Raging Like A Level 80 Warrior

Video games are, by definition, a hobby. Unless you're a genuine pro gamer who actually makes money when they sit in front of a computer, then there's nothing really on the line when you play beyond base pride and some in-game statistics.

But in spite of that, everyone's had to deal with at least one gamer who lets their emotions get the better of them. Ever got a poorly written message from a player you just beat insulting you in language that shouldn't be repeated in public? Thought so.

The perfect way to wind down after a game of Modern Warfare 2.

In the fighting game community, behaviour like that is called 'salty'. I can think of two big examples of it that I've witnessed in the last two weeks playing SSFIV to set the scene for this. The first involved a Guile player, a relatively good one, playing a Gief/T.Hawk player infamous for spamming 360 throws all the time. The Guile tried to play clever, but his play was almost too intelligent and as a result he got caught in one mindless throw after another. Eventually he just decided enough was enough, unplugged his controller mid-match, walked out of the room and refused to play the rest of his games.

The second incident, embarrassingly, stars myself. Playing in a match that didn't really matter against a player who I could probably beat easily if I went all out, I let ego drive me into playing random characters against him. Luck did not favour my randomisations, however, and in the end I lost two sets to one. My opponent promptly proceeded to rub this victory in my face, and when everything came together I basically snapped and yanked both controller leads out of the Xbox. In doing so I shuffled the actual console along and managed to wreck the disc inside. It was a heat-of-the-moment thing that I spent the rest of the day regretting, but the people running the tournament turned down my refund and gave me the benefit of the doubt.

Why did we get angry in both cases? Because we expected to win, and we didn't. If we'd been up against players who were quite clearly better, we'd have taken our losses with a handshake and a few notes on what to do next time. But because we'd gone into the game thinking 'this will be easy, I'm better than this guy', the result basically made us feel rather stupid about ourselves, and it was an emotion we had to deal with somehow.

So the question is 'why do people get so salty about video games?'. If you asked a non-gamer, they'd think that we were being immature or simply sore losers. They'd say gaming was a terrible hobby that inspired people to get angry at each other.

The fact is, video gaming gets a bad reputation in terms of making its players angry. Not because it doesn't have its fair share of ragequitters, no - but because every sport has players who get mad when things don't go their way. The only difference is that due to the online nature of modern gaming, it's easier to get mad because of the anonymity the internet provides.

 

Zidane ragequits at the World Cup.

Having spent years playing chess at a decent level, I have more examples to give here. The first is an old story about a chess grandmaster, who after finding out he'd lost out on first place in a tournament declared 'That I should lose to this idiot!' On a smaller scale, there's the parable of a club player who lost a tournament game by accidentally giving away his queen, and got his payback by breaking into the venue that night and cutting all of the queens in half.

And that's before going into other sports where rage gets thrown around without anything resembling restraint. Top tennis player Serena Williams is well known for handing out death threats when she's losing; Russian figure skater Evgeni Plushenko had a tantrum on the podium when he took home a silver medal at the 2010 Olympics; and Cuban martial artist Angel Matos dealt with being disqualified at the Beijing Olympics by kicking the referee in the face. Compared to these, walking out of the game when you're losing seems outright gentlemanly.

People getting angry over losing isn't a phenomenon unique to video games. It's an emotion that many of us feel, when we think we've been cheated or lost to someone we think ourselves to be better than. Some people get angry at themselves, some lash out at the people around them, some just pick up their things and walk away from it all, but it's almost always a matter of the player not doing as well as they think they should have.

And ego is a part of human nature, so like it or not ragequitters are going to be around for a long, long time. Of course, laughter is the best medicine, so rather than getting angry at them we should just make the most of it and laugh at their expense.