How Community Organising made me a better competitive gamer
In my day job, I’m a community organiser working with education, faith and community organisations in order to build and win social justice campaigns. But by night, I can be often found swapping the intensity of campaigning to the intensity of gaming.
After 6 months of losing in a competitive multiplayer game called Overwatch, I turned to the principles of community organising for help — then I started to win. Here is my story.
Gaming
It’s safe to say, I have two favourite types of video games. The first type definitely plays to the idea of making a “world as it should be”; designing cities with cheap and efficient public transit in games like Cities: Skylines, or building a Filipino nation in the 15th century strong enough to resist colonisation in Europa Universalis IV.
My second favourite type centres on team play and collaboration. This is how I stumbled across Overwatch.
Overwatch
Overwatch is a 6-v-6, team-based, first-person shooter developed by Blizzard. Overwatch now has over 40 million players worldwide and has a maturing professional league with players earning over $180,000 a year each.
There are several reasons why I found Overwatch more compelling than other first-person shooters.
Firstly, the game favours teamplay over individual effort. Unlike games like Call of Duty, there’s no reward for playing selfishly. It’s all about the team playing together to win an objective.
Also, there is a dazzling, diverse display of characters you can select from, each with unique abilities, character designs and voice lines. You could choose damage characters, like Widowmaker, a French sniper whose famous voice line is “one shot, one kill”. There are also tank characters, like Winston, a gentically-modified, super-intelligent gorilla who jumps onto the enemy team and contests objectives. There are also support/healer characters, like Mercy, who heals and resurrects teammates. I mostly play these support/healer characters (for any Overwatch players reading this, this blog is my road to diamond story. I main Moira and Lucio and my support SR is 3100+).
But most importantly, Overwatch has a competitive mode with a ranking system, testing and proving how good you are — which I found to be irresistible!
Competitive gaming
“Are you sure life isn’t a game?” — D.Va’s voice line
In Overwatch’s competitive mode, you are given a score and rank based upon your win rate and personal performance. The more matches you win, the higher your rank goes. Ranks go from lowest to highest: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, Grandmaster.
When I first started, simply put — I was really bad! I started out in low-gold, but would often languish in the silver and even bronze ranks, putting me well in the bottom 20% of players. As a naturally competitive person, I really hated this. I aspired to “climb the ladder” to become an above-average player at platinum rank, or even beyond.
But when watching coaching videos on YouTube, I was often surprised by the emphasis on social aspects, like greeting your teammates in an upbeat manner before the match started and asking what the plan was. Because Overwatch is a team game, I began to realise that the most organised team often wins. Our fate as a competitive player is completely dependent on the 5 other people on our team, who can often be complete strangers.
Because Overwatch is a team game, I began to realise that the most organised team often wins.
It sounds really silly, but I started to reflect on what relevant lessons from my community organising could I bring to my competitive gaming. I’m now writing this as a diamond ranked support player, putting me in the top 20% of support players. I was also briefly ranked by Overbuff as a top 1000 player for a healing support character called Moira.
These are three community organising lessons that made me a better competitive gamer:
Lesson 1: Relational power wins games
Lesson 2: Discern where to spend your time & when to use your abilities
Lesson 3: Organised people know when to fall back and group up
Lesson 1: Relational power wins games
“Justice rains from above” — Pharah’s voice line
Central to community organising’s argument and theory of change is that “you only get the justice you have the power to compel”. For us in civil society, this is about relational power. Or put simply, you need to recruit and build a team.
Searching for a roster of players to build teams
So, after 6 months of frustration, I knew I needed to identify talented players that I got on well with, then add them to my friends list in the game (I think I resisted this for a long time, because the thought of adding random people from the internet to a “friends list” was very offputting!)
I started to build teams of players who I could trust in playing with, laugh off any losing streaks, and celebrate the winning streaks. There was a strong international flair, with teams I built including an Indian guy in Dubai, a German woman, and a few South Africans.
Playing with teams I could trust meant better communication and coordination. Ultimately, by adding players to a roster I could build teams with, I quickly climbed ranks from gold to low platinum, making me an average player.
Good teams discuss what they need to win
Choosing the right character is really key, as some characters can really help or hurt your team’s composition depending on the context, i.e. the map, the enemy team’s composition, how much time you have left, etc.
One game, the enemy team had a particularly talented Widowmaker player, who could make multiple headshots. I asked my teammates to switch to a different character, Winston is a tank that is mobile enough to chase Widowmaker down. And because they did, we won, although it was very close.
Organisers grow their teams
In 2018, I took the lead on Citizens UK’s Fair Energy Campaign, which seeks to challenge energy suppliers on exploitation of people and the planet. I was working with a lot of people with positional leadership at member institutions, like priests of churches, directors of local charities and academics from a university. They brought a lot of wisdom to the team, but the capacity needed for a proposed “Switch Day” strategy was difficult to see. I had a really good team, but it wasn’t complete.
In response to this reflection, I knew we had to grow the team. One academic applied for funding, and is now about to recruit staff to work on the campaign. Also, we built a team in a local church that successfully piloted Switch Days, and is now working with bishops to make the Fair Energy Campaign a part of the Church of England’s strategy on climate change.
In organising, relational power’s currency is trust. With it, we can build the right teams for the fight in front of us.
______________________
Lesson 2: Discern where to spend your time & when to use your abilities
“Measure twice, cut once” — Genji’s voice line
As mentioned in my previous blog’s lesson 3, “Discernment is an important skill for an organiser. The ability to discern with whom do you choose to build a team is crucial for success and longevity.” What is also true is we need to discern where we put our time and energy, to maintain the value of our organising work.
