opinion time:
the truth is players don’t lose all the time. companies setup the matches to deliver a 50/50 win loss ratio, because if they didn’t do this, then some players would be losing all the time, these players would uninstall, and then they lose money because they can’t sell boxes or whatever they push these days.
however, humans also experience losses worse than wins. the magnitude of a loss emotion is typically greater than an equivalent win emotion. we evolved like this to make sure you didn’t lose your stash of food in the tree somewhere, or perhaps at the back of the cave - if you did, you died, and so those humans who preserved a sense of dread when experiencing loss were more likely to pass on their genetics. this is why playerbases constantly whinge and moan about being on the losing team - you are actually getting 50/50 win/loss, but your brain only pays attention to the losses, it doesn’t remember the wins as well, and so your perception is distorted.
only in some rare brains is this emotion spread dampened - these rare humans are able to tank losses easily. it still feels bad for them, but they can take the hit way easier. these individuals are typically also the professionals in competitive ventures of all strokes. since society sees them as “elite”, this is now seen as a good thing, even though in rougher times, you can’t expect these people to give more than a cursory fuck about the food supply being lost to bears. it’s one of the reasons why you see elite athletes constantly developing drug problems, catching rape charges, and going bankrupt. the loss just isn’t as emotionally bad for them. they can tank it. it’s not psychopathic, it’s just… they have less aversion to losses.
anyway, if a game is equal, balanced and fair, then an overwhelming majority of the playerbase is experiencing more loss emotion than win emotion, on average. this undercurrent of loss emotion is the true cause of the “violent” part of “violent video games”. it’s not the shooting itself, it’s the competition between players that festers these loss emotions, that then causes the aggression.
boomer legislators get this part mixed up and confused all the time, and so they speak reductively of the problem when they demand less bloodsplatter and gun imagery. what they don’t get, is FIFA, Super Smash Bros, Rocket League etc, can also cause this horrible feeling, because they are competitive games. it’s the competition that does it, not the violence. this is the true origin of toxicity in playerbases. no wonder DotA2 players always have 4000+ hours and say “i hate it, but lets go again”. “just 1 more round” it sounds like drugs, doesn’t it? “just 1 more bump brooo”. “cmonnn, just 1 more”.
solution: stop playing competitive matchmaking. it’s not good for you, it’s not healthy. you are feeding your brain a virtual drug. you are chasing the win, just like a gambler. stop feeding your ego, you don’t need to be good at a game to feel valid. overwhelming chances are you don’t have a “winner-style” competitive brain that will help you cope with loss emotions and truly let you enjoy comp/ranked games, so please stop trying. you’re hurting yourself. “top” rank will never be worth your mental health. you have to let it go.❤️
sources: (loss emotion magnitude in dota2, pdf)[https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7348&context=etd].
(elite athletes found to be arrested far more frequently for DV and SA than non-athletes)[https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1483&context=honors]
(competitive games, not the “cosmetically violent” games, lead to aggression)[https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/08/video-games]
and lastly, my own personal experience dealing with this in 2018. most of this post is anecdotal, it’s an opinion piece, and i don’t care to back this up further.
It’s not some conspiracy, if you are at a 50/50 win rate, that means you are at the appropriate skill level. If you’re better you would have more wins and you’ll move up the ranking until you start losing more games, where you will fall down the rankings to where your average is.
It’s skill based ranking after all, some people have good days where they are better and some also have bad days. It all averages out, but 50/50 win rate means you are appropriately ranked.
It’s very easy to think how striving for 50/50 in all cases is a good and even desirable solution, but that’s not how matchmaking is built in modern games because it would make for pretty bad experiences
That is how they are built, and how does everyone having as even of a chance as possible make for a bad experience?
Putting a bias like the parent comment is claiming is what will make the experience bad. Yeah you’ll get grumpy that you get paired with someone who has no defence, but they are also paired with you for a reason, they are a liability in other places.
I find the people that complain it’s a bad experience are the ones that are the most sore about a loss, they are the ones that just want to steam roll everyone so they can have fun while causing others peoples experiences to be diminished so they can be the ones having fun. Don’t be this person.
I still haven’t read that source about dota 2 but personally, I think it’s addictive because it feels sooooo good when you win. It brings the worst of you when you lose, but when you win, it feels really good, it’s so satisfying to win a hard match, competitive or not (i play a lot of turbo, feels addictive anyway). After all, if we only felt bad when losing and didn’t feel as good when wining, we wouldn’t come back. Or at least, I wouldn’t. If another game frustrates me, and gives me nothing in return, I leave it
Honestly I don’t even think it’s being elite. Ranked or not, the main concept is understanding 2 things, 1. There is no real consequence to loosing and 2. That looses are nothing more than something you can still have fun in, it’s not the destination but the journey that matters.
As someone that had losses and events in my life, the game and most things in life and miniscule, ans with this I enjoy everything. It’s great. No need to worry cause there is ALWAYS better evenings ans you have had worse, much worse than loosing 25+ in a row. Elite or not, it just means being logical and not judging your self
Agreed. I was huge on League for the better half of my 20s and it was all consuming. Haven’t been into any multi-player since. (not knocking people who do, to be clear. Just didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole again)
Yea I know some people like that. I’m fortunate enough that I don’t get addicted like that, I play plenty but not to the detriment of my life.
This is a great writeup and matches with my experiences as well. That said, I would say that the discourse around the subject is complicated and itself fraught with emotion. Ironically (or perhaps just appropriately), the discourse is framed as competitive: one between “boomers” and “gamers,” with the prevailing narrative being that out of touch pearl clutchers are obsessed with attacking forms of entertainment they don’t understand instead of dealing with the real problems of society. Part of the narrative, however, is also the categorical rejection from gamers that video games have the ability to affect your mental state or influence your emotions in ANY capacity. Which, as you’ve noted, they do. It’s competition. We see professional athletes get into fights and engage in poor sportsmanship constantly. In baseball, pitchers will throw balls at batters with the intent to hit. Batters will charge the mound. And this is in a game that explicitly forbids violence.
I think part of the issue is this expectation (and you noted this, as well) that people attach their identity to being “good at video games” - it’s a signifier of accomplishment for people who haven’t really accomplished much. Often times, this is young people or people whose careers are just getting started, or who are still in school and have a tenuous degree of personal agency. The thing that’s tilting, the thing that makes them upset, is that they expect this to be a domain in which they have power and control, and loss is a signifier of the fact that this is not true. It reminds them they don’t really have any power over their own lives.
Nah, my win rate is objectively under 50%, and I’m already down to a level where it feels like the outcome of the battle is largely separated to what I’m actually doing any more in comparison to what teammates I get. By logic, I should finally get 50% win rate this time, but somehow it’s still not, wtf.
And of course I almost uninstall because of that, and at least already play much less than I could. They clearly already lose money from this, people I know mostly have already quit the game.
