On the Subject of Cooperative Multiplayer Gaming

(Where there are teams, so will there be enemies.)

I like to think there’s a sort of equilibrium to the internet, or indeed, everything. I’m not going as far to say that there’s some sort of SHADOW HOURAI who goes around making usernames like :.:XxShAd0wH0uR4ixX:.: (this breaks all the tenets of my personal Guideline of Username Creation, btw) who is the Exact Opposite of me and gose aronud misplelign evarything and put1ng r4nd0m numb3r5 in his words and blogs (and by that same token, miraculously have the perseverance and will to blog on daily basis, GASP). However, I would say that as there will be people, in Minecraft, for example, with the divine* patience to build goddarn slot machines WITH REDSTONE, so will there be griefers with the demonic patience to destroy those slot machines (which wouldn’t take very long, so forget I said that and instead substitute “slot machines” for “1:5 scale Great Wall of China”).

In short, everyone on the internet is a jerk, unless they’re not.

So, moving on to the Cooperative Multiplayer Gaming part of this post.

Really, as my uninformed (honestly), short-sighted view, I see that cooperative multiplayer games will fall into two categories:

1. Games with one big team. (Minecraft, and… possibly Terraria)
2. Games with more than one team. (Everything else) (League of Legends, anything team vs. team (CoD, Halo MultiPlayer, half the fps’ out there, etc.)

Regardless of the category, jerks invaded these games a long, long time ago. They were there at the start. The Imperial Jerk faction planted a Jerk Senator on the multiplayer game creating teams to spawn jerks in every game since AD 2101. (no wait that makes no sense w/e)

Now, of both categories, I really only play League of Legends.

As a pre-emptive tl;dr, I’m going to summarize this post as “this is why we can’t have nice things”.

I will now proceed to list EVERY DAMN EXAMPLE AND WAY SOMEONE CAN BE A !#$~!!@#$% JERK IN LEAGUE OF LEGENDS. OR AT LEAST MOST OF THEM. JEEZ.

One is to “call mid”. This means that the Jerk will insist on taking mid, and act as if they own, or deserve the middle lane (or, in the case of Twisted Treeline, top lane). I see no major benefit to mid unless you consider certain champions’ reliance on taking this lane, but really, I see a lot of people take mid when a better candidate for mid lane is on the team.

Another is kill-stealing: holding back damage until an enemy guy from the other team (a “champion”) is dropped low by teammates, then snatching up the kill. If you contributed 5-10% of the damage in killing someone, and got the kill, you probably did kill stealing UNLESS your teammates would not have been able to finish the enemy champion off without your intervention. People will still insist that any sort of kill where they got a paltry assist was a kill steal. This is a goddamn team game, think of it as KILL SHARING. There’s a kill counter that compares team kills, you morons.

A big one is in chat. Goes without saying, applies to forums, all other games with chat (or those where you can type messages for each other).

The last main one is trolling. Also goes without saying.

I’m sure I missed something along the way, but I don’t really care that much…

And really, as a person who is Reasonably (or at least tolerably) Good and Moral in games like these (or the internet in general), it “frustrates” me (no, I don’t actually rage very often at all) that people can be jerks. And that people will be jerks. And that people have been, are, and will forever be jerks until computers rebel upon the widespread use of cyborg implants (woo Deus Ex: HR, although I’m not sure that happens) in humans, at which point they’ll just be bots with creepy monotones.

As I was saying, before I went into a completely unfunny, stupid, (I LIKE HATING ON MYSELF IT’S A TSUNDERE REFLEX SO DON’T RECONCILE ME ABOUT THAT STUFF… oh hey, that was pretty good- IT’S SH*T YOU DIDN’T HEAR ME SAY THAT) rant/tangent, I DO have an urge to go be a jerk and feign bad grammar so I can do “wonderful things”, but I suppress that damn urge so I can Be a Role Model to Others in Gaming. Personally, I suspect no one really is inspired by role models in games like those (if they do pay attention, it’s probably plagiarism). I *WANT* to go take all the kills with Kill Stealer Karthus (epic ultimate is epic), but I don’t! Mainly because I don’t *have* Karthus unlocked, but I will… soon… MUAHAHAHAHAHA! YOUR SOULS ARE MINE, PUNY NON-SMURFING FOOLS

My cynical side says that all this “Good Community” stuff is useless and ineffective, but if we didn’t have a Summoner’s Code we wouldn’t be able to threaten people with bans and things.

I’d like to go onto a massive (not really, I can’t type rants very well) rant about the stupidity of people, but I’m bored already. I have a Karthus to unlock.

:.:XxShAd0wH0uR4ixX:.: has logged off.

(I wonder if all these random parentheses make me look schizophrenic.

Is is wrong to pronounce schizophrenia “shit-zo-freen-ia”? I don’t really look up pronunciations anyway…)

(Edit from future: My cynical self now notices the futility of attempting to expound the virtues of maturity to the internet)