So like, I wanna preface this by saying that is gonna be several paragraphs of me bitching about how people bitch about other people. Whole lotta bitching. Also a lot of speculating about other people's thought processes which is sure to make me look like a jackass in some way or another. Ah well. Also, I am only judging people for their actions/words, not their thoughts. Even if you think about saying the most heinous shit to another person, as long as you don't actually say it, it's none of my business. Let's not do thoughtcrimes, thanks.
So, have you ever been mad at a video game? Of course, who hasn't? Have you ever been mad at another player in a video game? Yeah probably. There's plenty of valid reasons, be it cheating, blatant toxicity in chat, deliberately trolling teammates, etc.
There is another reason that I see super commonly, but I've never been able to wrap my head around, and that's simply being too good at the game. All too often, I'll hear people complain about playing against (or even with!) "tryhards" or "sweats". By merely trying too hard to achieve a goal, they are committing a moral wrong, and ruining the fun for their fellow gamers.
Hearing this makes me want to ask several questions. Like, I'm assuming, like all of us (hopefully), your primary reason for being here is to have fun. Alright, and presumably you're mad at the other gamer for preventing you from having fun in some way shape or form. Okay, well, how are they stopping you from having fun? How do you define fun to begin with?
To ask myself that question, I would say that I usually derive fun from putting in a good effort, trying to understand how the game works, and improve. Actually winning or losing the match in the moment is a goal, but not the be-all-end-all goal. Of course, that makes me sound far more serious about games than I really am. I still would describe myself as "casual", in the sense that I don't get too invested in the game or my performance, to the point that my emotional state hinges on it. If I'm getting my ass kicked by someone who is clearly better than me, that's normal and expected.
Meanwhile, I see other people react far worse, going out of their way to loudly complain, both to the enemy gamer in question, and anyone else unfortunate enough to be in the discord call. As someone who has been that unfortunate friend many times, I really want to understand the thought process that leads up to this. My dipshit not-a-psychologist theory is that when they see someone that is "better than them", even if it is just skill in a video game, they feel inferior. This leads to a desire to correct that by making themselves superior in some other fashion, usually by insinuating that the other person is unhealthily obsessed with the game, is an asshole deliberately trying to ruin others' fun, etc.
There's probably some throughline here in regards to the Us vs. Them mentality with the evil "tryhards", accusing them of things they don't actually do/say/feel, refusing to self-introspect, preserving the purity of a "casual" environment while never clearly defining what is and isn't "casual", and the slurs that sometimes get thrown around by these users, and Actual Real Bigotry, but I'm not gonna get into that today.
This creates a funny irony where the self-described "casual" player is pissed-off and taking the game way too seriously, while the "tryhard" on the other end is most likely just playing naturally, and having a good time. If you really are "casual", you wouldn't care too much about the outcome of the game, if you're getting your ass kicked, etc., right? After all, as cliche as it is, it's just a game, bro.
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If it sounds like I just described you, the reader, 1. I apologize for being so harsh, I've been frustrated with this for a while now, and 2. I really do wanna know more about how these thoughts/behaviors form and why. Was my dipshit theory accurate or nah? Am I looking way too far into what may just be simple gamer rage? Do we have vastly different definitions of "casual" and "tryhard" here? At the end of the day, I just want to understand player psychology stuff like this better, and hopefully maybe possibly help people enjoy games more.