What does a player owe in a competitive game?

General Discussion
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Competitive gaming isn’t just a casual hangout. It’s a team sport. And like any sport, it’s not just about showing up, it’s about pulling your weight. Imagine a player on a sports team, like football or basketball. If they don’t perform well, if they miss every pass, fail to defend, or can’t keep up with the pace, they’re not going to stay on the team for long. Worse, their teammates and fans are likely to criticize them harshly. That might seem harsh, but it’s an unspoken rule in competitive environments: performance matters.

So why does it feel like in gaming, this same expectation is controversial? Why is it okay to expect performance in traditional sports, but it becomes “unfair” or “toxic” when applied to esports or competitive gaming?

In Traditional Sports
In team sports, every player has a role to play. Whether it’s scoring, defending, or strategizing, their contribution directly impacts the team’s success. If a player consistently underperforms, several things happen:

  • Constructive Criticism: Teammates and coaches will point out their mistakes and push them to improve.
  • Reduced Opportunities: The player might be benched or replaced by someone better suited for the role.
  • Pressure to Step Up: There’s an expectation to practice harder, learn faster, and do better.And here’s the kicker: everyone’s okay with this. It’s not considered “discrimination”; it’s considered fair. The team needs to win, and every player has to contribute to that goal.
  • In Competitive Gaming
    Now take that same logic and apply it to a competitive game. If someone isn’t pulling their weight,failing to communicate, ignoring objectives, or consistently playing poorly, they’re holding the team back. But here, criticism is often labeled as “toxic” or unfair.

Why the double standard ?

Performance Is a Responsibility, Not a Bonus

In both traditional sports and competitive gaming, the principle is the same: if you choose to be part of a competitive environment, you’re committing to do your best. This doesn’t mean you have to be a superstar.

So why do people resist the idea of performance obligations in gaming when it’s so normalized in sports?

  1. Low Barrier to Entry
    Anyone can pick up a game and queue for competitive mode. There’s no tryout, no coach deciding if you’re ready. This accessibility is great, but it also creates a mismatch of expectations. Some players treat competitive matches like casual games, which frustrates those who are taking it seriously.
  2. The “Fun First” Mentality
    ARAM players “Chill it’s aram, not QM”
    QM players “Chill it’s QM, not SL”
    Bronze players “Chill it’s bronze, not silver”
    Silver players “Chill it’s silver, not gold”
    …
    Many gamers argue that “it’s just a game”, and prioritize their enjoyment over performance. But in a competitive environment, your “fun” is tied to your team’s success. If your lack of effort ruins the experience for others, it’s no longer just about you.
  3. Toxicity Confusion
    Criticism in gaming often gets conflated with toxicity. While insults and harassment are never okay, genuine feedback, like pointing out mistakes or suggesting improvements, is essential for growth. In sports, this is called “coaching.” In gaming, it’s often dismissed as “flaming.”

The Harsh Truth: Gaming Is a Team Sport

Let’s go back to the sports analogy. Imagine a football player saying, “I’m just here to have fun,” while refusing to train, missing every shot, or ignoring the coach’s strategies. They wouldn’t last long on the team, right? Teammates would be frustrated, and fans would demand better. Nobody would defend their lack of effort by saying, “They have the right to play however they want.”

Competitive gaming is no different. When you join a match, especially in a team-based game, you’re agreeing to a certain set of expectations. You owe it to your teammates to try, to improve, and to take the game seriously. If you’re not willing to do that, then maybe competitive modes aren’t for you, and that’s okay! Casual modes exist for a reason.

So, What Should Players Take Away ???

If you want to participate in competitive gaming, here’s the deal:

  • You have rights, like fair treatment and respect.
  • But you also have obligations, including being a good teammate and making an effort to perform.

This isn’t about being perfect or never making mistakes, it’s about showing up with the mindset to contribute. Just like in sports, your performance impacts everyone else on the team. If you’re not willing to meet those expectations, don’t be surprised when teammates get frustrated or critical.

