I'm not sure you mean. Even if they're angry, I think you have to look at what they're angry about. A videogame is not a good reason to start pulling out racial epithets, homophobic comments, and an all-out psychological war on your own team. I'm sure we all know the kind of rage I am talking about. I don't see how this kind of a game can provide that kind of... excuse... for the behavior that I'm describing.
Ah, but anything can cause anger.... videogames are merely one out of a bazillion examples. It doesnt have to be something "deep" or truly important to cause rage. Heck, my own mood is mostly tied to the weather. It gets bad, and my mood becomes rather dark. The worse it is, the more irritable I get.
And anger does not define someone's personality (unless they take it WAY too far). I'm mostly a super-polite individual myself... I dont freak out at people in-game, I dont freak out at people IRL ever, you'll never catch me being the one that yells at supermarket workers or whatever because of slight mistakes. Instead, I'm the one that tries to be helpful and make THEIR day easier.
Yet even so, in an enraged state, I tend to go berserk, and will start randomly smashing things. The only upside to this is that I will only throw/damage/break things that I own, I dont mess with anyone else's stuff. It happens though regardless. This combined with yelling and general shrieking. And I can be set off by basically anything, particularly if I'm in a dark mood to begin with, as I've been all winter.
Does this change the fact that I'm polite and caring most of the time? No, it does not. And I think the same is true for most people. I see friends do this sometimes.... change from someone friendly and kind, to someone mean who swears like a sailor, if they should get angered. And in those cases it IS often in relation to gaming. I notice that gamers as a whole tend to be an easily agitated group.
The reason though why I say that team-based games tend to cause it more often is simple. In a single-player game, or a multiplayer game that is one-on-one, the player is fully in control of their side of things. Whatever happens is a direct reflection on THEIR skill level, going up against whatever challenge is in front of them. If a mistake is made? It's THEIR mistake, and they can rectify it by increasing their skill. And that skill can be relied on in future games, increasing their chances of winning. But in a team game? It doesnt work this way. Your own personal skill level wont affect the whole game, but only a small percentage of it in most cases. You can be a bloody amazing player, but if the rest of your team simply doesnt hold up, you will lose anyway. And this frustrates people, as things outside of their control tends to. It can be dramatically more irritating than any singleplayer or one-on-one situation, because you simply cant DO anything about it directly, and your own skill level sometimes simply stops mattering when this is happening. Any team game can bring this on. So the player begins yelling at them, insulting them, as their anger grows, because they lack any other way to deal with it, and cant simply vent it too easily. Their teammates become even more convenient targets when they're seen as the core reason for overall failure.
Of course, none of this excuses things like racial epithets and homophobic comments. Those sorts of things rather are a sign of a jackass. Yet even still, that may not always be the case. An angry individual sorta loses common sense, and when not thinking clearly they may do things that normally they would never, ever do (and often will regret later). That's just what anger can do to someone.
Hopefully this post made sense, I've been kinda spaced out all day (more than usual, that is), so it might not.
