Levels of eSports Involvement

Introduction

Call of Duty is a first person shooter (FPS) that started gaining popularity in the early

2000s and has slowly gained ground ever since. The game was one of the first major multiplayer

shooting games and has revolutionized how games are made today. Many spin-off games based

on Call of Duty have been released, such as Battlefield and Destiny. Although the Call of Duty

campaign and multiplayer aspects were fun, the game is notorious for its massive eSports

scene. eSports stands for electronic sports and is essentially the name people use when

referring to competitive video games. Although there are many games that paved the way for

eSports, Call of Duty has expanded the first person shooter genre and developed a community

that hundreds of thousands of gamers are apart of.

The game started off as just an online multiplayer game, but around the fourth iteration

of the game, a competitive scene started to grow. There were tournaments with the most devoted

and skilled gamers that offered fairly large prize pools. The best players slowly but surely rose to

the top and now only the most elite players compete in tournaments. The competitive scene

became publicized primarily through social media and live streams, namely YouTube and

Reddit. The community is full of diverse individuals who regularly interact with each other

through multiple discourses. The main forms of communication that most people in the eSports

community use are Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, in-game chats, and local competitions, all of

which impact the degree to which the community member is involved. Throughout the existence

of eSports, multiple different types of players have evolved and the presence of these multiple
forms of the community impact the degree to which the player is involved within the community.

While many involved in the gaming community believe that they are truly a member of the

eSports discourse community, I am arguing that there is a harsh dichotomy between the two with

an emphasis on the Call of Duty community.

eSports Community on the Superficial Level

eSports communities, and the Call of Duty eSports community in particular, can certainly

be a friendly environment for players at certain times. Many parts of the Call of Duty discourse

community are inviting and welcoming to newcomers. The subreddit, for example, has

moderators that monitor the content to ensure that there is no bullying and as little unnecessary

negativity as possible. These subreddits provide an outlet for those who want to speak and be

social but arent quite prepared to do it in real life. The anonymity gives them a way to speak

their opinion without a fear of being judged on any other personal attribute.

The people who are on the surface of the Call of Duty eSports community are generally

those who casually linger on these sites of discourse and generally only see the posts on the

homepage, along with all of their other subreddit top posts. The top posts on these sites are

generally the ones that are positive, as the moderators do not want a bad reputation for their

subreddit. I would argue that these people are knowledgeable about the presence of the

community and the general aspect of it and even might believe as though they are a core member

of the community, but are certainly not a full-fledged member of it and have a false perception of

what the true eSport community entails.

Deep within the eSports Community

The amiable nature is certainly not present within the entirety of the community.

This anonymity is sometimes used in a negative way, giving players a way to be ruthless to

others without fear of being caught. Deep within the Call of Duty subreddits, there exists a great

deal of negativity. Within Call of Duty, there are many toxic players that bring down the

community and diminish its reputation and these posts can only be found within the depths of the

forums, hidden from the casual lurkers. Mariona Rosell Llorens states in her article eSport

Gaming: The Rise of a New Sports Practice that competitive gaming requires a lot of skill,

precision, concentration, body control, fast movements, endurance and team strategy These

aspects of competitive games are much more defined in eSports players rather than in casual

players. Hopping on a game with friends for an hour is much different than spending hours a day

practicing and investing your time into, and this is correlated with whether one is likely to be on

the outside or inside of the eSports community.

One example of this outsider/insider information is from a subreddit from a previous

eSports player, Paul Ice Poseidon Denino. Paul developed a fanbase from a game called

Runescape that then developed into the anomaly it is now. A post from the Ice Poseidon

subreddit gets to Reddits homepage fairly often, often displaying a humorous and entertaining

post from his livestream. People who only view these posts have a fictitious view of what the

actual discourse community is like, but might feel as though they are indeed part of the

community. If you search deeper within the community, you will see that these posts are not this

lighthearted and that his subreddit is full of aggressive and vile posts. An example of how

malicious his viewers, or the Purple Army as they call themselves, can be is all of the times
that Paul has been swatted, which is when one has a swat team or the police called on them

because a fan told the police that he or she committed a serious crime even if they didn't. This

occurrence has happened over thirty times, more than anyone in gaming history, and has caused

mayhem within the gaming community. The worst of which was when someone called the police

to say that Paul carried a bomb on a plane, even though he didnt, and was swatted and banned

from his streaming platform.

