Trust is the goopy bonding agent in the petri dish that is an online gaming team. Toss a bunch of strangers in a Call of Duty, DOTA 2, or Overwatch queue and youâll find that the team thatâs communicative or empathetic or just plain likes each other pulls through more often than not. Trust isnât something you can see, though. If a team is doing things right, all trust looks like is winning and laughing and bullshitting around. I never think about trust until itâs broken.
Trust depends on feeling that the person you know shares your values, whether that itâs right to flank the left of the objective and launch a coordinated attacks or that treating everyone with dignity is the only way to be decent.
The other day, during an Overwatch match, I learned that someone Iâd been playing with for a few weeks wasnât the kind of guy I thought he was. Weâd played a dozen or so matches together and, in-game and out, forged a bond. I didnât know much about him, of course, but I had a sense that we cared about the same stuff in this game and, a little, outside of it. Then he made lot of racial comments even after I asked him to stop, and that bond shattered. The trust was gone, and I realized I could no longer rely on him.
Itâs weird: Offline, spending an hour or two of your free time with someone every day means youâre practically best friends. You know them, you know how they go about things, and if they act in a way that offends you or inconveniences you, you feel a little betrayed. Online, without the formalities of âWhere did you go to schoolâ and âWhat do you do,â itâs harder to notice trust sowing its seeds and sprouting. But it does, if only through coordinating attacks on an objective in a video game and not superficial facts about ourselves. Which makes it all the more surprising when that sort of trust is broken.
Iâd been playing Overwatch with a guy Iâll call Danny for a few weeksânot all the time, but pretty often. Over the last year and a half, Iâd been collecting what I thought were competent, communicative, and trustworthy players to queue up with in Competitive mode. Danny was one of them.
Everyone has their own checklist of qualities they look for in someone they friend-request through an online game. I like players who are open to switching roles if our team composition isnât working. I also like players who call out when enemies are approaching teammates, compliment each other on great plays, and consider ways to help the team work like one coherent organism.
So, for example, if Iâm matched with someone whose Reinhardt shielded our Mercy against the lionâs share of deadly ultimate attacks, Iâll be impressed, sure; but if they communicated respectfully with the team, switched heroes when necessary and werenât a complete asshole, Iâll consider sending them a friend request and queueing up with them again. And now that Battle.netâs mobile app is basically my new texting service, Iâm not opposed to letting players I really trust insinuate themselves into my non-Overwatch hours. Each of those decisions I make is weighed by a calculus of trust: Do I feel comfortable around this person? Do they exert themselves? Are they consistent? Will they respect my boundaries? Are they, for the most part, in a good mood?
These things matter from a gameplay standpoint as well as from an emotional one: My games with Danny werenât a few off-the-cuff pick-up games, but matches in Overwatchâs competitive mode, where egoes (and quantifiable skill rankings) are on the line. Losing means plunging into the dark, embarrassing depths of ranked Overwatch, a dishonor that everybody who encounters you in-game can see. If youâre like me and take your Overwatch ranking as seriously as your weight, youâve got to trust the randos you queue up with regularly enough.
I canât remember what led me to accept Dannyâs friend request aside from how flexible he was as a player. Danny liked to chatter throughout matchesâmostly to tell the team what he was doing, so we could accommodate, and make jokes weâd all riff off. He sounded pretty young, maybe a college student. In-game, heâd pull his weight, switching between tanks and DPS heroes. Not the best player, but certainly one I felt I had a lot in common with, Danny was a pleasant presence on Overwatch and, a few times, offline in Battle.net conversations about anime or whatever.
One of the most demoralizing encounters Iâd witnessed in Overwatch was what assured me that I could trust Danny. Iâd introduced him to other buddies Iâd met over Overwatch, and he introduced me to his; one of whom said he was a queer man. One night, a stranger on our team was furious that we had barely put a dent in the enemyâs defense. He blamed Dannyâs friend, and Dannyâs friend blamed him. Thatâs when the stranger proceeded to emit strings of hate speech, calling Dannyâs friend every manner of derogatory term. Well-acknowledged among Overwatch devotees is how getting mad at other players is a surefire way to lose your head and, as a result, the game. We lost. Dannyâs friend logged off, clearly upset, and for a long time, Danny was silent over voice chat while he consoled his buddy over Discord. Thatâs a decent thing to do, I thought.
I had completed and won eight of my ten placement matches for Overwatchâs latest competitive season last week and logged off exhausted, but ecstatic at my 100 percent win rate. A few days later, I logged back on to continue in my path of carnage. I was feeling good, and after queueing up with Danny and three other buddies, was bound to be feeling great with a 10/10 win rate and, if I was lucky, a higher ranking than last season. We queued up for our first match, shot the shit, and waited.
Danny was more talkative than usual, trolling a little in the lobby and pretending to pick heroes who would have been laughably unsuited to this map. We were enjoying ourselves. On our way to the point, the team was flush with momentum. Our tanks stood out in front, shielding our squishier gun-toting heroes from harmâs way. Flankers slid to the sides of the map, picking off enemies and carving out a forward path. Our healer dutifully monitored everyoneâs health. And then, out of nowhere, with no context, Danny said something about how he was a cool guy, because heâs met a black person.
âWhat?â we all said in unison. âThat sounded kind of racist,â a buddy said. Danny apologized. We were thrown, losing the objective, but tried to group up and get back on track. Then, Danny said something like that again, just for shock value and with no context: âGuys, Iâve seen a black person!!!!â. It sounded really bad. Completely losing my focus, I played poorly. We lost the game. Later, my friends would admit that it had tripped them up, too. Why was this guy being so gross?
Queueing up for my last placement match, I was quiet. There was tension. We werenât sure what to think of Danny anymore. âU got all silent. U ok?â a friend weâll call Cameron asked me over text chat. I didnât respond and, instead, dedicated myself to moving past this feeling of uncertainty. I really wanted to win that last match. And I really didnât want Danny to be a bad guy. âUGH i suck iâm sorry,â Danny typed into chat. âPlz no racial commentsâŠ..,â I responded. The silence continued into our second game. Again, struggling to maintain a coherent, stalwart defense against our enemies, our team was scrambling to pick off opponents helter skelter.
âIâm sorry,â Danny blurted out over team voice chat. âYeah,â I said. A new vocal barrier had arisen and, with it there, communicating my strategy to my teammates was difficult. I lost track of Danny, no longer caring where he was or how I could help him. He made another racial comment, this time worse. We lost that game, too. None of us can remember exactly what he saidâwe were caught between shock and focusâbut he certainly kept saying it and it was certainly messed up.
Watching my skill ranking calculate after my final placement match, the meter stopped just about where I had ended the last season. Days later, I would remove Danny from my friends list. I didnât realize I had trusted him until then because, for the weeks we played together, playing with him, and online friends like Cameron, simply felt like being a churning gear in a churning machine. I didnât realize that it was trust that prompted me to communicate my plans with teammates. Or that trust was what allowed me to care about my teammatesâ health meters or enabled me to make the risky plays that wiped our enemies. It wasnât a trust founded on late-night phone conversations or secrets confided; it was the belief that that this guy was someone I could rely on.
âLesson learned,â Cameron would later say about Danny. He pointed out that, together, weâd surely reach the next ranking by the end of the season. âI honestly believe we will. We are forging our team.â Last night, Cameron, with whom Iâve been queueing up with for months, made three comments about my being less capable at Overwatch because Iâm a woman after Iâd told him to stop. Moments later, I earned âPlay of the Gameâ with a quad kill as Roadhog and logged off.
