On participation trophies

[GreyLord]

On another thread in the main D&D forum a discussion was brought up regarding participation trophies. The discussion has moved past that subject, but I still had something I wanted to say.

I do not see why people are so opposed to participation trophy's. The desire to win can be a strong one, but making everything out to be a competition sort of sucks the fun out of things. If the only reason you play is to win, and that's the only way you can have fun, that's a poor sport.

Poor sports flip the Risk board when they don't win. They flip the monopoly board and all it's contents on the floor when they go bankrupt or lose. They throw their controllers at the TV and cuss out their team mates in an online FPS match. These people are not fun to play with.

A better way would be that there is no trophy for winning in any low level sport or game. Giving everyone participations trophy's is much more fun, inspires more participation, and encourages the real reason to play in the first place. It should not be about the end destination, but the journey. You play because it's fun to play, not because it's fun to win. I'd say we'd be better as a society and as a people if we rewarded participation trophys more than we awarded winner's trophy's.

Think about it. I go to many conferences and at these things I get a ton of junk. These are not because I won anything, but because many people want my business or my interest. It's like getting a ton of participation trophy's. Almost no one gets a "you win" trophy unless it's those giving classes on success in their field, and those giving seminars or classes are there for work, not to compete. I love getting the junk (and yes, a lot of it is junk) at these things. Pens, notpads, business cards, they are all things that make it a little bit more fun...participation trophy's if you will.

I think I'd be turned off if they decided to only give things to people they thought were "winners" for whatever the conference was about.

I think the focus on winning is a detriment, we'd all be better overall and have more fun if there were more participation trophys and more focus on participation and having fun while doing it than simply trying to reward the "winner" of the group.

I think this applies even more to D&D than many other games out there. It shouldn't be an "I win" sort of game (and seriously, as a DM, it would be ridiculously easy to simply create impossible scenarios for the players, tpk them, and declare I win...how much fun is that for anyone but sadistic psychopathic maniacs?) D&D is about the experience of the game and enjoying the journey. Participation should be encouraged, rather than vying to be the winner when we play.

 

[Deset Gled]

I do not see why people are so opposed to participation trophy's.

It's one of those things almost no one cared about until they were told they should care about it. Unfortunately, it got popularized as a talking point in the 90s, and is now basically another part of identity politics, like cursive writing or Dr. Suess books. While there are some interesting philosophical and pedagogical discussions to be had on all these topics (as you get into in your post), you will probably find that most debates about them in the wild have little actual insight and are commonly just people regurgitating what the are told by cable TV.

To be clear, the topic isn't directly political, but tied closely enough to generational divides and civics (i.e. education and kid's sports) that it often ends up being uncomfortably politically adjacent.

 

[aco175]

I like how @GreyLord laid out his thoughts and argument, and I can see for many smaller things I can agree. I just recently started to use a sleep mask that is tied to a phone app to track things. It gives me trophy points that I think are silly. I do not not need it to tell me; "Good job, little buddy, you wore your mask for a whole week, have a cookie." As an adult, I find it treating me like a child.

Do children feel good when given a trophy or gold star? Sure, when they think they deserve it- which may be on a sliding scale though. Telling kids they did a good job when they scored a F on the test does not make them feel good or help them learn. Being able to self-gratify should be better than needing social-gratification to get along in society or playing a game.

 

[Umbran]

Do children feel good when given a trophy or gold star? Sure, when they think they deserve it- which may be on a sliding scale though. Telling kids they did a good job when they scored a F on the test does not make them feel good or help them learn.

Yes, but that last is a manufactured example that does not reflect the general practice.

Effort and improvement should be rewarded, even if those have not resulted in astounding results - at least, if you want to see more effort and improvement. A kid (or adult, actually) that's been working hard, but still fumbled, is likely to decide that working hard isn't worth it if you don't give them obvious support.

Being able to self-gratify should be better than needing social-gratification to get along in society or playing a game.

"Gratification" is probably not the right word, though.
"Recognition" or "validation" are probably more on the mark.

Humans are social animals, by general nature. Most of us do very poorly if we do not receive much positive feedback from the other people in our world.

