and/or help others to improve and people who are in general fun to play with. That means as well that even a Grandmaster-ranked player can be a "bad player" if he's always looking down on people and is ruining the fun for others.
If people could understand that their hobby could find a lot more positive feedback by society if they only let them take part ESports would grow more than it is right now.
Now this text will become a little more practical to complete my little definition.
What I noticed is, that Brood War players look down upon Starcraft 2 players and call sc2 easy and that it's not as elitist as bw. Then again sc2 players frown at LoL for being such an "ezpz" game. There are many more examples for such behaviour in other games (WoW Classic vs Cataclysm anyone?) but let's stick to those sc related ones.
I myself think that LoL is a lot easier (on the non professional level) to get into then Starcraft is and that is imho the reason for so many players joining rather LoL instead of SC2. But what some "bad players" in Starcraft do not realize is that many new players get convinced by their LoL friends to start playing when they havent tried any other video game before. So they get introduced to ESports by playing an easy game with nice tutorials and such. Wonderful. Now some might think of trying another video game. Maybe Starcraft? And that moment they hit a wall of elitism and intolerance. Who would try to be part of such a community? No one. To fill a logic gap I opened by saying that this elitism behaviour happens in LoL as well. (It does happen in every game)
LoL or DotA are team games. You can play with your friends and that softens the wind of negativity that is unleashed by playing under the standards of others. You can just laugh about a "your mom" line from your enemy with your team mate/s. In a 1on1 environment like it exists in Starcraft you don't have that advantage.
So to help Esports and your favourite game (whatever it is) you should talk more with them and give
them positive and constructive feedback. If you play Starcraft and you lose you say gg and tell your
opponent what was a good move and what you think he can improve. If you win you tell him that this and that move was well executed etc. This motivates new players and maybe they tell their friends that this game has a nice community and that the game is actually easy and quick to learn because people help you and support you. So show some positive attitude and be a good player no matter the performance
My next point is what it means to be a gamer/player.
To me, everyone who plays any kind of video game is a gamer. We are a small community compared to society and we do not have the luxury to say "She's an attention whore, not a real gamer!", "He only plays FIFA! He's not a real gamer!". It shouldn't matter what, how or how long someone plays. If you have taken an interest in gaming and you want to share that on facebook or in real life with a shirt or any other way, you should feel free to do so and other gamers shouldn't look down on that but be happy that there are others with similar interests. It spreads the word, it shows others that maybe even normal/non-nerdy/popular people play video games and that it doesn't have to be a niche. Maybe more people will then think of giving it a try and so on and so forth. Of course some people define themselves through video games and feel less special if it's not their trademark anymore. I'm thinking of teenagers for example, who try to differ from the mainstream and then suddenly face that their "scene" became mainstream and now they are mainstream...Awwwww :/ .
Tl,dr: Show some tolerance to new players, other players and help Video games to grow by showing a positive attitude.
I hope you understood what I tried to explain, even though my English isn't the best, and that you help me sharing this thought with others. By now I'm almost explaining this in every DotA2 game I'm attending and I feel like people are getting my point. On that note: If you are playing team based
games, try to talk friendly with weaker players and explain stuff to them, because in a nice atmosphere the performance of the team as a whole is greatly improved. (Didn't do any scientific research there but it's my experience from several years of playing in team-oriented environments.)
So yeah that's it for now. If you find any logic mistakes feel free to tell me. I am a rather confused person and sometimes I lose myself in my sentences
. Any constructive criticism is welcome and if there's a discussion I'll be even more so happy about it.PS: If you're interested in that educational stuff by Robinson try this: Changing education paradigms
