Greetings,
Online gaming is a part of the modern world and is becoming more and more prevalent. Online you will find gamers who are new to the idea and also those which would call themselves "hardcore". Of course you will find all sorts of grades in between. This allows for a great mix and allows for a wide variety of ability and gameplay in the games concerned. What will be addressed in this discussion is the subject of sportsmanship in these online games. While my particular focus will be those games which attempt to simulate warfare, the same subjects here will also apply in part to other games of a more role-playing nature.
To begin with I will explain myself and where I am coming from. I will give a little bit of my own online history and some other more personal details. For starters, I play games for the enjoyment of the game, or to put it more simply I play for fun. This means that I will never be rated as one of those "hardcore" players and I have no problems with this, to a point it actually makes me smile. I have other things to occupy my time besides these games.
The first time I played online it was on my old computer playing Battlefield 1942 (BF1942) a simulation of the conflict of World War II. I will admit I had no expectations of what it would be like and what to expect of my own playing ability. Now, I have been playing first-person shooters since Wolfenstein 3-D was first released to give you some of my vintage, and thought I was pretty average in my performance ability. So I went online with BF1942 and had a lot of fun games with people, I won some and lost some, playing with other human players was quite and experience and I quite enjoyed it for a while. What happened? Some players decided to "bunk" the system so to speak. The game that sealed my fate online in this one was when one person decided that it would be a good idea to stand on the other side of the map and perform artillery strikes on our spawn point.
For the uneducated in these games. A spawn point is where your character becomes "alive" so to speak, where you start from. So what this resulted in is my character spawning and then dying almost instantly to be spawned again in the same spot and to die again and again. This is called "spawn killing". Needless to say I left the game and did not come back. I decided a break was in order.
My next experience playing online was playing Battlefield 2 (BF2). I had played single-player for a while and had a lot of fun and then decided it was time to venture back online again to see what it was going to be like and see if the same problems would result. With no surprise certain things had improved, more spawn points cut down the "spawn-killing". It did not eliminate it, but it helped. Then I ran into another problem "team-kill", where a "friendly" player decides to target members of their own team. In some instances it was simply because they wanted the vehicle that was being used by another. Now, I will admit I have been guilty of "team-kills" by accident, it happens and can be expected from time to time, but when a player does it deliberately, that is different. Combined with some of the runners of certain servers determining that certain rules should be imposed extra on the game, this pretty much sealed the fate of me playing this one.
It would be sometime before I would venture online again, indeed it would have to wait until I had been introduced to the Xbox console and its follower the Xbox 360. My girlfriend (now wife) can be blamed for my change from PC (personal computer) to console games. In fact I will say it now that she is the best co-op player I have ever played with and I have enjoyed hours of fun with her doing this.
Anyway back to the story, we bought Halo: Reach (Reach), new with all the extras. This means it also came with a limited pass for Xbox Live. We had also acquired another from another game as well. We looked at one another and decided we would have a go at playing on-line. Well due to the truly random spawn points for this game there was a lack of "spawn-killing", and due to the console and not PC, no rules imposed by some random server owner. However, "team-killing" seemed to be still a problem along with a new one that I had not noticed until now "hunting". This is the hunting of a newer player by an older more experienced on for the easy kill. This was only made worse when it was two picking on the same player. Needless to say my time online with Reach was cut short quite quickly.
Now to much more recent times. I went out and bought both Battlefield 3 (BF3) and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (MW3) when they were brand new, once again with all the box and dice so to speak and decided that I would have a go at the online game again. Now between the two, I actually found that BF3 was a more satisfying game online than MW3, but this had nothing to do with the players, more the gameplay. BF3 is truly more team orientated, and in many scenarios more objective-orientated as well which felt better to me. The larger maps in BF3 and the attention to detail in the weapons also helped. I am a nut for military technology.
Xbox Live and it would seem that I had a problem with sportsmanship. I was blown away. How was my playing different from anyone else? I used the tools the game presented to me and used them. Needless to say it was this and the resulting reoccurring issues which have prompted me to write this blog and see the end of my online multiplayer for quite a while. I may venture back online with some known friends for some co-op games, but standard multiplayer is off the list. For me the fun was lost.
