My little cohort of fellow gamers were huddled around the latest XBox magazine last night at work. Generally I tune out when they get like that - they play online Halo-type stuff, which is not my personal cup of tea. This time, though, I got pulled into the debate. One of the guys handed me the mag and asked, "Hey, what do you think about this? Would you call this cheating or not?"
It seems this one guy by the name of David Harr ran into a bit of a snag trying to get all of the Achievement awards in Perfect Dark Zero. Good ol' David had already put over 50 hours into the game, and didn't particularly feel like playing another 2,000 rounds, so with a little ingenuity he put together what he calls the xBot. This little contraption is wrapped around the controller, and begins by hitting the START button to begin a match. After a set time, it mashes the B button to back out, then finds another game. With this handy-dandy little contraption, he is capable of going through around 40 games an hour, while its creator goes out to eat dinner, catches a nap, reads Great Expectations...you get the idea.
I looked up at my buddies and said, "That lazy sonofab*****..."
Cohort A looks down on me from his perch on the side of his desk to where I sit in my computer chair, and grins. "You know, that's sheer genius. We've been using rubber bands on our joysticks to keep our guys running around in circles all night long."
I swivel around to stare at Cohort B. "You actually do that kind of thing, too?" He just laughs and nods at me. No skin off his nose (found out later he's the one who came up with that idea). I'm still feeling somewhat amazed. I look back down at the article and notice the last sentence..."For our two cents, Harr's mad-genius powers alone mean those Achievements are richly deserved." And THAT'S when it really starts kicking around my brain.
Yeah, on the face of it, it made me downright ill. But then again, how often do we gamers spend hours making our protagonists into little Six-Million-Dollar men, investing our time (and on occasion, our money) into making them better, stronger, faster? For me personally, it's usually the desire to open every secret, find each hidden item, and catch all the potential story scenarios that makes me push those characters into Rocky-esque form. For example, in order to beat Ruby and Emerald Weapon in FFVII I spent about 20-plus hours in the sunken sub with several accelerated-Materia-growth weapons to gain duplicate copies of Master Final Attack, Phoenix, Mime and Knights of the Round Materia (the sub boasts monsters with the highest AP values). The fact that I also got all my team members up to Level 99 was really an added bonus at that point, and it was totally moot that the Weapon battles were optional. I didn't even need the prizes for defeating them. I simply enjoy trying to do everything that CAN be done in a game, but I definitely fought a lot of mindless battles just to get there. There were a few times I half-dozed off and found myself repeatedly mashing the attack button when Cloud was just standing there in the middle of the sub, scratching his head (he was probably wondering what the hell I was doing, and who did I think he was supposed to fight). If it was within my ability to screw together a few solenoids, a couple of batteries and a circuit board to do some of that means-to-an-end fighting, darn skippy I'd have pulled out the Erector set. Somehow, that stung a bit. Wasn't I always proud of earning things the hard way? Well, yeah...but if I had figured out an easier way I'd have been even more smug with myself. The point I suppose I found myself sticking at the time was, when does the end justify the means? Thinking further on that, I had to admit I was making certain assumptions - that David's little trick there 1- give him an edge against other online players, 2 - hurts others who got the Achievements through the tried-and-true blood sweat and tears method, and 3 - harmed the overall game experience for others. Since I'm not an online player, I was in no position to comment, but patient questioning and a few toothpicks under the fingernails of Cohort A and B gave me an answer. Neither had played Perfect Dark Zero much, but they thought it was just a matter of getting an Achievement Award. So if he just wanted a nice shiny little badge (or whatever it is that Zero offers), I was being a real hypocrite. And what if it gave him some really great weapon, or raised his stats to inhuman level, or such? Hmm...well, in my RPG's, if I can't hack the beasties in a certain area, I go back to a place where the monsters are a step down, and I boost myself up. If it's something without level stats (say, Silent Hill) then I try switching to stronger weapons, or go find more ammo so I can afford to perforate the creepy-crawlies with quantity over the quality of my aiming. Gamers are always on the lookout for an edge, but now I had to take into consideration that I wasn't used to looking for an edge over other gamers, and I was thinking of things in somewhat idealized terms. Is gaining higher stats over the competition unfair? Am I expecting warfare to be...well, nice? I like the idea of equality, but the spirit of competition isn't about equality. It's about "one of us here is gonna look like a colander, and it AIN'T going to be ME!" Sure, battles are fun, and we should play games for fun. But there is a good percentage of folks out there who want to be the best there is, and to do that, you need to fight other players. Unfortunately, not everybody out there is a master of reflex and hand-eye coordination (I definitely fall into that category). If I WAS an online gamer, I'd like to think I could at least gain a certain measure of respect from showing I put time into something, if not skill. I think this is where Harr's little project rubbed me the wrong way. I know nothing about the guy, but it's easy to assume that somebody who takes shortcuts must be a sucky player who will use any underhanded means to come out on top of the bodybags. So now I'm taking this as an affront to my honor as a gamer? The guy was damnably clever. In one fell swoop he proved himself smarter than me and my cohorts. I already knew I lacked skill, I just hated the thought of being out-thought, because that's my strong point. Hah, haven't even played the stupid game and the guy beat me...
All of this great mass o' thought came after I got home from work, so I don't think I'll share the epiphany with the guys. I did borrow the mag, though. There's some guy who started an online company that trains you to play Halo 2 for $155 an hour....dammit, why didn't I think of that?....out-thunk again...anybody know how to train your brain?