Fortnite Battle Royal released during the summer of 2017and I was going into 8th grade. The game quickly grew in popularity and all my friends and I were playing daily. When playing with other people the most you can have on a team is 4, meaning if someone messes up, you know who and it impacts everyone else. Spending hours at a time struggling to win a game and you or your teammates keep making mistakes, tensions get high. Over the course of a few months, playing Fortnite almost everyday there were a few times I found myself yelling at my friends about poor game performance from my living room couch.
If my friends were sitting next to me I would not get nearly as mad. I feel like I naturally empathize with other people in person, but online it takes conscious effort. Sitting next to me I could see the situation how they see it and relate to the way they played. Due to lack of nonverbal communication sometimes jokes about how someone played could be taken to heart, which would be avoided in person.
Social media companies recommend controversial posts or posts they know you disagree with in order to keep your attention and get you engaged. To a lesser degree, game companies profit off a need to be the best. Players want to look cooler and be better than everyone else. Changing your appearance in game preys on our dissociative imagination and creates a place where you can feel cooler than you do in the physical world. Skill based matchmaking puts you with people around your level so even when you get good, the game is just as hard and you stay hooked.
Why do I get more mad when my friends are not next to me? Why is that need to get better so strong in games? How do companies determine what makes you upset?
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