Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege is a 5v5 competitive multiplayer shooter. Unlike most shooters, where each team is allowed free roam of the map, each map has a distinct interior and exterior. The defenders spawn inside while the attackers spawn outside, and if defenders leave the building their location is revealed to the other team after three seconds. Like most competitive shooters, a stray bullet will hurt your team just like an enemy.
These mechanics are close to important as the more unique elements of the game, like the 50 unique operators, highly destructible environments, and verticality to the play spaces. Still, they might be some of the most understanding when spectating a casual, competitive, or even pro-league match because of the behaviors they enable. The outside spawn locations of the attackers allow defenders to “spawnpeek” by opening up a window to one of the attacker spawn locations to pick them off just seconds into the round. The detection of defenders outside the building has encourages some players to “run out” of the building, intentionally revealing their location to the opponents in order to make their kills even more embarrassing. The ability to damage team mates has of course led to “TK-ing” or intentional team killing, which became so prevalent the developers had to add in multiple sets of measures to deter it more recently. All of these behaviors are what would generally be considered “toxic” - they function only to attempt to annoy other players and generally don’t provide a competitive advantage.
One might think that this “toxic” behavior would be considered bad form in a professional setting, but it’s often a calculated move and most pro-league Rainbow Six tournaments will include at least a few examples of players trying one of these moves. For pros, it’s called “BM” (bad manners) and it’s an intentional psychological play. When a player spawn peeks, pulls a run out, or kills their own team before winning the round, it’s a form of taunting the other team and questioning their skills. In doing so, they hope to aggravate the other players and break their concentration in order to disrupt their play for the rest of the match. BM is unique because it is one of the few communicative actions that transfer to a competitive environment and is always the result of using game mechanics in ways other than they were intended. It’s one of the rare cases where players can playfully disrespect each other without crossing into harassment or insults.
Manninen (2003) identifies how players can take nearly any system in a game and use it for communication, and the same is true for BM. Although some of the most notable methods often are game specific and rely on certain mechanics, selecting a certain character, weapon, or costume and certain emotes, movement patterns, and chat messages can also become forms of BM. Although BM relies on a variety of communicative actions, it’s existence is what Manninen (2003) identifies as “normatively regulated.” While dying to a spawnpeeker is inherently annoying, it’s primary impact is due to the player knowing it is intended as a sign of playful disrespect from the other team. Although BM is largely accepted is most pro esports communities, there’s a good argument against it. It can be seen as condoning behaviors which, outside of the professional scene, create an environment which is toxic and hostile for many players. As someone who has been on both ends of BM, I’m inclined to think it can exist in some forms without being toxic. I’m curious if anyone else has had similar (or different) experiences with BM, and whether you feel it has a place in games.
References:
Manninen, T. (2003). Interaction forms and communicative actions in multiplayer games. Game studies, 3(1), 2003.