Call of Duty Lingo

There are a plethora of words that Call of Duty players come up with to communicate and

they change as games are added to the franchise. If you watch a competitive game, you will see

that the words spoken per minute by the teammates is astounding. They are constantly talking to

each other, noting where other players are on the map as well as specific strategies they want to

use. In order to be as efficient as possible, they come up with code names for specific strategies

or locations on the map. Some terms that are used throughout every Call of Duty include: Ace,

AR, camping, clutch, choke, dropshot, headglitching, noob, and ragequit. These words mean

various things and they are used repeatedly in the Call of Duty community. People who are

simply involved with the general gaming community are most likely familiar with these words,

as they exist in many competitive multiplayer games. However, there are many terms that these

members are most likely not familiar with, such as: house, brick, garden, top street, back alley,

and other terms similar to these. These terms are used by professional Call of Duty players, and

only those who are actually involved within the eSports community are familiar with them and

use them during gameplay.

Interviews

I interviewed two friends for this project, both of which are familiar with Call of Duty,

but to various degrees. The first person I interviewed is John, who has been playing Call of Duty

for about 3 years now. Although John doesnt play in any tournaments, he is somewhat involved

in the tournament live streams as well as the discourse community itself. I asked him how he is

involved in the community and he says that he watches the monthly tournaments on Twitch (a

live streaming platform) as well as follows some pro players on YouTube. I asked John what he

does to stay in touch with the community and he primarily uses the Call of Duty subreddit and

occasionally watches YouTube videos. He reads the posts there intermittently and sometimes.

interacts with the community members. More importantly, I asked him to sum up the Call of

Duty community in three words. The words he chose were supportive, entertaining, and friendly.

The next person I asked is a friend named Terry. He is an active member in the

community, but unlike John, Terry actually competes in tournaments and is an active member of

the discourse community. I asked Terry how he stays in touch with the community and he

primarily uses the subreddit as well as Twitter. He uses these platforms to discuss with others

specific techniques and thoughts about the new games that come out on a daily basis. He also

obviously uses a platform such as Skype or Discord to talk to his teammates during the actual

games. Terrys response to the questions were very different than those of Johns. Terry said that

the discourse community is a fairly aggressive one, full of posts showing strong condemnation of

the developers of the game as well as of other players.. The intensity of the sport dramatically

increased his overall stress and therefore aggression level. His response to summing up the Call

of Duty eSports community in three words was: intense, aggressive, and competitive. I then

followed up by asking him why he thinks that there is such a large difference in his and Johns
experience of the community his response was that the fact that he is much more involved in the

community means that he is exposed to the entirety of the community posts and not just the

popular ones. He doesnt know exactly why people who are so involved in the community are

more negative, but he believes that these people are likely more competitive which translates into

more aggressiveness. His prediction lines up with Adam Lobels article Video Gaming and

Childrens Psychosocial Wellbeing: A Longitudinal Study in which Lobel states that Finally,

competitive gaming was associated with decreases in prosocial behavior, but only among

children who played video games with high frequency. He then goes on to say that specifically,

this applies to gamers who play more than 8 hours a week. This conclusion lines up with what

Terry said, as he states that eSports players who invest a large amount of their time in the game

have different personalities than those who simply play casually.

Conclusion

After researching the eSports scene and Call of Duty in particular, I have come to the

conclusion that the eSports discourse community has various degrees of involvement, and these

degrees are dependent on the amount of time spent within the community. Those who play for a

large amount of time per day and interact with many forms of the community are more likely to

come across the potentially toxic players who also play for a large amount of time and have a

much greater understanding of the eSports scene. However, those who only interact in the

community occasionally are certainly exposed to an entirely different genre.

 Works Cited

Llorens, Mariona Rosell. ESport Gaming: The Rise of a New Sports Practice. Sport,

Ethics and Philosophy, vol. 11, no. 4, 2017, pp. 464476.,

doi:10.1080/17511321.2017.1318947.

Lobel, Adam, et al. Video Gaming and Childrens Psychosocial Wellbeing: A

Longitudinal Study. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, vol. 46, no. 4, 2017, pp. 884

897., doi:10.1007/s10964-017-0646-z.