I think we have certain innate desires - given to us by evolution - that we can not indulge directly without hurting others. I’m specifically thinking of the desire to dominate and conquer others, the desire to feel superior to others, and the desire to be violent and to feel dangerous and powerful because of that violence

I think the vast majority of people have these desires, but if we indulged them directly we would start attacking people or socially dominating them - which would be harmful to others who didn’t consent to that

so we have to find roundabout ways to satisfy these desires. obviously kink can indulge all of these desires very very directly. I think roleplay is another great way to indulge these desires (and of course there’s plenty of overlap between roleplay and kink, or even ways to incorporate the two together)

another way to satisfy these desires is through video games - where dominance, superiority, violence, etc. are simulated for us in virtual worlds where no one is actually harmed. why else would video games (generally) be so violent if not to satisfy these desires?

but with that out of the way, what I actually want to talk about is how this relates to competition in games, and video game culture in general. yep this is related to my last boost

first of all I want to say that I don’t enjoy competition because I don’t have a healthy relationship to it, so my perspective on it might be skewed. but with that said, I think that the purpose of competition in a sport, a competitive video game, a competitive board game, etc. is to let the winning side satisfy their desire for domination and superiority - with a (hopefully mild) emotional cost to the losing side

I can’t imagine a reason to play a competitive game (as opposed to a singleplayer or co-op game) other than to establish domination and superiority over another person in a way that everyone consented to by playing the game. in which case only one team/player can have their desires satisfied at a time, at an (ideally mild) cost to the others. the goal is probably that everyone will get to win at least a bit, so everyone will get to feel dominant and superior at least some of the time. but again my perspective might be skewed here

obviously one needs to be very careful when engaging in a competition. one needs to understand that this is meant to be a safe environment to indulge dark desires that would otherwise harm others, and to understand that it’s not only possible but important to learn to not feel too hurt by losing. that way losing is a mild enough pain for a player that the positive experience of winning will even it out

unfortunately a lot of players don’t have the emotional maturity to do this - so they express domination and superiority in terrible ways to the other players, or they express frustration and contempt that they won’t get to be dominant and superior. I think that’s more-or-less what toxicity is and where it comes from: the desire for domination and superiority, stoked by the competitive nature of a PvP game, unfiltered

I think a lot of people are drawn to video games because they have an especially strong desire for dominance and superiority, and that is part of why even singleplayer games can have toxic communities - because video game players as a demographic disproportionately want to assert superiority over others - and they often don’t have the emotional maturity to express that in healthy ways. which is how you get things like *shudders* the Steam community

so how do we fix this? assuming that I’m right about why people play games (both singleplayer and multiplayer) the best thing to do is probably to create a culture that:

• calls out people who socially attack others to assert dominance/superiority - even if those social attacks are cloaked by bad faith tricks
• goes out of its way to educate others on the limits of how dominance/superiority should be expressed - in a game or otherwise. and why it’s important to stay within these limits
• has explicit expectations of players in any given game - laying out in clear terms which behaviors are okay and which aren’t

@kasdeya before i say anything, i want to make sure it’s clear the position i’m starting from:

• i don’t like to wager many guesses about what is inherent to our condition, especially from an evolutionary theory perspective. i think it’s easy to get caught begging the question when we ascribe evolutionary origin to behaviors we see because it divorces them from extrinsic factors that we experience today. it’s sometimes difficult to determine what is evolutionary versus what is the result of immediate environmental factors
• tagging onto the previous point, i don’t believe that the urge to [dominate, conquer, enact violence] is intrinsic because it implies that all cultures and societies have always been subject to this and that we’re all inherently prone to being antisocial. i believe the opposite is true: if anything is intrinsic, its our pro-social behaviors because those are very often demonstrably more effective at large than antisocial ones.
• this is just a personal anecdote, but another reason i don’t believe antisocial behaviors are inherent is because i often feel them in response to something. however, it’s not like feeling lonely or horny or whatever which seems to happen after prolonged deprivation of some need. i figure, then, that if loneliness is the deprivation of a need, then the need is to socialize. if socialization is a need, prosocial behaviors are the ones that would help me fulfill that need.
• i’m a consequentialist. i don’t think having urges to do something makes you cruel, evil, or unethical. what makes you evil is only how to act upon those urges. the only thing having antisocial urges is proof of is that our environments fucking suck

i think that competition can emerge from different desires, either extrinsic or intrinsic. relating it back to my post you linked: i believe marx described the effect of capitalism as fostering individualism and competitive egoism to the detriment of community. i attribute a lot of these types of selfish, competitive desires and behaviors to living under capitalism. if we’re talking about competition in nature, i think we can define it as two or more parties striving for the same goal where success for one is failure for another. or i guess in other words, a zero-sum game. this type of competition is defined by scarcity; the reason things would compete is that the goal is either so valuable or so scarce that competing is less of a threat than the alternative. capitalism’s entire purpose is to create scarcity (commodification) in order to create profit.

as for the intrinsic motivations for competition: the urge to improve oneself, a feeling of belonging to a community that shares the same passion, and even just the joy of competition. i believe that it’s entirely possible to engage in competition where – while the victory may be mutually exclusive between the competitors – enjoyment can be had in either winning or losing.

i don’t think it’s an accident that the increased commodification of games and multiplayer spaces has lead to increasingly toxic game communities. dota 2, league, overwatch, etc. all have a very real monetary incentive to be good at the game. for example, winning the prize pool of the massive tournaments they hold or being a well-known streamer for that game. that plus the proliferation of sbmm has increased overall atomization of the communities; anyone you meet is temporary. it’s hard to form meaningful connections when it’s nearly impossible to have repeated exposure to them. worse yet, even in the instance that players do go out of their way to add one another as friends or whatever – the duration of games and minimal downtime between matches means that it’s actually really difficult to sync up and play without pretty explicit communication. the design of these games is to keep you playing as frequently as possible with minimal downtime. when you’re used to segmenting your play time in multiples of 15-30 minutes, it’s easy to convince yourself that you’ll just play “a few rounds” and go do something productive. when a friend sends a request to join your party, it can feel like a bigger commitment than just churning through match after match of strangers – even if you would’ve spent the same amount playing.

unfortunately i feel that commodification of communities (and the resultant atomization) is something we’re seeing in multiplayer games and online spaces in general.