How I became a hardcore gamer!

The adventures of David, a hardcore video gamer, teaching Katrina, a n00b-type video gamer, how to play Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Katrina's perspective:

Previously, the only vidjo-games I ever played were on Nintendo consoles (such as the Wii and DS) as Nintendo has recently started to target 'casual gamers' (or, in hardcore-gamer speak: n00bs) with easier and mote intuitive control layouts. You may have already read my blog posts on Nintendogs and Scribblenauts, both on the DS - if not, you might want to read them here and here.

Besides these games, I have also played Pokemon (Diamond version), Professor Layton, and Super Mario Bros. On the Wii, I've played Wii Sports Resort, Super Mario Galaxy, and Wii Fit Plus, all very entertaining games (even the Wii Fit Plus, despite its endless anti-fat guilt trips).

Yesterday, David taught me how to play a Xbox 360 game - Call of Duty: Black Ops. Despite the fact that I sometimes erroneously refer to the game as "Spec Ops", I think I am pretty good. I have had Kill-to-Death ratios of over 1 (meaning that for every time I die, I also kill someone), however most of my KD ratios are around 0.2 to 0.5. We have been playing the game "Team Deathmatch" which I realised refers to the fact that the teams are competing in a death-match against each other - at first I believed that it was because my team was called "Team Deathmatch".

I have played against enemies on the 'recruit' level (meaning that the enemies are easy to defeat), and I think that the 'veteran' enemies should come much, much later. I already know which multi-player maps are the best (the ones where the environment is not all one colour, like Summit or Jungle - ideally I like the more colourful maps such as Nuketown, or at least the maps that feature a little more built environment), and I know that if I were to ever play against real people I should not reveal that I'm female, otherwise they'd demand to see boobs.

After learning Black Ops I think that combat games that involve killing people and just generally being super-competitive and aggressive are not my cup of tea. I much prefer games where you solve puzzles, train puppies, or work on your fitness. The Xbox console is not as user-friendly or intuitive as the Nintendo Wii or DS consoles. Many games have different controls to each other, which is quite cruel. The hardest things to learn are using the dual joystick controls, one which controls your movement, and one which controls your vision, but I am getting there!

The best part of Black Ops Multi-player is killing people and the worst part is getting killed yourself. Once I actually did kill myself by falling off a bridge. The most annoying deaths are the ones where you are standing off with an enemy, and they manage to kill you before you kill them (mostly because you have forgotten to reload your weapon after discharging all your ammunition into a point somewhere next to the enemy's knee). Other annoying deaths are the ones where you die unexpectedly, for example, if your killer was standing behind you, or was a sniper and was a long way away from you.

It's also pretty fun to experiment with the various face paints you can wear. However, Call of Duty: Black Ops does not give you the opportunity to play as a female character; something that most Nintendo games I have played allow. (Even Super Mario Bros. where you play as Mario - at least he is portly and stylised enough to pass off as non-gendered, despite the impressive moustache). All of the Black Ops avatars and enemy characters are testosterone-charged macho soldiers and therefore can be a little alienating to female players.

David's perspective:

I've been playing videogames for as long as I can remember; they were a big part of my childhood, and still eat up a lot of my free time. A lot of people consider videogames, particularly the "hardcore" or "violent" kind, to be the realm of male players, and "casual" games the domain of female gamers. This is a complete fallacy; 50% of gamers are female, and the disparity in preferred genre is near nil. With this in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce Katrina to the "hardcore" videogame; as she mentioned above, Katrina has played plenty of DS and Wii games, and I felt it was time she graduated from these "casual" mediums, and moved onto something a little more intensive.

I thought the end goal of this experiment would be to foster an appreciation for the games that can really be considered art, games with plots rich in theme and meaning (like last year's brilliant Red Dead Redemption, or the cyberpunk classic Deus Ex), games that tell masterfully crafted epics and fairytales (like Mass Effect, or Majora's Mask). I realised however that these games weren't things that could be readily experienced like books or films. There's a lot of assumed knowledge in videogames, common practices, conventions and terminology, but most importantly controls; without understanding how to navigate a game, it would be impossible to appreciate. So our training began with a game lauded for its perfection of first-person shooter gameplay mechanics and control, an inherently popcorn experience, though one widely considered a pillar of the "hardcore" gaming experience: the Call of Duty franchise, more specifically Black Ops.

Introducing Katrina to the basic controls of an FPS, I realised that it is far more difficult to pick up a controller and start playing now than it ever was when I started gaming in my formative years. When I started playing shooters, they didn't exist on consoles; you played on a home computer, with a keyboard and mouse, controlling your avatar with the W, A, S and D keys, using the mouse to pan and control pitch (if such a feature was included - in early shooters the concept of vertical gameplay was entirely foreign, and you could look neither up nor down). There was no sprint key, no reload key, no alternate fire, no crouching, proning or diving, no picking up weapons, no grenades, no alternate grenades, no radar, no melee/knife attack. Furthermore, there was no great multitude of weapons, attachments and gadgets, nor the confusing process of character creation and modification. The modern-day shooter is the product of an evolutionary process, and gamers of my generation have had the fortune to be part each step of that process. We learnt piece by piece; Katrina had to learn it all on day one.