And honestly, that’s not “toxic”; it’s just how competition works. Whether it’s on the field or in a game, everyone’s here to win. Respect the game, respect your team, and give it your best shot, that’s all anyone can ask.

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eh, most of the post is within reasonable parameters
however dear me I did have a giggle. not on anything you’ve said, apart from the chill part but I’ll keep that to myself. it’s the fact that everyone goes to theses set of… what are these guidelines? and it’s all tickety boo. until it no longer best suits them in which case everything is thrown out the window.

the harsh truth is the human race are selfish team sport or not they will not follow everyone else if it doesn’t help them get what they want.

now on a personal level

I don’t believe I own anything to anyone when I play PvP certainly not when they act, based on your post, they don’t owe me anything

one last thing to note: this game is not an Esport, Blizzard failed on that respect.

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Choosing to owe nothing to your team is choosing to be a problem. You don’t need a billion-dollar esports prize pool to have responsibilities, just like in an amateur sports team being part of a group mean committing to effort, respect, and teamwork. Yet, where I agree with you is that none of Blizzard’s choices have gone in that direction, for any of their games.

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sigh I try :heart:

If only it were that easy

I’m all for putting effort into winning, respect though!? lets not get too hasty! (I jest… well… sorta)

but we have come to an understanding… I think

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:joy:

I know I’m being naive, you have the right to say it.

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Because your comparison isn’t applicable.

The traditional sports you’re comparing to are teams that are assembled through evaluation (tryouts) by individuals who want to very specifically be a part of a static team for participation in organized competition. In those cases, there’s a certain expectation that there will be a base level of performance to remain on that staic team.

In video game “sports” there’s two circumatances:

  1. The analog to traditional sports: Prearranged, static teams that that players specifically want to be members of. They have some sort of evaluation for membership, and whose purpose is competing in an organinzed competition. And if anyone has ever watched pro SC2, pro OW, pro heroes, etc there’s no toxicity within or between the teams.
  2. Randomly assembled teams (and often different teams each time) that have little to no evaluation for membership, comprised of people who who don’t care what team they are on. They are not playing for “sport” or in organized competition.

So it’s not a double standard due to “apples to oranges”.

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So you can owe people nothing because you’re banking on the fact that they’re ephemeral and you’ll never see them again.

I prefer to think of the team as the association of X players, not by individualities, the static part is that you’ll always have 4 players with you.

The “Fun First” Mentality, my own pleasure at the expense of others.
Also, you can play a team sport / videogame as an amateur without a ranking / ELO, and still be accountable for performance.

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Not necessarily. It’s also a matter of not playing a video game for sport reasons.

Not when trying to compare casual video game play with organized sports. the Latter is the same manually assembled roster of members who want to specifically be part of a certain team for the duration of the competition. The former is just people being thrown together with no care of who they are with for fun.

You’re one negative nancy if that’s the only way you can perceive the fun first mentality: all at the expense of others. Absolutely there are many who are asses at the expense of others, but attempting to lump in those who play a video game purely for fun is asinine.

Of course you can, I wasn’t saying one couldn’t. I’ve only been pointing how you can’t compare traditional sports with casual video game play simply because both use teams.

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You’re using organized sports analogies for hobby gaming.

If a ‘pro’ coach were over children’s sports, he’d get ousted real quick for trying to pull the same things used for training adults. Anon on the internet isn’t a professional adult, they’re effectively children playing make-believe because they’re tired of adulting. They didn’t agree to a coach, to run drills, or have replay reviews with strangers. There’s a severe lack of consent and rapport between these things.

If I have a pick-up game in a park for flag football, my focus isn’t on performance, nor is it going to be in a pick-up online game where I may have a ‘random’ role outside my preference. A quarterback is trained for specific team contributions, and shouldn’t get an earful for falling short as a lineman in recreational games.

