In the online competitive-multiplayer gaming world, support players are underappreciated… or so the saying goes. I tend to be a support player myself, and this sentiment seems to be pervasive in the general Support-Player-Space. If you’ve played any of these games, you’ll know what I mean — especially if you are a Support player.
I should probably explain this concept a little, before anything else. Often in these competitive-multiplayer games like Overwatch or Marvel Rivals, there are three main roles: Support, Tank, and DPS — ‘damage per second,’ or just ‘Damage’ is also common. These roles describe, well, the main role that you play during the game. Supports bolster the team’s efforts in one way or another, usually with healing, but also with buffs and enemy debuffs. Tanks draw incoming damage so that their teammates can do their jobs. And Damages pursue the other team, mainly targeting their Damages and Supports, while also dealing a healthy amount of damage on the Tanks so they don’t get too comfortable. These games are (ideally) designed for a balance between the three main roles, so it’s important to consider what everyone else is doing too. Basically, the three work together, and are theoretically all are as important as each other… so if any particular role is doing badly, everyone will probably notice because it brings the whole team down. Nobody likes to be the weak link.
For clarity though, various games play with this trifecta in different ways: they might give a Tank character the ability to isolate and eliminate the usually-pretty-killable Supports, like with Roadhog’s Hook ability in Overwatch. And in fact, some games rearrange the roles completely: Valorant has four roles, and the traditional Support role is split among three of them in different ways. You might support the team by collecting information about the enemy team’s movements, or you might set up traps to outfox flanking enemies, or you might shut down or disable the enemies’ abilities entirely. So there are plenty of games that do things differently too, though I’ll be focusing on the main trifecta from earlier, to illustrate a point about the life cycle of a support player, and its connection to the weak-link mindset.
Somewhat paradoxically, but still quite often, a support player becomes a support player because they’re new to a game, and they’re worried that they’re not very good. That’s how it starts: that’s the birth in the life cycle. They’re inexperienced, in other words, and want to be objectively helpful while learning how the game works. The thinking is that even if they’re not a very effective healer, it would be undeniable that they would help in some way as a healer, with evidence to prove it: other players probably died less often than they would’ve if this new healer were not present. This desire then evolves as the player grows: as an adolescent, the support player begins to realise how important the support role is. They then must gain an appreciation for themselves, to grow confidence, and perhaps might even try some other roles in the game — usually DPS or Tank — to discover themselves further. This might change their preference, causing them to switch from primarily playing Support to playing a different role. Or they might struggle on.
Let’s unpack that ‘must,’ since it determines whether one is a ‘support player’ or just ‘can play support sometimes.’ It’s reasonable to think that support players play this role because that’s how they best play. Maybe their aim is just bad, and healing is easier because you don’t have to be as precise (in some games). Maybe they like outsmarting the other team in a more strategic, methodical way. Everyone wants to be good at a game, no? [I mean, that’s debatable — certainly I’d like to debate it — but now’s not the time.] Maybe they just like to help others, and the support role is emblematic of that caring spirit. Somehow, the Support role has that special pedestal. It’s not a glamorous one, like with the DPS/Damage role, whose players get all the glory from kills. It’s the workhorse role; it’s deemed more necessary than the other two roles, because its primary purpose is team-oriented rather than enemy-oriented. And this is why, I think, the underappreciated status begins to feel more real; it’s because if you’re playing support, the support you give isn’t a special favour; it’s your job. It’s polite to thank the bus driver when you get off the bus, if the bus ride was a bumpy one, you might not want to thank them at all, despite the bus driver’s taking you to your destination. You have in fact gotten from Point A to Point B in that case, and maybe you should feel thankful for that, but you might still feel like they did a bad job anyway, and so yes, you might not thank them in the end. You might even complain about it later. Whether that’s ungrateful or not, I leave up to you.
But let’s say you never see the bus driver. Maybe they’re hidden by a curtain for whatever reason, or maybe it’s some near-future scenario where it’s a self-driving bus (Cyberpunk 2077, eat your heart out). Would you still thank them then? I’d like to think I would, but the point is that when you’re online, everyone’s a stranger. And when everyone’s a stranger, your job is the only thing that’s visible about you — it’s your only relation to other players, and all they care about is not who you are, or whether you’ve just had a bad day. The thing they care about is whether you’re doing your job well.
In the end, maybe the Support role is indeed just a role. And because a lot of Support players start as Supports, they might be less-than-proficient Supports, which means that they get flamed for doing a bad job. And that makes them feel disrespected and underappreciated. They see the fruits of their labour, even if their teammates might not, but they want these efforts to be noticed regardless. Thus, we come back to the adolescence: if one wants to persist as a Support, one simply has to respect oneself, because nobody else will do it. There’s a lesson in there somewhere. And this is how the Support player comes to identify with that role — by taking pride in it, and persisting, and creating meaning for oneself.
I read a social science research paper not long ago about the refugee support network that was set up in Amsterdam during the 2015 European refugee crisis. Wow, the whiplash, I know, but bear with me. This paper described a few spontaneous volunteer movements that had developed in the area, where normal citizens — frustrated by the more top-down approach that official support organisations were taking — banded together to produce direct and immediate aid for these migrants and refugees coming into the Netherlands. However, as time went on, these spontaneous volunteer groups began to restrict their tasks over time, becoming less flexible, and becoming more like the organisations that frustrated them initially. They specialised in their jobs, still wanting to help these migrants, but in a way that they, the volunteer workers, were comfortable with. I’ll link this study below, and yes, we’re actually still on topic, because you might have already noticed a connection here. Of course, though, the scope of these volunteer workers’ aid is much more important than fictional scenarios in video games. I digress.
Human beings are all appreciation-seekers, really, for the better of others or for worse, both in matters that are important and those that aren’t. Support players easily see themselves as martyrs: doing what nobody else wants to do, because Damages get all the glory and headshot montages. But what about the Tank? They’re doing their job too, be it badly or well. That’s the key: badly or well, and there’s nothing else to it. There is no nobility in any particular role; there are no pedestals besides the ones we build for ourselves, because they’re the ones we see, and they’re the ones nobody else sees. We play as Supports because we decide to, no matter what desires cause this decision. We want to see the direct and immediate results of our work. And we must think about this, lest we become complacent or lose passion in our work.
What makes a game fun for us? We decide. Why do we help others? We decide. Why do we persist? We decide.
Research Paper DOI
DOI: 10.1111/spol.12407
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