Our eSports Values

The Olympics in ancient Greece transformed competitive sports and created shared values which were included in the concept known as ‘sportsmanship'. Practicing eSports-personship’ offers shared values in the world of eSports.

Your Values

Generally, people live their lives influenced by three kinds of values:

1. Personal Values: these define who we are, what we want, and why we think the way we do.
2. Social Values: these our social connections and how we interact with others in society.
3. Universal Values: these influence our cultural norms, spirituality and our overall acceptance of having to deal with the various life experiences we may have.

Let’s avoid engaging with keyboard warrior toxicity

One important shared value to actively strive for and maintain is avoiding toxicity. Toxicity can be a lot of awful things in the online world of eSports such as raging, flaming, passive aggression and worse.
NZIS has a code of conduct which you can refer to in your Student Handbook. No matter what role you take in the distinct culture of eSports, our shared values should guide our actions with each other, and with our stakeholders.

The NO Go’s

Always remember:

• Do not be toxic: No insults, blame, instigation or passive aggression.
• Do not be negative: No getting others down, making people feel bad, focusing on what went wrong, being only critical and not constructive.
• Do not give up. Persevere!

Unfortunately, everyone has experienced toxicity within a game at one point or another. As we are invested in our play it is easy to allow ourselves to get caught up in a game and negatively take it out on others.

Adding on to what we now know about our cognitive processes (how our brain processes information) related to goal setting and resetting habits let's consider the power of the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) Triangle.

The CBT Triangle is an effective way to understand how our thoughts become our feelings (emotions), and how these become our actions, which then become our thoughts again and... a negative cycle can continue. 

It is important to remember that the negative cycle can be transformed into a positive and or resilient cycle of positive thought to positive feeling to positive action.

We have the power to change our thoughts, feelings and actions to choose how our actions impact others we interact with in eSports.

Consider this: Valorant Scenario 

For example, take being in a game of Valorant – you are watching your teammates finish off a round and it’s 4 versus 1 in your team's favour. You believe your team should be able to clutch the round, but you slowly start to see your team lose and frustration begins to build up as you thought the round would be won. Due to this, you lash out and flame a teammate or lose confidence in your team.

Here you can see that the positive thought of believing the round should be won has turned to negative thoughts and therefore feelings, therefore influencing how we have acted towards our teammates.

It is important to value and respect those we are competing with and against when being involved in eSports. Being part of this community, we expect everyone to adhere to these values and be the change you want to see in the community.