You’ve imposed the double-standard, and then fault others for the disparity you made.

That is why anon isn’t receptive to ‘criticism’: it comes from people who think their misguided opinions are useful instead of bad ego rants. You’re not going to coach players to be ‘better’ while wearing horse blinders and playing in-the-moment. They’re ‘children’ and want compliments to reinforce ‘good’ conduct to enjoy what they do, rather than pretend it’s half-time in the lockeroom and they have magical aspirations of having their sports glory retold as the next ‘Air Bud’ movie if thy manage to pull an upset this game.

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You cant really force 5 random players to get better when games are mostly a hobby for most. The only time you can call Hots competetive is when you have two pro teams fighting vs eachother. They choosed to become better than the average player you fight in ARAM/QM. They play regulary and have the same mindset.

Random players dont have the same mindset and just want to be casual.

There are a huge difference playing football for fun every saturday/sunday with your friends then to actual play the game with a team and a coach in your local club.

I can then agree you find it frustrating that people who are good have to play with bad players and get punished for it in online games. Its not fun to be the only one who know what you are doing and the others are throwing the game.

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I find the notion of “non-sport videogame” complicated to defend when talking about team versus team multiplayer games.
Sport isn’t all sweat and muscle cramps :sweat_smile:

It’s not a about comparing a random QM game against an NBA all-star final.
A traditional sport can be played at an extremely low level, just as some video games have competitions with higher payouts than some moderately popular sports.

You could take it to the absurd extreme: I join your unpretentious country village soccer club and sit on the pitch, or, to put it mildly, I don’t bother running or score own goals. You wouldn’t be happy, the spectators wouldn’t be happy and sometimes even the other team wouldn’t be happy.

That wouldn’t happen in real life, because there’s a coach to keep an eye on things. But in a video game, free and accessible, it’s quite different. Everyone has to look out for themselves.

Such extreme behavior is supposedly punished in Heroes when it’s blatant, and you can’t end up MVP of every game either. We can’t easily determine a middle ground of “acceptable competence”, but we can at least expect a mindset that is all too often lacking, and not just in Blizzard games of course, one could say in general.

We might be entitled to ask the matchmaker to act as coach, but that’s not his role, and on what criteria anyway ?

I don’t think we should sweep everything under the carpet just because “behind the screen anon” is untouchable, any more than we should infantilize them.

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I think that’s due to the fact that just because two things use teams, they aren’t comparable.

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Hey you cropped the best part !

In form, of course, but in substance, they are.
I’d like to see examples of teams that don’t fight over a goal or a sport where both teams win.
The notion of a team necessarily implies competition. (On an equivalent level, of course)

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Not in the circumstances you’re trying to equate though. Intent is everything here. Despite both using teams, traditional sports players have much different intent than casual video game players.

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I totaly agree with you on that, intent is everything and it ties perfectly with the topic, what does a player owe to his team ?
What’s the difference between putting on your sports shoes, heading for the stadium and launching the game and click “Ready” ?

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If having a competitive team is that important to you then you better off finding those people and play with them. Random players dont owe you anything nor do you owe them anything.

People only want to get better if they really want. Thats not something you can force into strangers. Mostly why QM and ranked is just a frustrating hell hole to join if you are solo.

You dont get to enjoy the game to the fullest becasue you decided to join a random team that can be a mix of good players and bronze trolls. Game was always meant to be played in a full team.

You cant really expect randoms to be like you when they wont see you again after game is over. You are playing with randoms. Not a static team you play with everyday who have the same mindset as you.

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This is where your analogy falls apart, by clicking “Ready”, I am not heading to a stadium, I am heading to the beach park with a cooler of beer, a few friends, and joining a pickup game on one of the public volleyball courts. One of those friends is 9 years old, one is 72, and one is allowed to throw his serves over the net rather than serve “the right way” because we all know that when he has had a few, it is safer for everyone. Is this competitive? Heck, no. Is it fun? Heck, yeah. Do we allow random spectators to join, regardless of skill or experience? Oh heck, YEAH!