And learnt it all she did. The two-stick control system was certainly the greatest barrier to control mastery; it's not a particularly intuitive system, but in less than an hour Katrina was circle-strafing admirably. A couple of one-on-one rounds on Firing Range, and she was ready to fight some bots in Nuketown. A couple of matches later and she had a 1KD, (Kill to Death ratio) a very impressive score for a beginner.

While it was rewarding to see her playing competently so quickly, what really made me smile was the way she picked up the terminology and language of competitive gaming, a lingo I had been speaking since those first days of four-player GoldenEye on the N64. Whether she was scolding me for "stealing a kill", blaming a loss on slow reload, or lamenting a "spawn kill", Katrina was naturally developing an understanding of decade-old competitive gaming convention; it made me realise that gaming isn't just a cult hobby. It can be enjoyed by anyone who gives it a chance, and I found that very encouraging.

It will be a while before she's making a name for herself in New Vegas, lassoing bounties at the Hanging Rock or strategically dismembering Necromorphs, but I think this has been a greatly successful first step on a very exciting path.

A rant on bus etiquette

My main modes of transport are bus and boyfriend-taxi, since I live a 50 minute walk away from the nearest train station, and don't own a car.

Apart from the occasional trip with the boyfriend-taxi, I catch the bus to and from work, uni, the city, and my nearest shopping mall. That's four different locations, serviced by three different bus routes, available from two different bus stops near my house - gosh this sounds like The 12 Days of Christmas! I should have ended with "and one garish but very visible shade of lemon yellow" (in reference to the colour of the buses, if you didn't get that!).

On most long bus rides, I am that person who leans my head against the window and promptly falls asleep, often with my mouth hanging open. But other than being vaguely unpleasant and embarrassing to look at (and I don't think people have the duty to be good-looking while catching a bus!) I try to not interfere with the comfort of other bus riders.

For example, when I catch the bus, my teeth are brushed and I do not breathe my stinky breath over the poor passenger sitting in front of me. Some balding man sat behind me the other day, sighed, and I was instantly assaulted by a gust of stale, smelly air! I thought I would be able to tolerate this (even though this man seemed to sigh unnaturally frequently)... until a few bus stops later, when his friend got on the bus, sat next to him, and they promptly engaged in a conversation that lasted the entire trip. Every time this guy spoke, the same stale, smelly breath wafted over to my seat. By this time the bus had filled up and it was impossible to move seats.

The following day, this balding man took the seat directly in front of me! Stemming from the belief that his breath could travel backwards as well (since the bus moves forwards), I quickly changed seats before his friend came on and while empty seats were still available.

Secondly... when I catch the bus, I put my bag(s) on my lap or by my feet on the floor, if it's a peak-hour bus that I know will fill up! (If it's the midday bus that only ever fills up a third of the way, if that, then I'm a bit more lax.) And believe me, I catch enough buses, at different times of the day, on different routes, to be able to figure out these patterns.

The only thing worse than putting your bag on the seat next to you on a peak hour bus that will fill up... is putting your bag on the seat next to someone else! This morning, while I sat on the bus with my bag in my lap and an empty seat next to me, some man sat in the row behind me and plopped his backpack on the seat next to me (the seat in front of him). I felt like turning around and giving him a greasy but decided against it, since I'd have to be on the same bus as him for another hour.

I just kept quiet and thought to myself "great, now people are going to get on the bus and think I'm some inconsiderate fool who takes up seats that are meant for humans, with inanimate objects, like bags!" Never mind that I was on my way to work and therefore in business attire, so it would have been very incongruous for the grotty backpack next to me to actually belong to me. But sometimes people don't notice small details the way I do.

Anyway I can really only think of two rude things that I would never do on a bus, whereas I can think of three rude things that I routinely do on buses, so perhaps I am in actual fact, the rude passenger! The annoying/obnoxious things I sometimes engage in include:

• Carrying on a loud conversation with the person next to me (if they happen to be a friend or acquaintance)
• Engaging in public displays of affection with the person next to me (back in the day where David worked in the same area as I did, and we caught the bus in to work together)
• Carrying on a loud conversation on the phone, in an Asian accent (if I'm speaking to my parents)

So, in a shocking twist my rant on bus etiquette has ended with the revelation that *I* am the quintessential annoying bus passenger! (Maybe M. Night Shayamalan will adapt this blog post for his latest movie?)

Hmm... I would hereby like to issue an apology to any fellow bus riders I have been annoying to, especially that nice Indian lady who always smiles at me at the bus stop. But this apology does not extend to Smelly-Breath-Man or Grotty-Backpack-Man! You have felt my virtual wrath!

Peace out everybody!