 

[Christian Hoffer]

Given the general malaise of apathy in many societies, participation can and should be rewarded. At the same time, the drive for success can be so toxic, it's really pathetic.

My oldest son plays in a free rec soccer league. They don't keep official score, there's no official standings, it's just sport for sport's sake. Last spring, a kid on another team threw a punch at the back of his head (it missed) simply because he didn't like that my son was defending him and preventing him from scoring an easy goal. It was psycho behavior that was encouraged by his father. All for a game that literally did not matter.

 

[Ryujin]

But I think you can have both. You can reward participation, while also rewarding exceptional performance. I think that both are necessary to a healthy culture. You both want and need exceptional people to do exceptional things, while hopefully not stifling those who aren't exceptional. You maintain with the average person. You advance with the exceptional. Both are needed.

In the 1970s, in Canada, we had a programme called ParticipAction. It was created because studies determined we were becoming couch potatoes, as a nation. If you at all took part you received an embroidered patch indicating that you did, but they were also graded bronze, silver, and gold for your levels of achievement. I think this was a good way to handle it. I still have my bronze patch in a drawer, somewhere, 50+ years later.

Of all the things I treasure from me life, the one thing I have in a place of honour is my tiny academic achievement award, from 1976-77, when I was in grade 7. It kept me going at a time when my father was constantly telling me that I wasn't doing well enough in school. It told me that he was the only one who thought that. Don't under estimate the value of markers of achievement.

 

[Wolfram stout]

So I was getting participation trophies in the 70s, and was confused when it became an issue in the 90s and the 2000s. In general kids aren't stupid. My first year we didn't win a game. I didn't suddenly think I was a winner or a great player just because of the trophy. It was a keep sake and that was it.

The league still had a yearly champion, so I agree you can have both.

 

[Hex08]

Effort and improvement should be rewarded, even if those have not resulted in astounding results - at least, if you want to see more effort and improvement. A kid (or adult, actually) that's been working hard, but still fumbled, is likely to decide that working hard isn't worth it if you don't give them obvious support.

I'm not saying I totally disagree with you here but, in my experience, it's not uncommon for the recognition to regularly go to the same people. At a prior sales job myself and a small handful of people always were recognized for the most sales. I didn't think much about it, after all I was making the company more money so I should be recognized (even though my commission check already did that). However, at other jobs (like my current one) I am not a top performer but exceed expectations so am never recognized as a top performer but there is always a small group of the same people who are getting recognized for performance and seeing the same people constantly recognized over others is not motivational. We are also recognized for being the most improved but because I do perform better than most of my peers any improvement in my key performance indicators is small and won't be recognized outside of a "good job" from my boss in one-on-one meetings. Also, as I have gotten older I have found that less and less of my motivation to succeed is from external sources (recognition) and instead the motivation is internal so recognition matters less to me than is years past.

Recognition is hard to do right and is not always the motivator people think it is but for some people it can be.

 

[Umbran]

I'm not saying I totally disagree with you here but, in my experience, it's not uncommon for the recognition to regularly go to the same people. At a prior sales job myself and a small handful of people always were recognized for the most sales.

We agree.

If they got the most sales, that's not a "participation trophy". They got the most - those were awards for top performance, for "winning". When only the top performers get awards, and nobody else gets any recognition, and that's frequently de-motivating to others.

That's the point of so called "participation awards" - to recognize that it isn't only the top performers who are valuable.

 

[Maxperson]

My oldest son plays in a free rec soccer league. They don't keep official score, there's no official standings, it's just sport for sport's sake. Last spring, a kid on another team threw a punch at the back of his head (it missed) simply because he didn't like that my son was defending him and preventing him from scoring an easy goal. It was psycho behavior that was encouraged by his father. All for a game that literally did not matter.

That right there is the problem for a lot of us. Who wants to just run around doing something that means nothing? Not me. I can have plenty of fun in the game outside of winning and losing, but if winning and losing are not a part of the game, then it's just a boring waste of time for me. That's the reason that kids quickly stop playing Tic Tac Toe. Always ending up in a tie with no winner or loser is boring as hell.

Winning and losing are not the cause of poor sportsmanship like you encountered there. Other issues cause that, which is why it also showed up in a game that meant nothing.