Kid Icarus: Uprising and Sportsmanship

When Kid Icarus: Uprising came out, I played the game's multiplayer religiously. I just loved the concept: Taking the weapons you built in single-player and pitting them against other gamers? Cool! And I'll stand by my opinion that Nintendo could take online multiplayer scene by storm if they expanded on Uprising's mechanics. But that's a discussion for another time.

For the uninitiated, Kid Icarus: Uprising is an action game for the Nintendo 3DS. You play as the angel Pit who battles the forces of evil in a mythology-inspired world. The controls involve moving Pit with the control stick while aiming and controlling the camera with the touch screen. There's a bit of a learning curve, but you'll unlock a very robust game on the other side. Pit's mobility and powers are influenced by the weapon he's using, and at 108 weapons in this game's armory, you will have your pick. Multiplayer is played the same way, but now you're competing with other players for glory.

I almost exclusively played the game's team-based mode, called Light vs. Dark. In Light vs. Dark, you battle in teams to defeat other players and decrease the opposing team's collective health bar. When the other team's bar is depleted, the last player defeated will turn into an angel. The angel is very powerful, but the other team wins if the angel is defeated. Thus it is a good idea to keep the angel protected.

The first few games of Light vs. Dark I played, my team won. When you win, you see your team's angel help the other team's angel up off the ground in a show of good faith, backed by an uplifting fanfare. When I first lost a game, I was a bit riled up and was not looking forward to what sort of humiliating results screen waited for me. Instead, I saw the exact same image of one angel helping another, smiling at each other, while the same music played. And I thought to myself, "What? No rubbing it in? No condescending musical stings? No huge 'YOU LOSE' covering the screen?"

A sample round of Light vs. Dark. Notice how even though the player loses, the results screen is still triumphant

Slowly, my confusion melted into elation. I no longer felt put on the spot. During the game, I felt frustrated because my weapon and skills were being outmatched. But hearing that music and seeing the two angels being friendly, I only felt the same sense of satisfaction that I would have if it were my team that had won. The game gives rewards to the teams based on who won, and of course my team's consolation prize was small compared to the winning team's purse. I suppose you can interpret that as the game focusing on who won and who lost, but it is only fair that the team which played the better game receives the significant reward.

Thus, we're back to the results screen, the one real opportunity that Uprising had to objectively make the teams feel one way or the other about the outcome of the match. To be honest, it's brilliant. Absolutely uplifting. The game could have really gorged the winning team's ego while stomping on the other teams', but it doesn't. I just couldn't bring myself to stay upset when I saw the angels smiling and that upbeat fanfare. I truly got a sense that the only thing the game wanted me to feel was that the match we just played was a good game. Nothing more, nothing less.

My friends, I want to see more of this: Games themselves promoting good sportsmanship through their presentation. That's not to say there are no examples of it out there, but the more the better.

I know promoting sportsmanship is a tricky business. How do we build a culture of mutual respect without going too far overboard and sheltering the participants? There's no one answer to this, but Kid Icarus: Uprising's approach is a pretty good take. And furthermore, it does this in a way that only a video game can. The bright and positive fanfare gives the losing team something encouraging to see and hear immediate after the game ends. This is the game immediately doing what it can to promote an optimistic outlook for that team. It's a counter-point to whatever frustration the losing players may be feeling following the match that just ended. However, the post-game rewards give a clear indication that not everyone is a winner. The winning team earns a free weapon in addition to a sizeable amount of ingame currency. This is done after the encouraging fanfare to frame the rewards as an incentive. It's as if to say, "Hey, you didn't win this time. But the next time you win, that's what you look forward to earning." There's a balance of themes there that may not be perfect all the time, but it's the best effort I have seen thus far.

When you lose in Team Fortress 2, you're forced to hobble around completely defenseless until you're killed or the next round starts

To contrast, let's bring up another multiplayer game that puts emphasis on the results of a match: Team Fortress 2. Team Fortress 2 is a first person shooter with a dark sense of humor that revels in shamelessness. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact I have laughed with the game's dysfunctional and tongue-in cheek malice many times. And as such, the way this game ends its rounds is equally hilariously mean-spirited.

In Team Fortress 2, once a team wins, the other team can no longer fight back. An announcer shouts "You fail!" and a crowd boos while downtrodden music plays. The losers are stripped of their weapons and their running speed is decreased. In addition, the winning team's weapons are super-charged with critical hits. Essentially, the losing team is reduced to fodder for the winning team to hunt down until the next round starts. To top it off, this whole mechanic is called "Humiliation." And by all means, is there any better word to describe this situation?

So does that mean Team Fortress 2 is an awful game? Of course not. Anyone who plays the game will quickly be made to understand its hard-boiled nature and expect everything to feed into it. Humiliation is intended to be humorous to all parties involved. Objectively speaking, humiliation is a laugh riot. The team without weapons is bowled over by the team with the supercharged weapons? Who would have thought? This may be one of the only times when people are victimized and I'd say the only logical reaction is to laugh.

I'd also like to put in a good word for Uprising's single-player campaign. It is quite the adventure with some fun characters, snappy dialogue and no fourth wall.

If in the end neither game is seriously trying to personally make the loser feel bad, what is the difference that makes this article about Kid Icarus: Uprising and not Team Fortress 2? The keyword here is "authenticity." You can take Uprising at face value and trust it to be authentic with how it presents itself. There are no hidden or double meanings. There's something comforting about a game that works intuitively with how the human mind processes information and meaning. Team Fortress 2, on the other hand, requires a split-second of deciphering. Horrible things happen to your character not because the game is actually mean to you, but as a bid to be so over-the-top that you laugh alongside the game at the absurdity that it presents. So where Team Fortress 2 uses an overabundance of poor sportsmanship as a means of comedy, Kid Icarus: Uprising presents you with good sportsmanship and means it.

As things stand now, there is a lot more inauthentic humor than there is authentic empathy. That's because being inauthentic is easy, people like to laugh, and some cynicism can be healthy. What I want to see is more of the Uprising example. I want to see more authenticity not just in video games, but in the world as a whole. I want to see more people attempt authenticity. I want to see more people speak up for authenticity. I want to see more people react to and promote authenticity. We may believe that authentic culture "goes without saying" and that's why we see less outstanding examples of it in the media. As for me, the fact that I was so surprised to see it goes to show how much more I'd like to see out there.

And now I want to hear from you. What experiences have you had with games promoting good sportsmanship and authenticity? For all I know, there could be a game out there which depicts competition even better than Uprising does. Maybe you saw a movie or read a book where characters set a good example. Heck, maybe some of you have a story about a positive experience in Little League. If you do, I want to see it in the comments.