It may appear silly to discuss a term like teamplay for a game like Team Fortress, doesn’t it?
But does having half of a server’s population sporting the same colors automatically make a team? Not really.
The idea of teamplay constitutes for all members of a team work to together to achieve a certain goal set by the creator of the current map. On a CTF-map the goal is to steal and cap the enemy flag (sorry, intelligence 
), on a CP-map it is to capture a set of capture points, on a PL-map it is to escort the cart to its destination, and so on. Sounds boringly obvious.
Yet the reality often looks somewhat different.
In your basic pub-game you will often encounter people who participate in the ongoing match with very diverse agendas. Some people play with the team, some for the team, some alongside the team and some play a very different game that doesn’t involve teamplay at all. Those are very rough distinctions, of course, and many times people move in the large grey area between both extremes (dedicated teamplay and no teamplay).
Teamplay on a pub server is difficult. There is a general lack of communication, the random line-up of teams makes anything beyond basic tactics a challenge and since you often don’t know your teammates and their skill-level it is hard to work together.
But the fact remains that TF2 is designed as a team game and should be played as such. Even if teamwork is difficult you should at least try to play for the team by trying to achieve the map goal. Meaning that teammates should help each other, protect each other and making an effort that the team might win. Personally I usually place the team above myself, meaning that I will sacrifice myself (repeatedly, if necessary) if it helps the team.
But there is that other extreme: People joining a server, joining a team and showing neither interest in their team nor the team-aspect of the game. They may go for kills to flatter their ego with a good score (where helping the team is rather coincidence than intention), they may use the game as an exercise ground without really helping the team, they may just goof around because they are in no mood to play “seriously” (consequently letting their teammates down) or – the worst kind – people intentionally trying to disrupt the game to satisfy their own twisted sense of fun (grieving).
That’s a disgrace to the game and shows major disrespect for the other people playing on that server.
Note: I’m talking here about people who join a server with a regular game going on. It’s something different if the majority on the server decides to have a casual fun game and just wants to goof around. That’s fair and if a newcomer doesn’t like that he can look for another game elsewhere. But if the majority on the server is playing a straight game then you should do so, too. If you want to goof around, then you should go and look for suitable server elsewhere.
But a minority has no right to affect the gameplay of the majority or even spoil the efforts of the other players through ignorance, ill-will or selfish motivations.
I’m sure quite a number of people will dismiss my words as silly or abstract.
Well, try to imagine that: You meet with a few people on a Sunday afternoon to play some soccer (or basketball etc). Not overly competitive, but still a proper game. What would you think if some person would start goofing around? Dribbling, balancing the ball, making risky shots just trying to show off, not passing the ball and all such things. In short, what if that person would play for himself instead of playing for and with the team? Would that sound like a proper game to you? Do you think that everybody would be having fun?
Of course there’s one huge difference between that scenario and a TF2 game:
In real life the other people present would set that person straight, would demand that he plays properly. When that would fall on deaf ears most likely this would result in consequences for that person (like excluding him from the game).
In short, social pressure would most likely prevent something like this to happen or would at least quickly correct the situation.
That is one of the major downsides of the internet: There exists almost no effective social pressure because the internet offers next to no means to execute that pressure (it works to some degree in internet-based social groups like clans, forums etc.). This leads to a regrettable lack of personal accountability (or in our case: player accountability).
And while I acknowledge that there a little to no means to enforce accountability I have no intention to accept it as an irreversible constant. There are already (albeit primitive) tools in place to apply social pressure (e.g. Kickvote). I’m confident that in the next years we will have more subtle means to punish (or reward) social interaction (and playing online games is a form of social interaction) in online games.
The implementation of a central platform with Steam – though by itself not without controversy – could be a step into the right direction to achieve something like this.
But regardless of all technical means, the first step is to create awareness. People have to realize that it’s wrong to enter a server (or forum, or chat room) and act selfishly and without regard and respect for those who share that space with oneself.
I realize that I took the term of teamplay and expanded it to a more general view of behavior in the internet. But that was unavoidable, since that covers the groundwork on which teamplay and everything that comes with it build upon.
Moving the focus back on the game I’d state that teamplay is not only the function of performing common tactics in a game, but also a specialized form of social interaction and respect towards the people we play with.
But there’s another layer to the topic of teamplay, which is closer to the principal meaning of the word, and when I cover that aspect in the next editorial of this series it will be more specific to TF2.
Until then, have some nice games and remember to be a team player 
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