So what does sportsmanship in online gaming mean? How should it be rated? What should the basis of this be? These are the questions which need to be asked and answered. No doubt there will be some wild and wonderful theories about this. If it simply means using the tools given to you and going after an objective regardless of the method, then much of what I have said is mute. In my impression it should mean having regard for other players in your pursuit of victory. Interestingly the former is more like real war and the second is more like a game. No surprise. In fact a comparison to real war is needed in order to put this in perspective.
War is killing for a collective purpose, to quote the war historian John Keegan. In real war a man will do anything he can in order to kill his opponent and this is expected as the stakes are high. Unlike the game he has only one life to expend and no chance of "spawning" for another shot at it. In war the leash is let of the animal and the warrior goes to work to achieve his objective any way that he can. It is true that rules have been attempted to be placed on the methods and weapons used in war, with some success in some places. We have all heard of the Geneva Convention, but we have also seen the results of wars where these rules seem to be absent.
Should online warfare maybe have a Geneva Convention imposed upon it or some equivalent? Is it needed? Should rules be imposed in order to curtail some of the unsporting behaviour online? More to the point will it work at all? True there are programs to stop people hacking games "Punk-buster" and their equivalents, but this does not control what the players can do within the programming. Maybe a list should be put out along with the gaming manual for the game of what is expected online with the games, of course this still requires people to follow these rules. True people have been banned from games and servers, however, this does not seem to be as effective as it could be. With rules comes enforcement and the methods of and here lies another problem. Essentially it still comes up to the individual player to "behave" while playing online.
Now for the subject of breaches. These are things which I personally think breach any code of sportsmanship for these games. After all every player is playing the game in order to have fun, and these things hamper the fun of the players involved.
The first and to my mind the most irritating is "spawn killing". Now the player does not necessarily have to be targeting the actual spawn point itself and killing the player just as they spawn. Sitting just out of the spawn point and knocking off players as they just leave the spawn point is the same thing in my mind. This does not allow a player to become involved in the game and hampers their fun.
Second is "team-killing". Sure, friendly fire is a real thing and it does happen. I defy any player to claim that they have never accidentally killed a player on their own team. However when it is some person who is deliberately killing a friendly player in order to use a vehicle or a weapon this is not the same thing. In some instances the same happens just because they can or because the other player is present. This does not inspire the sort of team feelings that should be part and parcel of these sorts of games. In fact, just as irritating, if not more so, is when friendly-fire is not on and a person targets another with their weapon because they are there or doing something that they don't want them to. "Team-killing" drags the game down and reduces the enjoyment of the gameplay.
Three, what I will refer to as "hunting". This is the deliberate hunting of another player, usually a more experienced one one on a less experienced one. Sure, spawning can result in some players running into one another repeatedly, however when one player deliberately goes out of his way to kill another again and again, this is different.
The fourth is something which most often happens with PC games where servers are set up by players. This is extra rules imposed. Such things as only "owners" can drive vehicles, or use emplaced weapons or some such. These are artificial to the game and simply should not be present in the game. If there is an agreement or a particular server for a particular weapon-set, this is different, and people should abide by the agreed rules. However, where it is absent, the game should be left as it is.
There will be "lone-wolves" in every game online regardless of the rules imposed. These players will be out there to achieve what they can by themselves. There is not much that can be done about this. Even imposing structures such as squads will still not prevent this. However, where a group of players chooses to work together they simply should work together, supporting one another. In the consideration of this people should realise that mics and headsets are not as prevalent as they might be considered to be. Players should also realise that in the thick of combat a person might not see an icon requesting ammo, health or something similar. Be considerate of your teammates and realise that everyone is human.
To some the subject which has been raised here will be ignored as something which does not matter. However, what they do not realise is that keeping the game fun is the only way that they will attract new players and retain them and also older players. For the most part the reason which I have most heard for players leaving online games is because they are not fun anymore and usually due to the actions of the other players involved. These games online rely on other players continuing to play them. Many online games have no online presence anymore because they have no players. How much of this is because of the game, how much of this is because a newer version is out, and how much of this is because of the actions of other players is a question that needs to be asked and answered. The last one comes down to the playing of the players and hence sportsmanship.
Cheers,
Henry.
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