Opponent or Enemy - Who Are You Playing Against?

Is the person across the table from you your opponent or your enemy?

I think this is an important distinction that I hadn't considered until recently. When we play games, our stated purpose is to beat the other person. But I think how we view that other person can influence how we behave in and out of the game.F

I'll take the most common example of treating the other player like your enemy. If you've ever played an online shooter, you know what I'm talking about. Years ago when I would sit down to play Call of Duty, the people on the other team weren't competition; they were horrible people who must be crushed in the most humiliating way possible. There is no reason to hate them, but my view towards them could be so venomous that I would purposely do what I could to anger them. Using cheap weapons, hiding in a place with no strategic advantage just to frustrate them when they died, and teabagging them (if you don't know what it is, just trust that it's the least honorable way to celebrate a kill). I would do that because they weren't a person with value, but someone I literally cared nothing about.

Contrast that to people I play Warmachine with. When we play I'm relaxed, joking, playing hard but playing fair. I'll talk to them about tactics they might be able to use to beat me, knowing that it will put me closer to a loss. I see the person I'm playing as someone with value, who isn't just a soulless person who only exists to make me lose. I will play hard, but I'll always maintain civility.

There are a few personal reasons behind this difference. The obvious one is that I know my friends, but there is no face to someone in a video game. Another is just maturity - back when I was a hardcore gamer I genuinely didn't care about the other person. I couldn't see them, I'd never interact with him again, so why should I care if I make them angry? Heck, it was fun to know they were angry!

But I think it all boils down to how I viewed the person on the other team. The existence of enemies is why we had the Geneva Convention. When left to our own devices we'll do anything to beat our enemies. We not only want to win, but we want to make them feel dominated, humiliated, and worthless.

That's not something that exists on a macro scale. If I'm on the blue team in Halo, everyone on the red team could be considered my enemy. As long as they lose, it doesn't matter how I behave. I could fight with decency and dignity.... or I could utterly humiliate them and smile, knowing that the greatest thing I could do would be to ruin their night.

But if they're my opponent, it changes my behavior without doing much to change how I play. As I said in my WAAC article series, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with taking advantage of anything built in to a game to win. If a weapon is more powerful than any other weapon, you shouldn't be ashamed for using it. Nothing in the game's established rules says "If you use _____, your win is worth less."

So if I kill my opponent with a rocket launcher, I move on and continue trying to win. I don't gloat, I don't scream "take that scrub!" whether or not they can hear me. My goal isn't to beat them, but to win a game according to the game's rules. If the game says "first to 50 kills wins," then my purpose is to get 50 kills. It's not to kill someone an make them feel bad about being killed. They died, it's part of the game, and the same thing can happen to me when I get outplayed. I shouldn't count it as a victory if I get a shrill message laden with profanity because I treated them like crap in the game and they are upset about it. They are a person with value, and I should respect that.

It took me awhile to realize this, mostly because I didn't know I was placing less value on a person playing a game against me. Somehow a form of entertainment had become more important than my humanity. I'm not even sure when it set in, but in hindsight my behavior over the years has been rather embarrassing.

I hope I'm just a corner case, but I think a lot of us do this. The more anonymous we are allowed to become, the more likely we are to treat people as enemies instead of opponents. That's part of the reason I have grown to enjoy face-to-face games over the more convenient internet-based games. Not simply because I can see my opponent, but because they can see me and treat me with an equal amount of respect.

That's not to say that you should only play nice when you are held accountable in a face-to-face setting. While I'm loathe to admit it, Halo players are just as much of a living, breathing person as my closest friends. Even if I get teabagged at every death (which you do in Halo...), it's still important to take the mature path and treat them as an opponent.

That was quite the ramble, but if you've stuck with me this far I'll try to better sum it up. When playing a game, put more value in your opponent than in the game. Do what you can to beat them, but remember that the purpose is to beat the game, not the other person.

See you tomorrow! And don't forget about my Warmachine/Hordes dice giveaway coming up soon!