What do you get out of gaming?

April 23, 2008

This occurs to me today, because of a round of Halo 3 that I was playing last night.

But to start, here’s what I get out of gaming: I game for fun. I play to enjoy myself. And when I play online, as I was last night, I’m looking for similar things. I want to expand the gaming experience, to include people that are not AI characters in the game, but instead real people. Usually, this means that things occur that are unexpected and surprising. For the most part, I enjoy myself*. I don’t play to be the best. And to be honest, I know that I’m not the best. I’m not all that interested in being the best. Its not a self-esteem thing for me. I’m just trying to enjoy myself. And I like to help other players to enjoy themselves, if I can.

So, last night, I’m on Xbox Live, playing some halo, when I end up in a Territories game. And I look at the other team. And the list pretty much looks like this:

iMmaDoucheBag
iMmaDoucheBag[1]
iMmaDoucheBag[2]
iMmaDoucheBag[3]
iMmaDoucheBag[4]

So, this looks a little suspect to me. As well as the fact that these “players” are pretty much invincible. Doesn’t seem to matter what any of the guys on my team do, these guys keep winning, and can’t really be killed. And when you can manage to kill one (I think we killed one), the other “players” have already killed you. So, I’m getting a little annoyed, and I’m getting curious, so I take a look at their gamer cards. None of them have a gamer score. They have no achievements. They have no gamer rep. It seems that their entire goal, is to simply pwn other players, and to WIN. So, I don’t know what it was that I was playing. A guy and his bots? I dunno. But the entire experience was bad. No one had any fun (except these guys who got such a kick out of PWNing the people around them). Puts a bad taste in my mouth, and makes me reluctant to play.

I’ll tell you one thing: if I go on live again and find myself in a similar situation, I’ll just drop the game. I’ll take the xp hit, and just leave. After all, If I’m not having any fun, I’m not interested.

*Note: One way to help ensure that I enjoy myself, is to keep the voice chat set to friends only. There’s nothing worse than being PWN3D by someone and hearing this 12 year old voice say “take that bitch“. Yeah, that’s more than just a little…humiliating. So, I don’t have the voice chat set to chat with everyone in the game. Maybe I’m missing out on some organization, but I’ll tell you one thing: I’m saving myself a lot of gamer rage.

Written by grinningskull | Filed under: Video Games, Xbox Live |