If you have ever gone into a more than a few Call of Duty lobbies, or played in a tough game of League of Legends, odds are you have encountered someone who has belligerently berated or otherwise “raged” at other players within the game. This is an all too common phenomenon that permeates much of the competitive video game scene and it has stunted player growth at almost every level. First, let’s look at a few examples of what video game rage really looks like in practice.

A compilation of Call of Duty players screaming at teammates.

An extreme example of rage at a LAN event

So, why is this so commonplace in video games, but far less common in everyday competitive sports? Yes, I know we have all seen a pro basketball player yelling at their teammate or a quarterback throwing their helmet on the sideline after a bad series, but this is the exception instead of the rule. People are forced to behave in certain ways day to day because they are held accountable by social norms. You wouldn’t spend 5 minutes screaming obscenities to a teammate in a pickup basketball game after a mistake, because you would be ostracized by the other players. This however is not applicable to the online space; when online, people are allowed to have outbursts without fear of any real repercussion which brings down the greatest barrier to this kind of behavior…peer pressure.

A great example of how anonymity allows players to act irrationally can be seen when players have an account banned due to unsportsmanlike conduct which takes months of community reporting to accomplish only to have them create a new account, and within minutes these players can be back in a community creating the same problems they were banned for initially.

This has been and continues to be a cultural problem that faces the world of E-Sports and video games in general and as popularity and public exposure soar , it is something that will need to be addressed. Without taking an adaptive approach to this issue E-Sports run the risk of creating a (more) toxic community which will eventually drive off new members and slowly wither the pool of up and coming players. On top of this internal strife, a community like this would only garner more negative publicity which in turn may ward off new sponsors and fans, negatively impacting the future of E-Sports as a whole.How does the community go about solving this issue then?

There is no clear cut answer, psychology is a murky area and that is especially true when you throw the average age of many gamers and a competitive atmosphere into the mix. However, some standardized practices which have been adopted by many professional sports leagues along with some E-Sports organizations can help lay the groundwork. It has to be a two pronged approach, attacking the issue from both the professional level and the community level. Professional players in many prominent leagues such as ESL and LCS are held to quite a high standard already. RIOT Games has been at the forefront of creating professionalism in E-Sports with their salaried players who are guided by a set of expectations and written rules laid out for them. Structure like this in the professional scene is paramount as most top level pros are now sporting sponsors who often do not want a negative association with their brand.

Professional players must also act as role models for prospective and upcoming players, and infractions must be handled in a businesslike manner. IWillDominate was a professional LoL player for Team Dignitas who was banned from competitive play for a year after his interactions with the community were deemed too negative and controversial. He later returned to professional play to help Team Liquid make the Semi-Finals in the LCS. This is a poster child example of how E-Sports organizations can handle adversity and maintain professionalism within the sport. Good role models now will help to cultivate positive players later.

The second side of this is the community itself which is admittedly much harder to regulate without appearing oppressive to the player base. Most games have implemented a report system which has decreased rage to a certain degree through fear of punishment. However, given the ease with which a player can simply create a new account this approach often doesn’t work. I propose that games ban an IP address for reported behavior (after being vetted for authenticity) for a tiered period of time. This would look something like X number of hours for the first offense, x number of days, etc.

Now, I know someone is saying, ‘but what if my roommate does something and gets our IP banned and now I can’t play?’ This is where the peer pressure starts to work the same magic it does when playing a team game not on the internet. If repercussions for this type of behavior not only effect the player in the game universe, but can consequentially impact them outside the game as well, the benefit of changing the behavior rises exponentially. It wouldn’t be easy and honestly it might not be well received initially, but implementing these rules might just help curb the growing rage culture within video games and allow E-Sports the room to grow to its full potential.