The Characteristics of Gamers

People gravitate toward games they are good at, I think. There are other factors to consider, such as what their general circle of friends play, but often there isn’t much dissent among friends. Anyways, there is an ever persistent rift among fans of first person shooters: that of the Call of Duty and Halo franchises. To be sure, there is overlap between the two, but frankly no one gives a shit about similarities.

Lest I mislead any readers, I should point out that COD is significantly more popular than the Halo franchise. I used popular as a reference of how many people play it, and not how much people enjoy it. On some level this is to be expected, as the Halo series is largely praised for its plot, whereas COD is a multi-player powerhouse. But both of them have a campaign mode and multi-player compatability.

Although Halo’s plot is masterful, I won’t be discussing it. Instead I am curious about the gaming dynamics of the multi-player experience in both games.

My first experience playing Halo was at my cousin’s house when I was in about the fourth grade. At the time he had but an original Xbox, along with the first and second games of the franchise, released in 2000 and 2003-4 respectively. I was appropriately hooked, as it was quite a pleasure absolutely dominating my younger brother at the game and stalemating my cousin. Time went on and I surpassed my cousin in skill, and the perpetual stalemate lay between my cousin and brother. When the relatively recent time came to play Call of Duty, I fatally assumed that my Halo competence would extend to broadly defined first-person shooters. It didn’t, not at all. The game dynamics were so vastly different despite the shared characteristic of blazing gunfire. The fundamental difference between the two is that COD relies far more heavily on processing speed, reaction time, and accuracy, whereas Halo games select for anticipation of where your opponent is going to be next. The latter operates at a slower pace, so it is less of a burden to make sure you hit your opponent right away. However, this grace period extends to your opponent as well, so it really isn’t any easier. But it was far more easy for me to pick up on the second one, and much more fun as well. Even the best players at COD know that you scarcely have time to move around the map; in Halo, you have plenty of it.

I’m curious to what extent selection has played a role in both games. Obviously, they’re both diluted significantly because people don’t gravitate solely towards the games they’re good at. But it would be interesting to see.

Sophomore Year

There were so many things I learned sophomore year. Almost none of them came from school. Actually, I’d be hard-pressed to think of any, in absolute terms. They all came from my own reading on the net, primarily of politics and philosophy. This year, my interests lay in the sciences.

Not coincidentally, the one tidbit of information I did learn from school wasn’t even part of the curriculum, necessarily. The class was going over World War 2 and the motivations behind it. There are the political and legal stimuli that were necessary, but what was far more interesting had to be the psychological underpinnings. This was obviously not reviewed in fantastic depth; however, when we did review this material I tended to agree with my teacher. He noted that the individuals in post WW1 Germany were no different than ourselves, outside of unfortunate political circumstances. There is obviously a bit more to it than that; the Germans may have had more of a proclivity towards authoritarianism than ourselves. Actually, we know this to be true by virtue of our founding principles. But as a general piece of wisdom, my teacher was correct: it’s easy to think of Germany and particularly Hitler as outliers, when similar events might spur our own nation down that same path. He noted that many aspects of life can be described as having fascist tendencies. The most striking have to be sports. Many high school sports end off practice (I know mine does) by having all participants congregate in a circle and chanting some sort of colloquialism. There is a reason it is done, and that is to remind the team that they are fighting for something beyond themselves, the collective. Your shitty performance is detrimental to the entire team, and you don’t want to let that happen. Conversely, you are fighting for something bigger than yourself, and if you perform well it does not go unnoticed. You will gain recognition for your service towards achieving a collective goal.

Punitive measures also revolve around this idea of the collective. If you fuck up and are subsequently sent to run a few miles in atonement, it sucks, but you perservere. But if you fuck up and the entire team needs to run a few miles as a result, the physical pain is the last of your problems. The associated psychological damage is far more compelling: you are to be shunned by your team, reminded constantly that you are the sinner. Word gets round and you might be the butt of a few jokes. Are you going to fuck up again after that? Hell no.

Coaches know this. And though I understand their tactics, I wholly disagree with them.