“ Sportsmanship: A form of conduct that includes fairness or fair play, respect for one's opponent, and graciousness in winning or losing, courtesy, striving spirit, becoming to one participating in a sport. Fairness in following the rules of the game is tacit.” |
The classic definition of Sportsmanship.
e-Gaming
will always fall short of becoming a true e-Sport until we remove smurfing, bad manner and cheating from it. It will never be true e-Sports until we have real e-Sportsmanship. Avoiding bad manner, which always starts with no smurfing and no cheating is the better path to improve our gaming community.
e-Sportsmanship
has the same definition and it is obvious that no cheating, no bad manner and a new concept, no smurfing, are implied. The average typical e-gamer usually only recognizes the no cheating aspect, his opinion about bad manner and smurfing is very varied. It is even more obvious however that both of them hurt e-games from ever becoming true sports. What follows is a small discussion on our three main weaknesses as a gaming community. These are our three evils. From a community perspective the worst evil of them all is smurfing, as it is probably the least recognized as a problem, but they all take their toll and do their damage.The Thief: Map Hacking
The list of top players who have map hacked keeps growing, one by one they get caught, over and over until one day they reach the nadir point, the point when they start winning without a hack. A gamer with passion for his game, who maps hacks does for two main reasons, to win no matter the cost and to learn. They reason, whether in their sub-consciousness or consciousness, if I start playing today, what are my hopes of catching up with those players out there with 20,000 plus games under their arms? Map hack.
The easiest and fastest way to learn the game: Imitation. The imitate in real time over and over until the reasons and why of every aspect of the game becomes evident, even to the dullest. You will hear them claim they "did it for fun" or they did it "to be noticed or to belong" or to "get better games" All lies or self deceit: They did it to steal the win, or the knowledge.
It is a selfish path, it is the path of the Thief. They will steal from others the wins and they will steal from themselves the best part of the gaming experience: the learning curve. Selfish in that they ruin the game for countless others, so that they can win and get better. Their needs are more important, and it does not matter that they trample the game and others for it. They take, or so they think, and give nothing. There is nothing sadder than having learnt this game map hacking: they ruined their past, they ruined years of gradual learning and the chance of being battle forged.
The thief never does realize they only stole their own joy and gaming experience. It is like growing up skipping childhood. The greatest moments in anyone's gaming experience, is when you win a game that was earned through effort and hard work, while your opponent gave you his best. In general the more experience you have, the less you have to learn, and the more time you spend applying the knowledge learnt. The true fun and wonder was when all was still new and you were still learning more than applying your knowledge.
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The Liar: Smurfing
Many do not even view smurfing as something intrinsically wrong. Again you will hear "it is fun" or "I smurf so people do not harass me" etc.. Many reason you will hear, but again they are lies or self deceit. If you do not want to be harassed /dnd /ignore or simply ignore the messages. Who says you need to lie? Want privacy? Go to a private channel. The privacy issue is a farse. A gamer that smurfs does so for three reasons, to hide his past, to deceive his opponent or to avoid accountability. Smurfing is perhaps far more evil than map hacking or bad manner.
From a cheaters perspective: It is no coincidence that smurfing is the map hacker’s greatest ally. He can hack, and if he gets caught, the only victim will be a smurf account that he will never use again. If he is clever they will never know who he really is. He can steal and remain anonymous.
From a social perspective: No real community can be built or developed if smurfing is allowed, they simply do not last. You can not base social interactions on lies only. You can not build long term social relationships if you hide your identity, delete your past and invent yourself every time you see convenient. How can one build a lasting community if there is no accountability and no one is responsible for their own actions?
From an competitive perspective: Smurfing offends fairness and sportsmanship. Smurfing implies lack of respect for the individual and your opponent. There is nothing more rude and cowardly than to lie about who you are. You want to make it to the top, but if you do not make it - you want no one to know about it? You want to be known if and only when you win, but if you lose you chose to remain anonymous. You want your opponent not to know who you are so you have an edge over him? You want the win only. Again a selfish path that robs your opponent of his merits, to know who he beat. Smurfing is nothing more than a refined form of cheating.
The Heathen: Bad Manner
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You will find them in forums always posting negative comments, always insulting the fellow gamers and always whining, commonly known as trolls. They have all similar character flaws: they are insecure, they seek attention in their own misguided way and they lack respect for the game and his fellow gamers. You will see them insult you for no other reason but to offend or hurt. Have you ever joined a game and your opponent starts a litany of insults, from the start to the end? Whether he loses or wins he will remain rude.
