It was only a few months ago that China collapsed at The Shanghai Major. Despite having three of the top four teams at The International, not a single team finished in the Top 8 at Shanghai, an unprecedented decline for the region’s Dota rankings.

In an interview at the event, Kyle “Swindlezz” Freedman suggested poor work ethic was to blame — a theory widely espoused by the community. “The Chinese teams just don't try. I just feel like they aren't taking enough pride in what they do,” he said. Tang “71” Wenyl, manager of the most-hyped Chinese team at the event, EHOME, echoed the criticism, saying that in his region there are “too few players and teams that actually really want to win titles.”

“Not trying hard enough” is a common and easy explanation for underperformance. But we regularly see favourite teams at top events stumble and fail. Were they all just not trying hard enough?

Ahead of The Manila Major this weekend — and looking at the social media reactions to Secret and Evil Geniuses’ performances since Shanghai — I was driven to ask: what goes into a choke? When the big game comes around, where does a top team’s motivation go?

Social Animals in a Social Game

Team Secret rolled into last year’s International with an unprecedented ranking, at the top of the most ferocious field of Dota competition yet assembled. Just two months before the event, Pinnacle projected Secret had a 42 percent chance to win the top prize in Dota, more than doubling the odds of their next closest competitor. Excluding EG, Secret was predicted more likely to win than every other team combined.

But Secret’s historic TI voyage was about as successful as the Titanic’s. They got a little over halfway there and sank like steel.

In the echo chamber of Dota fandom, underperformance tends to be localized around individual players. In this case, Artour "Arteezy" Babaev was an unfortunate target. “I could have tried harder to bring out the best in S4 and tried to ignore my hate for Kuro,” he said after Secret’s TI loss. “I could have done more, but I blew the fuck up.” The comment sparked an explosion of fan backlash.

In Dota, the most vocal fans are the most vitriolic, gleefully throwing players onto raging fires after losses, and the accumulated weight of Reddit shitposts, social media attacks and in some cases even death threats sits heavily on pros’ shoulders. The result is that for players like Arteezy, the emotional blow of a major loss is multiplied by the inevitable public witch-hunt.

Staying calm in the face of both opponents and fans is crucial to maintaining confidence and execution, and one of the reasons LAN experience is so important for growth. “The calmer you are, the more likely you are to make a decision informed by your practice,” said Kurtis “Aui_2000” Ling on the Defense of the Patience podcast last month. “It’s something every team can work on.”

Humans Under Inhuman Conditions

Experiments in psychology have found that people who face external pressures grow less motivated by their own, intrinsic reasons for playing. According to a 1982 psychology study from the University of Rochester, positive feedback combined with the expectation of success provides weaker motivation than positive feedback alone. In layman’s terms, telling someone, “We expected you to win, so good job for meeting our expectations,” is less motivating than simply telling them, “Good job for playing well.” A follow-up 1996 study found that subjects told to focus all of their attention on winning had reduced intrinsic motivation.

Reinessa, a streamer, cosplayer, and all around community pillar, has plenty of exposure to the social side of professional gamers, in part because she’s been dating Theeban ‘1437’ Siva, Team Secret’s coach, since well before the team’s TI run last summer. She has a lot to say about what motivates players — and de-motivates them — behind the scenes.

“A perfect mechanical gear can only do as much as the other ones it's built into an engine with,” she says. “I think that guys are immensely passive-aggressive, and will ignore problems that have to do with 'feelings’ for as long as possible. When you are dealing with a team game, that is the insidious enemy.”

Pro gamers are faced with incredibly high pressure, often at a very young age and with few emotional supports to turn to. No other international competition puts boys — sometimes as young as fifteen — on stage in front of thousands of fans, with millions of dollars and the threat of endless online animosity on the line. Godly Dota skills don’t prepare you for that.

Reneissa says there are a myriad of human factors that play into performance, both in the short- and long-term. The balance between work and life has as much impact on esports competitors as the rest of us, except the job is much more than a typical nine-to-five. Players are frequently forced to play while sick, sleep-deprived, and under-stimulated. As just one example, in 2013 Alliance’s Admiral Bulldog fell ill and lost his voice before facing Na’Vi in StarLadder Star Series Season Season 7. Despite placing first in league play and beating Na`Vi in the Winner’s Finals of the LAN event, Alliance went down 3-1 to Na`Vi in the Grand Finals. In a post-interview with GodBlessMali, Bulldog refused to blame the loss on his illness, but he admitted it was very difficult to play when his teammates could barely hear him over the crowd.

Family and romantic troubles that the community are often unaware of can also have a big impact on motivation. According to Reneissa, Peter “PPD” Dager broke up with his girlfriend shortly after the Shanghai Major this year, which she speculates may have had some untold impact on his mentality, in addition to the team’s tumultuous roster changes.

As fans, there’s no way to know how much PPD’s personal issues affected the team — all we can see is their relative decline on the tournament circuit. Even that is, to some degree, a narrative told by fans to fans; EG had top 3 finishes at two out of the three LANs they’ve played in since Shanghai. Still, the loudest reaction from fans has been, “Why aren’t you winning like you used to?”

