6 Ways to Be A Total Jerk in Games

Instalock in the Character Select Screen

An easy way to impress all your friends in any type of competitive, character focused game is to lock in your character immediately in the character selection screen. Particularly in MOBAs like League of Legends, Dota 2, or Smite, instalocking a character can inherently throw off the rest of the team’s composition. This is an easy way to gain the rage of four other people on your team. Without any discussion about which roles each player will fill, such jerks selfishly jam their way into the games, forcing everyone else to do their best to work around their rudeness to make a viable team, which is oftentimes impossible. Good luck losing your game, jerk-face – next time discuss with your teammates. That’s why it’s a team game after all.

Griefing

Way to be a jerk! For those not in the know, griefing is the act of harassing another for the sake of entertainment in order to ruin their play in-game. Different from trolling, griefing manifests in using the game mechanics against other players to ruin their fun. Someone stealing all of their friend’s supplies while they were logged out of Minecraft before booby trapping their home? Someone purposefully running around in a shooter with friendly fire off, taking time out of their day to blast only friendlies? Someone intentionally running into enemy teams with the whole purpose of getting massacred mercilessly so that it annoys everyone else on their own team? Yep, it all qualifies as griefing.

Get out of town, griefers! Not only is this behaviour not even a little entertaining, but it’s an easy way to lose friends. It’s also an easy way to receive a ban from the game developers, as griefing is frequently against most game’s terms-of-service, and is often a bannable offense. Have fun not playing games with that IP ban, jerk!

Camping

We’ve all been there, and we’ve all seen it. Lurking above that locker by glitching through the wall, hiding behind that desk in a way that makes them completely invisible and invulnerable, or simply hiding in wait through a busy corridor, camping is one of the most deceitful practices in any FPS game. With action games being focused on competitiveness, challenge, speed, and movement, hiding in shadows and camping is both cowardly and deplorable behavior, reducing the game’s intrigue and complexity down to nothing but a button clicking simulator.

Come on, chicken! Those who are infamous campers are better than this. Hold yourself to a higher caliber and play the game as it was intended. Don’t use deceit to bump up a score that wasn’t earned properly. Because the reality is, camping is often an offense that will get players kicked from servers, and even if they go unpunished, as they rise in skill level, high-level players have long since learned the popular camping spots, and frequently hunt campers in particular, counter-camping their efforts to ruin the game for others. Don’t be that person. Nobody wants to be the person who regrets weeks of camping when they never win games and whole lobbies of players tell them to “get good.” What an embarrassing jerk move!

Exploiting/Hacking

This goes without saying, but there is nothing okay with exploiting or hacking. Using the games inner systems to their advantage, many hackers and exploiters will use their knowledge of the game’s functions to win games with dramatic ease, often to gloat in the faces of others about their “superior skill.”

Guess what, kids: there is no skill in hacking to make yourself invulnerable to attack, or glitching through that wall where nobody can fight you. It’s deplorable, bannable, and a poor way to compensate for a tremendous lack of courage. Just like campers, if you ever hope to have any real fun playing a game rather than actively cheating, players will have to learn the real systems of the game as they were intended. Or perhaps they’ll just end up like the slew of Counterstrike players who have ruined their professional careers through cheating and exploiting. Jerk move.

Sore Loser / Sore Winner

This one boils down to the obvious, “Don’t be an jerk.” Everyone knows better than this, deep down. But whether due to the competitive nature of the game or because they need to boost their own ego, some people get riled up in such a way that they feel they have to throw around bad manners in the in-game or post-game chat.

Nobody cares how many times you died, or what excuses you have for your poor play. If you did poorly in a match, relax, because it’s just a game, and you don’t need to scream at the winners just because you played poorly. Conversely, don’t be a jerk if you won the game. The other team gets it, you stomped their faces in the ground, and that was certainly an accomplishment. Be the better player and don’t rub it in their faces about how bad they are, or how they should “just quit the game.” You already got your victory; appreciate your talents and move on. There is absolutely no need to be a jerk when it’s all over.

Be a Racist, Homophobic, or Sexist Jerk

Just stop. Stop. This doesn’t need an explanation. Everyone knows better by now. There is no excuse for resorting to being such a jerk while gaming.  Stop acting like a child or such foul people will be hunted down and their mothers will be told about their appalling behavior. Certainly their parents will appreciate knowing how disgraceful and ignorant their jerk children are.