StarCraft 2 is an excellent game, from all perspectives. Unfortunately, however, there is an aspect of it that neither developers nor the players are able to control. I am, of course, talking about the multiplayer experience. As with all other games where you play with random people on the Internet, StarCraft 2 matches can elicit emotions that range from exhilaration even if you lose, to profound annoyance even if you win. In a world governed by meticulous micromanagement the one part of the game that you have absolutely no control over is other people’s demeanor.

When a match begins, only one thing is certain: one of the sides will lose. Both know it, and both are prepared to give their best to not let it happen. Often, however, one of the sides is not prepared to deal with the possibility of defeat. The reasons for that are best left for professional psychologists to discuss, but what matters is that an alarmingly large chunk of people seem to perceive their own loss as a grave insult, regardless of the reasons for it.

Now tell me if this sounds familiar. You get a base going, churn out a mass of marines and marauders, hastily research some upgrades, load your horde into a bunch of medevacs and after drawing your enemy’s forces away from his base with some designated decoys, take out his resource gathering units and a couple of buildings for good measure. You know he will not be able to recover from this, and so does he.

At this point you are subjected to a litany of verbal abuse. Apparently you need to learn how to play. You are also a n00b, and quite possibly a three-letter derogatory term for a homosexual. You are using cheap strategies, and it is ridiculous how someone like you was ever able to make it all the way to the platinum league. You are in fact a cheater. And so on and so forth. Curiously enough the insults are nearly identical from person to person. It is as though there exists a standardized database from which they are drawn.

Personally, I find it amusing most of the time, and I hardly ever reply to these people. When I do talk to them, I usually mock them by suggesting that if they know how to play, perhaps they should also know how to win. The irony is lost on them, however. I have a suspicion that no matter what course a game takes, if it leads to their defeat – they will always credit it to their opponent’s supposed deficiency. The talented strategists that they are, it is perfectly natural (so far as they are concerned) that they are repeatedly unable to devise adequate counters and fall to the simplest of tactics.

There is another side to this, of course. Often you find yourself being defeated by something as silly as a photon cannon near the ramp to your base, or by just a handful of reapers, or maybe a drone snuck into your base and placed an extractor on one of your Vespene geysers thus wasting precious seconds. All these moves can be frustrating, especially if you expected a long game or had an advanced strategy in mind. When that happens, do you always control yourself? Do you recognize that you were brought down in a clever way? Do you congratulate your opponent?

I consider myself a pretty thick-skinned person, and thus cannot recall an instance when I let it actually get to me. A lot of people, unfortunately, are more easily offended. What do you do when you win and a sore loser berates you? What to you do when you lose to something you feel is a “cheap” way of playing the game? Have you ever resorted to playing a certain game only with friends, or worse yet, have you ever completely quit a game over your multiplayer experience? More interestingly, if you are one of those people who curse others out for winning, why do you do it? I’m genuinely interested in hearing your side of the story!