Sportsmanship vs Gamesmanship in WoW

Community General Discussion
1

Just an interesting little query here…

Are you a “Sportsman” or a “Gamesman”?

I suppose this could need a little explaining, but it’s largely how one approaches the game, how you play it and to what ends.

“Sportsmanship” is something we all should be familiar with, generally being the way you’re expected to play pretty much all sports from a young age and all the way up to a professional level.

From Wikipedia:

Sportsmanship is an aspiration or ethos that a sport or activity will be enjoyed for its own sake, with proper consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one’s competitors. A “sore loser” refers to one who does not take defeat well, whereas a “good sport” means being a “good winner” as well as being a “good loser” (someone who shows courtesy towards another in a sports game).

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportsmanship

The general premise is, as usual, to encourage the game to played so that everyone can enjoy it. This can occasionally include handicapping yourself to give the other side “a sporting chance”, and generally ensuring all players leave the game amicably at the end of the match.

“Gamesmanship” is rather different – the purpose is to do whatever it takes to win, while still technically being within the rules of the game proper. Common methods largely boil down to throwing your opponent off their game, which in a sense gives you an advantage as you should still be on yours.

From Wikipedia:

Gamesmanship is the use of dubious (although not technically illegal) methods to win or gain a serious advantage in a game or sport. It has been described as “Pushing the rules to the limit without getting caught, using whatever dubious methods possible to achieve the desired end”.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamesmanship

A big part of it is mind games to throw your opponents off their game by deliberately frustrating them or confusing them, and even various examples of “trash talk” are clear examples of gamesmanship. The ultimate objective is to win… but generally being careful enough to actually break the rules. In other words, so long as it’s not OFFICIALLY considered “cheating”, it’s fair game.

Based on the above information, would you consider yourself a “gamesman” or a “sportsman”?

I suspect the results will be most interesting.

2

I don’t really see a game.

I see a world, with a bunch of games.

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3

I don’t believe they are mutually-exclusive. You can want the game to be as balanced as possible and work within the rules to get every advantage that you can.

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4

Since you aren’t competing against others, I find it really hard to accurately make them both apply.

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5

… and why am I not surprised that the first response doesn’t answer a simple “A” or “B” question?

… and the ever-annoying “everything is on a spectrum” answer.

While the statement does carry some truth, keep it simple and answer which direction you lean towards.

“Sportsmanship” can certainly be competitive, but has a sense of “fair play” attached to it and doesn’t sweat losing in a fair game… while “Gamesmanship” is inherently competitive, but “playing fair” is secondary to winning the match itself.

Don’t lie to yourself.

People trying to top DPS meters, healing meters, or achieve any sort of ranking are still competitive.

6

No, it’s not on a spectrum. In fact what you’ve presented here is a false dichotomy. The two types of gameplay are not opposites or ends of a spectrum. They can coexist without any problem. Your question is, itself, flawed.

7

My guild raids mythic. We have a saying " >expletive deleted< the dps meters".

Meters are a tool. If you are only focused on pushing meters, you are a bad player.

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8

No one takes DPS meters seriously in 2019.

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9

Yes, I am./

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10

This. If there was something to take serious, its ilvl percentile parses. But even then.

11

ITT: OP makes a question and tells everyone exactly how to respond lolol

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12

Well, I certainly look forward to your detailed explanation as to how the two independent variables.

I deliberately left out “Unsportsmanlike Conduct” out of the original post to try and keep it somewhat neutral, due to how much it overlaps with “Gamesmanship” (or at the very least, it covers when gamesmanship goes too far).

So… the WoW community is FINALLY starting to grow up?!!
My, that is good news… or is your guild just a microcosm, an oasis in the eye of the storm?

It was intended to be a simple “A” or “B” question.
… a poll option would have been nice for this sort of thing.

Answering the question and providing a detailed argument would have been preferable.

… and this is the point I can tell people around here are only doing stuff to mess with people.

13

This is pretty common in higher end content. Its a well known fact if you tunnel and only worry about your personal dps, its not helpful in a raid progression setting.

This does not mean that if someone is parsing incredibly low you ignore it. You find out why, and try to put them on the right path. Of course this also depends on the “seriousness” of your progression. You don’t join a top 100 guild, for example, and parse badly. At that point they aren’t there to teach you.

But for the average guild working through mythic raiding? In my experience they all seem to be well aware that the dps meter rankings isn’t something serious to brag about.

And example. I was 2nd on the dps meters for a recent raid boss. If I went purely by that, I would feel pretty good about myself. When I brought up my logs and compared what I did to other ele shams of the same ilvl, I was at like a 43rd percentile parse. Thats pretty bad. Bragging about my dps meters would look pretty stupid, since I should have done a ton better.

14

Gamesmanship is just another word for exploiter in the gaming world. Those people probably aint around to say they are one cause they have probably been banned.

15

I can’t wait to see how much useful stuff you do with this data. An academic paper “gamesmanship surpassing sportsmanship in MMO communities”.
I can see why you need serious answers.
I’ll be watching.

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16

No need for intricate detail, it’s pretty simple. A game exists as a competition, you either play it the best you can or you give up on winning in any meaningful manner. Part of a game is having rules set up so that the most skilled player has the best chance at winning.

If the rules allow extremely broken behavior that you need some sort of extra code which only certain people hold to then either the game rules need to be changed or those people are just handicapping themselves.

So, sportsmanship is setting up the rules in such a way that everyone can use their full toolkit to get a win. Gamesmanship is playing the game to your fullest ability. They are both part of a well-tuned and exciting game, not opposites.

17

A bit of both to be precise.

But then again respect is relative nowadays, point out someone’s mistake or ask them to CC/Interrupt and get a “WhY r U sO tOxIc”

So I lean more on Gamesmanship

18

Wrong. Hockey is a good example of this. You don’t have to be physical and check other players hard, but it is allowed to be done and some people do it. If you do it excessively, even if it is within the rules and a clean hit, the other team will send someone after you to fight. Legal,within the rules, but requires a code. “The code” as it is referred to.

19

Which just means that they added more rules to the game. Maybe not written ones but still extra rules. Be too aggressive and you’ll get someone sent after you.

20

Gamesmanship is very specific about not breaking the actual rules of the game.

… so “exploits” are off the table. Unless there’s no consequences for being caught using them.

You’re talking about an idealized and unbreakable game, and not taking into account player conduct for how they react to winning or losing (which is largely OUTSIDE of any official ruleset).

Generally speaking, “sportsmanship” is that extra set of rules of conduct; quite often unwritten rules and conventions which, by common acceptable, should not have to be actual hard rules.

Also, gamesmanship includes tricks like making it seem like you have less skill than you actually have. From the article linked earlier:

Causing the opponent to overthink
Examples of methods designed to cause the opponent to overthink or to not take the game seriously enough include:
[…]

  • Claiming that the game being played “just isn’t my sport”, or claiming less expertise than the player actually possesses (a mild form of hustling)

I believe the term “smurfing” is used when applied to videogames to PRECISELY describe this particular set of behaviour. “Twinking” for low level alts in PvP can be considered another example of gamesmanship, giving yourself a huge gear advantage above those who normally would not have them.

So how would ANYONE write rules to counter this particular set of behaviour?