Again smurfing is the greatest ally for the heathen, for he is not accountable for his own behavior, he can hide. Again due to the intrinsic flaws in his character, these are the first to become thieves, and start cheating. So whether it be cheating, smurfing or bad manner, we need to remove them from our community and our game as much as we can. When we do this, we will have a true e-Sportsmanship.
Up to Us
It is up to us to make our gaming experience better. We are always blaming the different ladders, battle.net or hackers. We are always blaming others, never ourselves. When I say we, I really mean we, for I myself have done my pityful share of blaming and accusing, and yes I have even smurfed, who has not? The difference is I refuse to do it ever again. We are always complaining why things are not better, but bottom-line, its is up to us to change our ways. It is up to us to stop accepting and tolerating behaviour that hurts us all.
Summary in retrospectPutting aside the usual bad manner that plagues our community, many excellent replies, in fact most. The mixed feelings about the three evils fall only upon one of them: Smurfing, which was the star of this feature. Apparently the community at large, though they recognize that smurfing can be evil at times, many believe that it can have "good" uses and it is not always evil or for that matter "wrong". A few simply do not care, they will smurf regardless - it is a "game". Though I disagree, I respect their views. Here are just some of them.
The best one by far was posted by
superpenguin, but then again he is superpenguin after all. I refuse to touch it for fear of spoiling its integrity, it would be too long to quote, but feel free to check it yourself, its number #42.Gosugamers is after me!
Community feedback for posterity"Problem is, some people only see it as a game and nothing else, so they could care less if they hurt someone or abuse them in anyways."
Cx_Gu[n]Smurfing is allowed on battle.net. Period. Hacking is not. I can't hack if I want to without breaking the rules. But I can (and have, and do, and will) smurf.
BurgerMeister"Out of publicity and to give the top players some real credibility from a sponsor side, smurfing is totally ruining it all. Smurfing destroys the ladder system."
MazorI disagree with your anti-smurfing policy 100%
Legionnaire"Do soccer players show up at matches wearing disguises? Do celebrities put on a mask and beat the living daylights out of someone, or start acting like complete assholes? No. The same should be said for progamers. The single valid reason I can think of to smurf is to avoid having reps of yourself (ever notice how Korean tv rarely releases any reps?) for other people to study. Even then, why should they have an advantage that all other sports do not? On the other hand, privacy is a right, and it should be left up to the individual to decide."
sf.varaon"When I play ClanWars or Tournaments for my team, when I play NationWar for my country - I play on real account - it is clear. ...About smurfing in ladders. Cant you realize, that if I choose smurf to train, I will not make my team famous, because I don't wear my clan tag? This way I play just for skill, my opponents won't get nervous playing me, as it was already said here in comments and I could focus on game, not on answering to thousands of n00bs asking for game, game lessons or chat support. Until I smurf to hide some kind of cheat (ladder abuse, maphack) or until my behaviour could be called bad manner - smurfing in ladders is nothing bad either."
Raven"smurfing in tournaments just shouldn't be allowed. Once the tournament part of a ladder starts, you stop smurfing, simple as that. The smurf has served its purpose of allowing you to practice/play in peace, no harm done."
iD.FA "The cream of the best players will always be the rolemodel for the new gamers, so if you have any intentions on making this idea come true, you would have to start at the top - with the progamers in Korea. If they would totally stop smurfing the rest of the gamers will follow NOT the other way around. Good luck with that."
StinGeR"right about cheating bm, but wrong about smurfing, smurfing is bad depending on the reason."
sons"I cant understand why a player doenst wanna play with his realnick, are you not proud of the nickname you've chosen AND suceeded with?"
play.Habit "As soon as you start thinking smurfing is a deadly sin... you've been playing brood war too long. It's about killing each others units fairly - without hacks, not their names, or their face irl."
aar"No, I think smurfing is not bad in most cases. It's not a lie. It's none of their business if you're playing so long as you're keeping great manner and doing what you want to do. Especially progamers, so many people find ways to get their replays and when they are practicing for maps and do not want replays shared at all giving their opponents an edge on their preferred styles or their builds on certain maps they are practicing for... :P"
Nal_Testie"To smurf IMO is to change nick in order for you to INTENTIONALLY fool the people against you, you cheat them in a way... Ronaldinho doesn't hide his face when he plays soccer, he maybe train hidden sometimes but not on tournaments - Champions league, World cup (such as are the ladders for Brood and TFT...). And he makes a looooooooooooot more money than you, so money are not a reason either... Just because that's an e-sport doesn't mean you have to ruin all the fun of the game. But on the other hand I understand that can never be stopped. It can be decreased in size but it will never fully stop."
anduril
