Teamplay Behavior - The Finer Points
By Jimmy Dota

A good team is like a powerful, finely tuned marriage. Members form strategies together, capture objectives together, and then finally unlock cosmetic items together. A bad team, on the other hand, is an ugly, embarassing thing characterized by bickering, sloppy plays, frustration, and team wipes.

Nearly all bad matches have one thing in common: poor teamplay behavior (TB). This is true even if no team members are explicitly griefing. Unfortunately, too many rules of teamplay behavior remain unspoken. Some leaders seem to assume that their teammates already have strong and generous characters like their own. But judging from a few of the gamers we've encountered, more rules ought to be spelled out. Here are twelve of them.

RULE #1 Don't leave. Sometimes, a match doesn't go well. You find that the game is not just unfun, it is agony. You may be furious because a teammate is doing poorly, or humilitated because you are doing poorly. Your friends might be fighting, the game might be glitching, some jerk in the other team might be using the chat to twist your thumbscrews. At these times, yanking out your power cable seems like an elegant solution to your troubles. Don't do it. Rage quitting is the absolute worst thing you can do for your reputation as a team player. When you quit, your teammates will imagine you crying in the corner like a baby. So instead of quitting the game forever, try quitting it for a minute. Wait until your character is in the spawn, take off your headset, and take ten deep breaths.

RULE #2 Make sure your stuff works. Your mouse, keyboard, graphics card, internet connection, and game should be set up before you so much as whisper your intention to play a competitive match. Double check that that game you are about to play is installed and patched. Your teammates need to know you are competetent enough to run a videogame on a computer without hassle. Some technical difficulties are unavoidable, such as the internet disconnecting, the game not running correctly, or mom needing you to take out the garbage. If you anticipate these becoming an issue, warn your teammates about them before they happen.

RULE #3 Be patient while everything gets organized. Just like how a five-star restaurant takes longer to bring out your food than a McDonald's, the experience of playing a competitive game with a good team can take time to set up. If you cannot play a game without waiting fifteen minutes for it to start, play Bejeweled. Otherwise, wait quietly until everyone is ready. If you are one of those people who hops into the discord, loudly demands that a team materializes in front of you, and threatens to leave if five minutes pass, I can guarantee that behind your back, the people you regularly play with are making fun of you. If you do this while also being a frequent cause of delays, you are probably a meme to them, and there is no hope for you.

RULE #4 Be pleasant to the ears. Humans are fickle creatures. You may be an upstanding gamer who follows all the other rules in this document, but if you produce irritating sounds, the people you play with will dislike you. Do everything you can to make your voice a thing of angelic beauty. Spend an hour tweaking your mic settings so that it cannot pick up the sound of breathing or keys getting pressed. If you cannot do this, get good at using Push-To-Talk. If you are prepubescent, it is almost certain that you have a shrill voice with a painful Lovecraftian tamber. Download a voice changer and lower the pitch until you sound like James Earl Jones.

RULE #5 Relay important information. This is what your mic is there for. Did someone make a turret? Call it out. Is an enemy player somewhere you wouldn't expect him to be? Call it out. Are you about to make a dramatic play, one which your teammates could benefit from advance knowledge of? Call it out. If you treat your teammates like Kitty Genovese, they will find out, and they will hold it against you. This rule is vital, and it goes hand in hand with rules six through eight.

RULE #6 Speak in short sentences, then shut up. This is a corollary to Rule #5. Many of your teammates will want to relay important information, but if they must fight you for airtime, they won't be able to do it. Therefore, no matter what you're saying, no matter how important it is, make an effort to say it in as few words as possible. Your teammates want to be kind and patient with you. But if you keep clogging communications with verbose diatribes, someone will inevitably decide that enough is enough, and shout at you to STFU. When this happens, you won't want to speak a word for the rest of the match, and that's bad, because that violates Rule #5. One way to tell whether or not your sentence are short enough is if anyone ever talks over you. If you are following this rule, they generally won't need to.

RULE #7 Do not discuss anything other than the game at hand. This one is simple. If something funny happened to you at work today, save the story for after the game. If the NASDAQ is crashing, save the topic for after the game. If your grandpa just died, save it for after the game. If someone just told the team a fun fact about Aligators, and you know that it's actually only true for Crocodiles, save it for after the game. Not only are side conversations distracting, they also encourage long-winded communications, which violates Rule #6. Everyone breaks this rule from time to time, it's just a fact. But that's all the more reason to squelch a side conversation right as it forms, even if you are the one who started it.

RULE #8 Do not be the Bitter Team Tactician. Sometimes players will say something that on the surface appears to be game-related, but is in fact a nefarious Side Conversation. The worst case of this phenomenon is when a player chooses to be the Bitter Team Tactician. The Bitter Team Tactician is someone who discovers grandiose strategies which require lengthy explanations, usually at some point after the strategy would have been useful. Should your team have run two support characters? Should they have defended a different place on the map? Perhaps so, but unless your brillinat tactical observations are relevant to the here-and-now, and unless they can be communicated in a few short sentences, keep them to yourself. With luck, you will be able to bring them up after this game, and before the next one. More likely, a few minutes will pass and you'll realize the strategy you thought of actually has some major flaws.

RULE #9 Don't complain about random factors. Look up the Serenity Prayer and keep it in mind every time you want to kvetch over something that you, your teammates, and maybe even the developers of the game had no control over. In games, just like real life, people attain victories through sheer luck. Sometimes the netcode doesn't work the way you want it to, and sometimes random numbers are consistently generated against your favor. But keep in mind that these situations are just as likely to benefit you as they are to benefit the bad guys. The reason you choose to play this game is because, in your heart of hearts, you know that the more skilled players prevail. Just don't bring it up!

RULE #10 Do not claim to play "for fun." Fun is fine, but it's also one of the shallowest emotions experienced by mankind. Babies can experience fun. Animals can experience fun. Think of your favorite movies, books, or memories. Chances are, you are fond of them for some reason other than just that they were fun. If you are playing a game competitively, it is because you are choosing to experience an altogether more sublime and sophisticated emotion, this emotion is called "ambition." Therefore, if a game is going poorly, and your teammates are experiencing the negative aspects of ambition, it is a mistake to try to isolate yourself from them by saying that you are only playing the game "for fun." It makes you look dishonest, it makes you look shallow, it makes it look like you think they are bozos for pursuing a valuable life experience. Your teammates will briefly consider whether it is possible to murder someone over an internet connection.

RULE #11 Do not remind your teammates to go for the objective.

RULE #12 Do what your teammates tell you to do.

RULE #13 Be honest about your skill set.

RULE #14 Do not be a hotshot.