I had somewhat of a revelation this week related to the way I play multiplayer first person shooters. My son is an active Boy Scout and over the summer, his troop likes to meet weekly to do “fun” stuff. It’s mainly designed to reinforce the weekly routine and to promote “fellowship” which is pretty much just a traditional way of describing hanging out with one another, getting to know everyone better. “Fellowship” gives it a more substantial ring. Why am I talking about this on a video game site? We played LaserTag… about the closest thing I can think of to playing a first person shooter in real life.
Read on to learn what I discovered about myself during our games…
At first, I was a little put off by the fog machines they were using. I know they were in use to enhance targeting (allowing you to easily target the enemy with your laser which showed up very nicely in the fog) but it made it a bit awkward to breathe at first. I eventually got over it, but it was surprising. With the ramps and upper levels, there were quite a few people using different strategies. I found myself naturally finding a good sheltered spot and pretty much camping, picking off the oncoming enemy as they tried to get to our base to score. The game was set up such that you had to return to the charging station after 60 shots (which didn’t take that long using auto-fire.)
One variation to normal team deathmatch was “Deflector” mode. When you randomly get selected to be a Deflector, your vest tells you and starts flashing fast. At this point, the best strategy is to run like hell (as fast as you can in near darkness with other people running around) to the enemy base to score big points. The best part of being a Deflector is any enemy that shoots you takes the damage instead of you. At the end of the night, the only time I approached the enemy base or even strayed far from my base was when I was the Deflector.
The game had scoring kiosks that kept realtime scores of everybody and at the end we got very detailed statistics and this was what helped me see how similar this experience was to playing multiplayer online games. If you just looked at the scores of each player, I was solidly in the middle of the pack with the highest scorers on our team having roughly DOUBLE the score I had. If you looked at the detailed stats, you’d see they paid a very high price for their overall score. They had been massacred compared to my stats, being shot 5-10 times more than I had playing it safe. I could see myself being a stat whore if I played this game very often. Fortunately for my out of shape legs, we only played one four-game session. Speed walking up and down ramps took its toll on my legs.
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Would it be odd if I were to say similar experiences have occured in LaserTag for me too? I was a pretty good shot recently following target practice in Resistance and The Orange Box…
As nerdy as it is, I’d also credit my long-time affair with Gran Turismo with my natural ability to drive as I’ve only been learning for five months or so and I’ve just booked my test (which is pretty nippy for the UK, apparently) and I’m a kickass natural in a gokart.
Never noticed online behaviour in the real world, but have noticed real world behaviour online. I’ve had a few times in Team Fortress where I’ve walked into a team mate face to face in some hallway and we’ve both moved to the side to let the other person pass and ended up still face to face, happens a couple of times before one of you gives up and stays still, letting the other move.
Aha. You mean the Pavement Dance.
Its taken you five months to learn to drive it took me a month HA
@Yamster
Exactly… Except it looks a lot more interesting when it’s a Heavy and a Pyro doing it
I was playing lasertag the other day but the commander spoiled it by spawning hundred of vehicles all over the place.
I hate it when they do that!
@ Eagle Eye, no it didn’t take him 5 months to learn to drive, but here in the UK you have to have a certain amount of lessons before you can take your test, to get experience in different conditions.
LaserTag, how awesome
I camp a lot myself, or I some reason do the MGS style and sneak up on them using walls and darkness, too bad there ain’t no cardboard boxes 
Yeah I’m too addicted 
When I go airsofting I tend to set up near a choke points and don’t tend to move to often (my AK mags hold 600 rounds
). I play the same role in games, set up near a choke point with something that holds a lot of ammo and don’t let anything through
When I used to play Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), I would walk out into a parking lot and look to the sky for a “waypoint” to my car.
Granted, that’s taking it beyond personal habits to a level of psychosis….but its an example of gaming paradigms crossing over to real-life.
Geez, I love me some laser tag!
Thank God nobody T-bags in real life…
I have never been able to consider the To Do list at my work as anything other than a quest log.
@[conspirAcy]
Am from the UK and it took me a month – the whole amount lessons is BS they just want you to pay for more lessons