Oz Kotakuite Jordan wrote in recently to express his disappointment with the attitudes of online gamers. Specifically, after being defeated in a game of Halo 3, Jordan and his team mates were met with less-than-jovial commiserations from the victors:
As we returned to the lobby, and I had just started saying my routine Good Game and congratulations (I don’t like petty arguments online, so am always as friendly as I can be) when I was interrupted by the winning teams cocky and snide remarks. As my team attempted to congratulate them on the victory, as we had many other teams, all they could do was refer to vulgar jokes and insults at our expense. It’s as if they’d expected to win as they had long ago sized us up!
Are insults and vulgar remarks to simply be expected if you play online, or should we demand more from our fellow players and perhaps, even ourselves? Bad winners are worse than bad losers – at least losers have something to feel bad about.
I can’t say I’ve ever made negative remarks against another player while online. I get frustrated, sure, but usually it’s at myself or my team mates for game-losing mistakes. However in these situations you just accept the fact that everyone’s human and shit happens.
You can read the rest of Jordan’s story after the jump, and I encourage you to add your own thoughts about the topic.
Afternoon, Kotaku,
I write to you today as a very pessimistic online gamer.
I had just completed a fairly enjoyable afternoon playing online in Halo 3, as I had found a good new set of friends online that made as my team.
We had a lot of fun, whether we won or lost, as morale was high, and everyone was encouraging one another.
Of course a few jokes were thrown around by the other team at our expense during the session, but just as I was finishing my last game (to go off and play ShadowRun), our high-morale team was degraded by comments from the opposing team.
We had narrowly lost our last match by 4 points against these people.
As we returned to the lobby, and I had just started saying my routine Good Game and congratulations (I don’t like petty arguments online, so am always as friendly as I can be) when I was interrupted by the winning teams cocky and snide remarks. As my team attempted to congratulate them on the victory, as we had many other teams, all they could do was refer to vulgar jokes and insults at our expense. It’s as if they’d expected to win as they had long ago sized us up!
We had had respect for those players that defeated us gallantly in combat, but when we offered our end-game congratulations, and gratitude for an enjoyable match, we received insult upon insult on our performance.
What had sparked this? Absolutely nothing! There was no way we could have upset them prior to the match, or even during it. So why all this negative feedback after an enjoyable game?
Riddled throughout games these days are people who just cannot keep their mouths shut. They strive on putting other people down due to in-game skill. It’s not about who ultimately wins the game, as everyone who gets a kill technically ‘wins’, in the sense that they win out over the opponent. It’s not about how good you can size up your opponent with what is believed to be close and personal attacks. It’s about the fun that has been had in the game.
Although my team suffered severe oppression, and in the final run of 5 kills unto the victory of the other team (in which we were down by 9), we told each other to continue, to go down fighting. We were going to do the best we could. Although we lost, we had a heck of a lot of fun, and greatly enjoyed each others co-operation.
We’re all just disappointed in the unfortunate attitudes of the other players.
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