Video games is a medium where we can escape our harsh realities; waking up to go to work every morning, multitasking watching porn and pretending to be productive at work, and dealing with all those annoying sexual harassment lawsuits from your co-workers. In video games we can visit wonderful worlds where you can partake in extraordinary things where you can; shoot, stab, punch, dismember, and parkour kick people in the face, all with the press of a button. From the comforts of a dirty stained couch you can play as characters that are heroic, intelligent, resilient, and out right amazing. Often times we were able to save our princess from a dinosaur-turtle hybrid, we were able to kill that vampire in his giant castle, and we were able to stop that douche with the sunglasses and his pharmaceutical company. There are times however, that we do bad video game behaviors that we are not proud of, and here are four of them.
4. Looking up online walkthroughs
There you are, you have been stuck fighting Mike Tyson for the pass two hours. His beady eyes and gap teeth are pounding your face in so much that you are having physical pain in real life. Back during the NES days you either admitted defeat (occured often), persevered with your hard work and skill (admit it, you suck), or you waited for the next issue of Nintendo Power to look up the guide (you did this, don’t lie). Now thanks to the internet, looking up written or video walkthroughs are just one click away.
Not only have games gotten easier since the NES era, even if they were as difficult as before, looking up something online to solve that puzzle or defeat that boss is more accessible than ever. Online walkthroughs are as popular as ever. Look at the amount of views for these two walkthroughs. That is just Youtube, there are a lot of gaming sites that have their own walkthroughs that helps defeat that tough boss or helps find all those obscure collectibles. Many people are guilty of looking up these types of guides, myself included, and it has devalued the achievement of completing the game.
3. Rage quitting
This is something that many people experience once they start playing more multiplayer games online. Getting verbally abused by a nine year old in Taiwan is not a great experience and often anger sets in. Once I was so close to chucking the controller to the TV and the only thing that stopped me was the fact the controller and the TV was not mine, it was my college roommate at the time. The rage, the rage was real.
I felt like if I could have one specific superpower it would have been to have the ability to punch mofo’s through the internet. So I just decided to rage quit before things got worst. When trying to perfect your play and to have someone mess with you either by name calling, beating the snot out of you, or just be outright annoying; rage quitting may be the only option before things escalate.
2. Trophy whoring
I have a confession. I once rented Terminator: Salvation the video game. I knew that it was going to be a bad game, the metacritic score shows how bad this game is. I did not care. I saw the number of gold trophies and I went for it. It took about seven hours of this awful game but I got the platinum, and I felt ashamed. I did not feel great because some of my platinum’s are tough to get and I always feel great, like I accomplished something. However, with Terminator: Salvation, I felt like a complete tool. There is a whole community of players who purposefully play bad games just for the trophy/achievement points. This one might be more obscure than the other ones but it is something that gamers actually do.
1. Trolling
Everyone admits to being trolled, but no one admits to trolling. “I’m just having fun! They aren’t really mad.” Tell that to the other person online who wishes to kick in in the scrotum. This is something that a lot of people do, but don’t want to admit to it. Everyone has at least done some type of trolling; even if it is a little trash-talking. Video game trolls have the advantage of hiding behind a shield of internet anonymity There are a lot of Youtube channels who mainly focus on trolling, and people love it. The view counters are in the millions for some of these videos. I have done some trolling and I feel awful about. I have never made anyone cry, but I know that I have gotten under people’s skin.
I purposefully killed teammates in FPS. I have sent messages telling other players to quit the game due to them having a bad game. I have since retired my douchiness on the internet and I focus on being more of a team player, but with all the other dickheads in the gaming scene, there might be some type of assholegeddon soon that will rip a hole in the fabric of time and space due to their bad video game behaviors. When that happens, make sure that you play your favorite video game one last time.