eSports, Gaming, and Bullying

EDITORIAL??posted Oct 31st, 2012

In a world fueled by passion it can occasionally lead to unsavoury situations. eSports is a world that utilises one important staple ingredient: the internet. Gaming has grown online and the humour, memes and linguistic style have become mainstream, with words such as newbie, owned, leet, gg and entering everyday vocabulary. The other day I heard a non-gamer, technophobe, no-internet girl scream ?OMG, NEWB?. She explained OMG came from magazines and how newb came from the TV show Scrubs.

The complete anonymity of the internet leads to outspoken free thinking and a vocal environment, but within an extremely limited framework. Over time the internet ?user? has taken on a personality and expects the same humour, a required amount of trolling and achieves approval by fulfilling these aspects. You could spend the next month looking at the top votes on Reddit, or the most popular comments on Youtube and I can guarantee the humour is identical in each topic. In an anonymous world the userbase has created a character to mimic and fulfill. Some websites are darker than others in the spectrum of this humour which we can see with popular social sites 4chan, reddit and 9gag each taking on an individual character.

Gaming is by and large anonymous, with the larger games encouraging superficial confidence by allowing your name to melt into the network. Try and recall the last few players in your LoL or CoD match. However the anonymity starts to erode as they enter the top few percentile of good gamers. The eSports scene is far more personal, with a model which is 1 part game, 1 part personality and 1 part scene, in which players in eSports start becoming people.

The eSports scene is a large multifaceted industry of players, casters, fans, business minds, sponsors, hosts and of course game developers, and every single title is a person. Behind each player is a person, behind each screen name is a person and in some cases a business, a life and a means to an end.

Andrew "Zyori" Campbell is an executive producer and lead broadcaster for ZyoriTV. Zyori is well known for his in-depth analysis and pro player interviews in the HoN scene and has been described as ?Heroes of Newerth?s Day[9]? with an easy going personality, in-depth knowledge and dedication to eSports. Over the last 2 years he?s streamed, hosted, played and focused his passion into eSports. A few weeks ago he had one accident: he left his stream on broadcasting to the world an empty room. During this time he walked onto the stream and was naked from the waist down. Overnight the internet exploded with images, videos, links and articles talking about Zyori and his incident. Everyone on the internet and anybody familiar with those in the limelight know that such an incident will be covered, will be shared, laughed at, cringed at and discussed. Two weeks later Zyori streamed a statement and posted a video. He talks about how the ?trolls? took it a step too far.

The internet is a cyber Wild West, with no real law and self moderation which shapes what we as consumers want. After the incident with Zyori many internet fans had heard of or seen the video (even Zyori admitted his real life friends knew) and Zyori admitted he was a realist. He knew this would be the case and being the strong character he is, he took it on the chin, accepted it and tried to move on. But then a select few users took the ?joke? too far. They sent the video to his parents, his out of eSports work place and constantly uploaded the video to Youtube. The ?trolling? crossed the line from the expected internet humour to affecting his life. He revealed he suffered personally to the attacks and expressed concern of the danger of the internet and the lack of ?cyber police? and some kind of law.

This cyber bullying led to the end of Zyori TV. He announced in the video he was going to wind down his involvement in eSports. Garena dropped him and he hinted at various avenues of business closing down, all due to this one mistake. I personally would like to think that internet, the industry and the scene could just ignore it, accept it as a mistake and move on. Sadly we know that whilst individuals in the positions of decision making could do exactly that, it?s only a matter of time before someone will bring it up as an attack, tarnishing whoever may be involved. A sad fact.

Cyber bullying has been a hot topic recently with the suicide of Amanda Todd and murmurs for policing on the internet. Yet I feel this is not required. The community as a whole moderates itself, and with the exception of the over zealous users who feel the need to contact and email sponsors directly over language, incidents or behaviour seen on stream, the community is fair and sensible.

When dealing with internet screen names, pause and just think of the implications of hitting ?enter? after writing some rage. Consider that behind that screen name is a real person, with a real life and real feelings. And to those who need to troll, laugh and play around don?t take it to the next level to bully. Who do you impress? Please, don?t be one of the minority who spoils the eSports community for everyone with irresponsible and mean-spirited bullying; if cyber-bullying stops, we will not need to consider cyber-policing. And, if you are one of the majority who sees the trolling being taken to a new, malicious level, stand up for eSports and your community and do what your parents probably told you all along: stand up to the bullies.

Source: http://www.rtsguru.com/article/4426/eSports-Gaming-and-Bullying.html

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