Prioritising yourself and not chasing others
As a main support healer, it can be a frustrating experience. In the game, when pressing the “x” button, the character in-game says “I need healing”. Imagine if you hear 2 or 3 teammates repeatedly hitting this button at the same time, when they are scattered in different parts of the map.
It is very tempting to chase around after each player, trying to heal them. But whenever I did, I got ambushed and kept dying. I realized by risking my life like this, I provided less value in the game. You can’t heal your team if your health is zero and you’re dead. My priority became to keep myself alive — afterwards, my healing rate increased by 10% and I started to win more games, climbing from low platinum to high platinum.
Using abilities, not all the time, but at the right time
But also, I had to be more discerning when and where I used my healing abilities, as some of my abilities have a timer cooldown and have to wait several seconds before I can use them again. When playing Moira, I used to use my healing orb all the time. But when I really needed it, I didn’t have it available. By not reacting with all my abilities immediately, I discovered that I brought more value. Using abilities at the right time rescued fights that I nearly lost.
Prioritising who to support at a given time
I began focusing my healing on my main tank, who often receives most of the damage, rather than try to pay attention to everyone equally. I also began to look at the fight’s context, for example, which ultimates my team had ready.
Ultimate abilities, or ults, are high impact abilities which can swing a game, and are built up slowly during the course of the game. For example, Reaper has an ultimate which can damage a lot of enemies in small area, which can often be match-winning.
I started to tell the team my healing priorities, e.g. “Our reaper has ult, I pocket (heal) you”. In better discerning who to priortise for healing and communicating that, I began increasing the value of work for my team — which plays out in my improved win rates. However, in doing this, I know I am annoying teammates who might be left out whilst I’m focusing my healing elsewhere. Instead, I now ask them to do the work of coming to me for healing.
Organisers failing to discern
When I started as an organiser early in my career, I did a short stint in both Greenwich and Wandsworth boroughs – whose travel time can be 90 minutes each way. I tried to give equal weight and attention to all my member organisations, but I ended close to burning myself out. I would try to cram in 121s with everyone and anyone who would meet me, sometimes traveling 60–90 minutes each way. Because I said yes to everything, I also ended up organising individual campaigns for lots of individual institutions. Just to keep up, I would end up working 50 hours a week.
In hindsight, there were institutions and leaders that I worked with that I should have prioritised and build my day around them, and ask others to meet me nearby.
In organising, we are not meant to organise everyone on every issue. By looking after our health and discerning who do we prioritise for support, we maximise the value of what we do.
______________________
Lesson 3: Organised people know when to fall back and group up
“Cheers, love! The cavalry’s here!” — Tracer’s voice line
As an organiser, whenever I start to feel burned out, it’s usually because I haven’t built a strong enough team for a given campaign. It’s very easy to start with a campaign, which is reduced to nothing after a few people leaving. From painful experience, it becomes easy to burn out and campaigns are hard to win.
Fighting as an incomplete team
In Overwatch, after you get eliminated there is a time delay before you respawn. If you’re not careful, you can initiate the next team fight with only 3 players against the enemy’s 6 players. There’s such a desire to get back into the action that teams don’t properly group up, and start “trickling” in, getting eliminated one-by-one. I used to be VERY guilty of doing this.
This is similar to “overextending” when a teammate engages the enemy inappropriately ahead of the rest of the team, which can leave the team vulnerable.
Co-ordinating when losing
As a main healer, I often fill the “shot caller” role which directs the flow of the team fight, calling out priority targets and reminding teammates of the enemy ultimate abilities we should be expecting — I usually get a ton of in-game endorsements after matches. After seeing so much trickling and overextending in my games, I learned to forcibly ask my teammates to “group up” or “fall back”, and I began to explicitly say “please stop, we need to contest the objective together as a team of 6,”. This one change brought my rank from high platinum up to diamond.
In one game, we lost two teammates on King’s Row defence first point. This meant we were left in 4-v-6 team fight. We were likely to lose, especially as we lost our main tank who provided our shield protection. I made the call to “fall back” and regroup. Thankfully, my team listened and disengaged. We waited for our teammates to respawn, we contested the objective at the very last moment, and we won the game!
Organisers must be willing to disorganise
In February, I helped to organise a team looking to campaign on jobs/opportunities in innovation places like the Olympic Park. This fight was meaningful to me personally, due to the experiences of close friends trying to find good jobs post-2008 recession.
However, the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020 paused all our work with all our sixth form colleges. Furthermore, the pandemic caused new issues to come to the fore, like digital exclusion and mental health. After talking to key leaders, and with my pain on my part, we decided to pause the jobs campaign, with most leaders now on the new Digital Inclusion team. I’m hoping to restart conversations around jobs later this coming Winter.
In organising, we must resist the instinct to enter the fight too quickly, especially if we lose teammates. We will simply trickle in and keep losing. If we fall back when we need to, we can group up, make a new plan, contest the objective together, and win.
______________________
Conclusion
“Always strive for improvement” — Zenyatta’s voice line
So did I actually use community organising to become a better competitive gamer? Or was this blog written as a humourous, light-hearted attempt at distraction? 2020 is a year where we saw our systemic and structural inequalities laid bare, through death captured through numbers in a global pandemic, and death captured on Instagram resulting in Black Lives Matter gaining traction.
People don’t respawn like in video games.
It’s in times like this that faith in the organising method can be tested. When the challenges seem so great, and we seemingly lurch from crisis to crisis, perhaps it is easier to indulge in escapism through building teams to win video games, rather than building teams to organise at the scale needed to meet this moment. Maybe this blog is just me needing to motivate myself to “fall back” and “group up”.
As I write this, I’m on a hot winning streak (7 wins in a row) in season 23. Maybe I should take some lessons from Overwatch competitive gaming back into my organising.
glhf
(good luck, have fun)
