like a fire

I recently posted something about the story behind the biggest video game release ever. Halo3 has people all over the world stunned with the graphics, the story and the game play. It is truly an amazing game. But there is another side of the Halo experience that I have been encountering lately that raises my sense of rightness and justice.

This concern comes from the experience of Halo on Xbox Live and from multi-player games over system link. There is nothing like playing the game of the year with several of your best buddies. The ability to play with up to 16 other players is definitely a part of what makes Halo so attractive. But the darker side comes out in these matches.

Most often, playing is a frenetic experience of kills and re-spawns. As with all games there is the tension of winning and losing, and as with all games, there are people who are good winners and bad winners. Getting to the point, the trash talking sometimes becomes too much for good fun. This is especially present in Xbox Live where there is a certain amount of anonymity. I would say that most games have this and we just have to deal with it. But something happened in my group of junior high guys last week that made me stop the whole game and talk about. The exchange went something like this:
“Hey man, stop camping that bunker!”

“I’m not camping!”

(Person continues to slaughter everyone from said bunker)

Then.

“You guys are worthless!” (Repeated consistently for personal pleasure)

It triggered something in me. Really? Worthless  because we can kill you when you have the sniper rifle and rocket launcher in the bunker? (Wait a minute) Worthless because we can’t play a video game as well as you? I don’t know what happened there, but I started watching the faces of these guys a lot more and I didn’t like what I saw. Unlike a basketball game where there is mostly personal interaction with the players, this video game made the players life-like bodies on the screen and faceless voices in the room. I didn’t like it.

I am talking to the guys today and asking them to think about impact of anonymity in video games and about their own voices in that. I am also going to ask that they keep it a bit more charitable. I know that some of this is pretty regular guy stuff, but I feel like I would do the same with a team sport if someone was behaving like that. It is just a lo harder to see it through the video  game lens.