My patriarchal blessing mentions me being a peacekeeper. For some reason I always thought that was a little odd, because I was thinking of it in terms of at my parents house within my family. Not that I’m a troublemaker, but I didn’t feel like I served in a peacekeeper role much at home. I had an insight last night after a friends comment though. There’s not a frequent need for a peacekeeper at my parents house, I’m blessed with an amazing functional family for which I am super grateful.
I do serve in that capacity often with my friends, not exclusively mind you, and I can be a cause of pain too. But I have a mentality that I’m finding less people share than I thought.
I’ve always thought of myself as a people person. One of the most powerful lessons I remember learning from my Mom is the importance of people. Specifically, there was a time when I was very young, and I did something to make a sibling (likely CJ) upset. I probably took a toy or hit him or something stupid, I was pretty young. What I remember though is my Mom didn’t tell me “it’s not nice to take things” or “it’s rude to hit” she said something like “you’ve hurt him, and now he doesn’t trust you as much”. Whatever I did became irrelevant in comparison to the effect it had on the relationship. I by no means live perfectly by this guideline, but I’m finding I seem to do so more often than many.
For example, we had a Halo party on Saturday. There were very even 3 on 3 teams (with me as an onlooker) , it was super fun. Anyway in Halo Reach there are 5 special abilities which players can choose from in certain gametypes. They mostly played “slayer pro” which only allows the player to use the sprint special ability, because they see the rest of the abilities as dumb or cheap or some other nonsense, which I think is mostly bias but whatev. Their main complaint with normal slayer, which allows picking the 5 abilities, is when people use cloak. They finally tried the gametype just to shake things up, with a unspoken rule of “but no cloaks”. Landon was there playing Reach for the first time, I watched/coached him most the night. I told him pick cloak because it would just upset everyone, but he did anyway. And since he was using it everyone used it, and since everyone used it, no ne enjoyed that match.
So what’s the parallel here? Why is a specific power-up such a big deal as to create contention and discontent in a game? Note that it wasn’t a big deal, and grudges didn’t continue after the match. But there’s two sides, either of which I think could easily bend.
Side 1 is the “cloak is stupid” side. Their basis is that the cloak is cheap (sitting invisible on a hill with a sniper can be admittedly over-powered), and that the radar messing up effect it has is annoying and thus no fun. To this, I’d say it’s not cheap, it’s just different. Maybe it directly counters the tactic you prefer to use effectively, but that doesn’t mean it’s “cheap” it means you need to try something different yourself. It’s like when the British would line up shoulder to shoulder and fire, and then getting upset that their opponents hide in the trees. If you keep lining up shoulder to shoulder and marching at a slow pace, you’re going to lose, that doesn’t make the opponents tactics cheap, they just need to be responded to differently. Yes some people online use powerups in a way that is truly cheap and lame, but in a room of 6 real life friends the peer pressure to not be an idiot will prevent anyone from being truly cheap for more than a few kills. I should also add even sprint can be “cheap” when used as a direct counter to other strategies. The moral of the story is, why be a butt about it? Just play different for a bit rather than damaging a relationship.
Side 2, “it’s part of the game, I can use it if I want”. Also a decent basis, there’s no cheating taking place, it’s built into the rules! Sometimes people view it as dishonorable, sometimes they just view it as annoying or no fun, but it’s the way the game was designed, why not play the games full potential? Also totally logical, once again it just focuses entirely on the event (the tactic you’d like to use) and totally ignores the relationship. If everyone except you says don’t do it, and you do it anyway, you can single handedly bother the entire group over something equally stupid as the above British army analogy. This time you’re the guy in the trees. If you’re only objective is to win, then sure, it’s the correct decision. If it’s a matter of preserving my family’s life, I’ll hide in the trees for sure. I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a situation serious enough for it to be justified based on my logic here. Any time I decide to go for the dirty tactic anyway, I’m just feeding my pride. Whether it’s an unconditional desire to win, or a desire to be right, it’s still pride. Almost every one of these circumstances isn’t about saving your family, it’s about having fun with your friends. So why not just avoid the tactic so everyone’s happy?
Hmm, this turned into a Halo rant haha, it can easily be generalized and applied to all sorts of games or circumstances though. Note once again I’m far from perfect, but I do believe I tend to go “meh, ok we’ll do it your way” and have fun playing with or without the tactic in question a lot more than most people I’ve observed. Often times people get upset or annoyed, and I don’t get why. Literally no one benefits. Both parties are bugged, the tension increases, no one even gets to be right. What’s gained? The exception to this is when playing with the tactic would be some sort of moral compromise, like say if there was some sort of option to make every halo player naked, I’d be opposed to that to the extent of leaving. But if it’s using the cloak, or the rocket, or even edge guarding in smash, is it really worth the tension? I don’t think so.
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