We also don’t flame them when they miss a set.

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Unfortunately, your example is more akin to starting a game with 5 friends against AIs, or a custome game against other friends, where your poor performance only affects you and those who are willing to put up with it.

If I show up (click “Ready”), the field is occupied by you and your friends (X premade), I have no choice but to join you (matchmaker), you spend the whole game throwing up your beers and telling jokes (not playing seriously), I’d be sad.
Not very respectful, is it?

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Or the reverse of grandstanding to be ‘competitive’ for a group that aren’t into isn’t very ‘respectful’. It’s not as if ‘real sports’ don’t have comparable analogies: apps exist for people to use a ‘match maker’ for playing local pick-up games. Once people meet in person, they’re more likely to adapt to who actually shows instead of necessarily hoping to get the best of some neighborhood league, as that would otherwise require a lot more preprep and coordination.

Traffic law is probably closer to what you mean as there are supposed to be common grounds and respect people observe to help facilitate shared roadspace. However, people have differences in observation, patience, and understanding of road cooperation that putting their own selfish impulses ahead of the ‘matched’ group ends up making things worse for everyone else – despite their inability to notice the consequences of their own involvement.

Part of the issue of ‘games’ is they have some 8 - 10 different ‘motivations’ and people rarely agree on all of what ones are being done at a given game. If someone wasn’t upfront about ‘agreeing’ to the given circumstances, then there’s little they ‘owe’ because they end up thinking the ‘contract’ is broken and they didn’t get what they ‘want’ from the exchange.

However, many of the issues of casual play stem from a difference in perspective and priority; if I build to expect the tank to initiate, and they play to peel instead, then that affects my play: I didn’t make a game plan with them as people might expect if a team chooses to play man-to-man instead of zone defense.

Sports tend to be role specific and have stats to reinforce what is ‘good’ so they can keep doing ‘good’. HotS is not hard defined in the formations, team expectations, and the stats do no reflect ‘good’ play the same way they do in ‘sports,’ so expectations between the two fall apart rather quickly.

It also doesn’t help that people tend to play ‘competitive’ games because they’re not playing ‘real sports’, didn’t learn ‘sportsmanship’ – let alone the ‘good’ version – they aren’t running skill drills to actually be ‘good’ at the game, and tend to fall into ruts of blaming whatever they can.

Without some bar on entry – paid copy, try outs, etc – HotS is a ‘causal hangout’ and is prone to having the bratty kid take his ball and go home and expect the rest of the neighborhood to revolve around him instead of realizing they’re just going to play something else instead.

Similar take on ‘arcade era’ games, there’s some ‘rules’ at hand, but the cabinet technician isn’t going to throw a player out for stalling my game out with credits for vs matches, or program the game to reduce hadouken spammers. If people want a ‘competitive’ environment, then they’re either going to need paid entry, or scouting and try outs. Otherwise, they’re stuck with the play-date kids that the parents dropped off at the park :confused:

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This is a bold one. If I’m the one voluntarily joining a team, I have to know what I’m getting into. I wouldn’t go into a troll premade, for example.
In HotS (or any other game), you don’t always choose your team, but each member has chosen to play. It’s inconceivable to me to imagine for a second launching a team game, any game, and not giving a damn. Maybe it’s an educational handicap, or maybe the majority of players don’t bother with such principles.

I like your road analogy, but it’s hard to compare in the sense that each driver is his own team with his own goal (his destination to reach). You rarely see drivers playing against themselves or underperforming on their routes. (Except when it comes to visiting the mother-in-law :sweat_smile:).

It’s also important to realize that the idea that you don’t owe anyone anything in games also works the other way round: no one owes you anything.
And I don’t think a lot of people here tolerate griefers, do they ?