When winning is the only goal, and when first place is everything, all feedback comes down to meeting or failing to meet expectations. There is no path towards truly positive motivation, creativity, and investment in the game for its own sake.

The Cost of Money

Add prizes into the mix, and we step into the realm of the “overjustification effect.” Experimental evidence suggests that people are less likely to be motivated by a task for its own sake once they expect pay. This isn’t a conscious decision, but a basic shift in the way humans view tasks.

Loss of motivation when hobbies become jobs is a commonly cited struggle of musicians, creators, streamers, and writers. When athletes such as Wayne Rooney or Albert Pujols fail to perform after signing multi-million dollar contracts, the overjustification effect is typically ascribed. Why would gamers be different?

Yet Dota 2 prize pools keep skyrocketing — meaning that pay is tied to performance, rather than sustaining players through their professional careers. Not only does this mean rising players can’t earn enough income to find their footing on the international stage, it’s potentially undermining top rosters’ ability to stay motivated, as their motivation shifts without their conscious awareness or control.

A 2010 meta-analysis by Tim Judge and colleagues looked at 92 studies from over 120 years, and found that income increases are only trivially related to job satisfaction. But experimental results also suggest job satisfaction is one of the most crucial predictors of performance. Does spiking a prize pool from $500,000 to $5 million mean more pro gamers are interested in Dota? Yes, most likely. Does it increase satisfaction, and therefore improve their performance? Unlikely.

Try Harder

In the eyes of fans, personalities and even players, motivation often boils down to this most common of mantras. “They’ll win if they come in wanting it enough,” say analyst desks in trite clichés. In the community at large, it’s exceedingly rare to see a real discussion over whether the players’ minds are clear, whether their team is communicating well, or whether they have the emotional and physical health to sustain their play. Lack of information probably feeds into this cycle, since players are often reclusive and resist discussing personal concerns with the public fanbase.

But even managers and players often say, “We should have tried harder,” as an explanation for failures.

“Sometimes when you lose you feel like, ‘I need to try harder,’ or maybe you have a feeling like, ‘If I played more hours all the past weeks, or if we put in more work, we would’ve won this match,’” Maurice “KheZu” Gurmann, No Diggity’s offlaner, recently told me.

There’s an immense amount of pressure to hold on to losses, to self-blame, and to ramp up practice, without addressing the underlying problems hindering performance. Yet losing is very rarely a case of a team or player consciously ignoring their craft. “Europeans all have tried hard,” Rasmus “Misery” Filipsen said on Defense of the Patience. “All new teams want to rise and become better. Everyone wants to win pretty much. It was kind of not like that back in the day. The same goes for America; it’s the same way, pretty much.”

Study after study on optimal practice patterns, across fields ranging from athletics to academics, have shown that practicing has diminishing returns. Eventually trying hits a limit, and no amount of trying harder breaks those barriers. As Yoda said, “Do or do not, there is no try.” Trying harder simply isn’t enough, when the factors most seriously hindering progress have nothing to do with optimizing practice’s returns. Yet how often do you see fans calling for a team to take better care of itself? How often do teams admit they haven’t been sleeping well, or that stress has eroded their execution?

When winning becomes everything and players lose intrinsic motivation, it’s not hard to see that trying as hard as you can and trying as hard as you could aren’t always the same. As teams win more, the expectation for continued success makes losing harder to accept and address. There is no offseason in Dota. There is no break. There is only winning. Unfortunately, that attitude leads to far more adversity than success.

The only way improve and maintain beyond the limits of practice is to address underlying issues. Khezu said sometimes he has to accept that he did everything he could and let the loss go.

Pride Goeth Before the Fall

The most commonly cited motivator for players? Pride. It’s about proving who is the best. It’s not about competing and doing your best, but becoming the best.

“It’s not about the money,” Reinessa said. “These guys want to win. Think about those egos. They work their ass off to win. But just because they want it doesn’t mean they’re in the right place for it.”

Reinessa sees it, as do commentators like Alan “Nahaz” Bester, who said on Around the Pit, “This is their careers, man. They take pride in being good at their jobs like all of us do.”

But pride is a thin bulwark against the erosion of morale that players face — from losses, from an unflinchingly negative community and from interpersonal stress. Increasing prize pools and pumping up expectations of success undermine players’ reasons for playing; rather than playing for the sake of the game, they’re playing for the sake of the win.

As esports continues to grow, teams, organizers, and especially fans need to seriously consider how traditional sports and careers balance the work and life of its participants. When winners lose, it is rarely because they simply didn’t try hard enough or didn’t have the potential. As Swindlezz recently said, “Everyone involved is a living, breathing human that just wants to win. Unfortunately only five of us ever do.”

Special thanks to Reinessa for her numerous contributions to this piece and to Khezu for relaying his thoughts to me despite his blistering schedule.

Ryan "Gorgon the Wonder Cow" Jurado writes about Dota 2 and freelances for theScore esports. You can follow him on Twitter.