Blame & Stolen Praise: The Nature of Team-Based Games

My two current games of choice of late have been the online components of Starcraft 2 & Gears of War 2, both of which I enjoy very much. SC2 tends to be when I have friends on, while GoW2 tends to consume my private time. Interestingly enough, neither of these are single-player, and both are team-based multiplayer. The two are pretty different though.

I read an interesting post on the SC2 forums about why people tend to shy away from 1v1 in SC2. It basically boiled down to risk/reward. He hypothesizes that like in a team FPS, with 3v3 and 4v4 SC2 matches you can always take the credit for a win, and blame the others for a loss. 1v1 means you have to face the fact that you have no one to blame but yourself for the loss, which most people can't handle.

I actually think the poster's probably right for the majority of gamers; I've definitely seen a lot of "if my teammates hadn't sucked I would have totally owned you" type comments after my team winning a 3v3. However, I like to think I don't fall under this category. I usually acknowledge my strengths and weaknesses, or comment when I didn't really help in a match, etc. I think it's actually my awareness of my strengths and weaknesses that drives me towards SC2 multiplayer.

I know I'm not great at early game, especially scouting & early harass. I could devote more time to improving these, but since as I stated I tend to play SC2 with friends, it's easier to just play on a team with someone like Aaron who complements my weaknesses with his strengths and come out all the better for it. Naturally I'll want to improve eventually, but it's easier to focus on improvement when you have a reliable ally to fall back on.

Which leads me to my next point: SC2 is actually far, far harder to tell who's pulling the team, anyway. Numbers often will show overall who was "doing" the most, but let me present a game from today.
Rome, Aaron and I played a ranked 3v3, and decided before the match started to do a (late) early T1 rush. We were going along, and suddenly Aaron got attacked. We managed to fight it off, but Aaron lost the majority of his base. However, we counterattacked (since Aaron had taken down a good chunk of the forces) and Rome and my combined force managed to take out the 3 enemy bases, one by one*, while Aaron rebuilt his base and lent a bit of support towards the end.

Looking at the numbers and graphs afterwards, it would seem Rome and I carried the game and Aaron didn't help. What that ignores is the fact that if Aaron hadn't defended the rush well enough, had he just been steamrolled, Rome and I couldn't have gone on the offensive like we did. While the game gives us credit numbers-wise, without Aaron being the excellent player he is, we probably would have lost. And that's why SC2 is hard to boil down in terms of team gameplay; it's often a combination of, say, Aaron's expansion harassment, Rome's raiding, and my heavy support that will win a game, and even if I destroy the most buildings or whatnot, our success is very interlinked, and we are all pretty dependent on one another (assuming the other players aren't completely incompetent)

I want to contrast this with Gears. It's also a very team-driven game; for instance, whenever a player drops and it turns into 4v5 instead of 5v5, the team with 5 has always won in my experience. There are rare exceptions will I will see the last player on a team beat the other 3 players, but those are just that: rare exceptions. This is a game, however, where it's very obvious who's helping the team, and numbers are quite relevant. I often seen organized teams (i.e. people obviously talking to one another) annihilate the opposing team, as often if not more often than one player carrying everyone else.

This is why it bugs me when so often good players will split off and do their own thing, and then be faced 4v1 because the other team is working together, and then complain that the other players aren't helping out. Sure, they usually kill 1 or 2 of the other opponents, but they get upset that apparently they're the only "good player." The simple fact is if they stuck with other teammates and used their skills instead of essentially hiding, we'd probably BE winning. In fact, if my team is losing, I usually end up following someone else, and more often than not it means we end up winning the round. It's a team tactical game, yet some people still think it's Halo or MW2. Master Chiefing it may earn you the kills and the points associated with it, but it won't always win you the round. In fact, my most memorable win recently was me killing the entire 5 members of the opposing team in one round, and that was only possible because they weren't watching their back because the rest of my team was firing on them.

What's my point with all this? Good question. I guess I'm lucky to have such a good group of gamer friends, ones who I can play a game of SC2 with and not be blamed for being the sole reason our team loses, or never get credit for us winning. One aspect of gaming I absolutely hate is the amount of idiots on multiplayer games, and I suspect that if I had been playing SC2 online alone I would have ceased playing it weeks ago. While it's nice to be the top player in a winning team of Gears, it's far more satisfying to congratulate known teammates after a SC2 win, or even to analyze a loss to improve next time. I think this sense of camaraderie is the real reason I haven't played much 1v1 in SC2; I get that experience from Gears, and I get my "real" team based game with friends on SC2.

-HTMC

*Funny story from that, regarding stupid end game complaints. As we were killing the last base, the guy complained that "no one builds base defenses." Rome and I asked if he meant his teammates, since we had just blown up their bases, and they had defenses. Enemy guy responds "no you guys," meaning Aaron had no defenses. I respond "...but it didn't matter," since we had obviously just won. He keeps repeating that no one builds defenses, which would make sense if Aaron not building defenses had meant we had lost the game... but we hadn't. We're still not sure why he brought it up, but I guess it supports the point that most people will blame anyone else but themselves for winning or losing a team game... even if that other person is on the other team :-P