eSports are often seen as toxic environments and there seems a prevelance of wanting to blame others for individual failures. I freely admit I've done my fair share of blame-calling over the years but that's partly because those I do choose to criticise, are either AFK (when they should be playing) or are intentionally toxic themselves. Just today, I was playing a game of Evolve and two minutes in received a torrent of abuse from a player because he was unhappy that I revived him (when - he says - I should have chased the Monster). I guess he just wanted to die and then use that as an opportunity to complain further when he did. Despite his complaints, we won the match within 5 minutes. Anyway and back on topic, in this article Jeremy discusses such issues and in the process, makes some great points. 

Competitive gaming, or eSports, has come a long way in just a few years. Sold out arenas, massive prize pools, and tremendous viewer numbers are just the tip of the iceberg, but show just how popular professional gaming has become. With that said, only the top of the top percentage of players are pros. This article is for the millions of us who simply play from home.

It’s become mostly a joke at this point, but the mentality of “I would be ranked so much higher if weren’t for my terrible teammates” is still quite prevalent for a lot of players in team-based competitive games. You can replace the“terrible teammates” part with “AFKers”, “horrible game design”, or whatever else suits your game of choice, but the basic idea remains the same. What’s really being said is, “I can’t possibly be to blame for not being able to achieve the rank I want. This is only happening because of some outside factor completely beyond my control.”

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Last Updated: Mar 21, 2016

About The Author

Lewis is a long standing journalist, who freelances to a variety of outlets.

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