Play Your Own Way
This post comes with caveats. In a perfect world, common sense would prevail and I wouldn’t have to list them. But we live in an age where some people take great pleasure in being professional contrarians and deliberately obtuse. So let me state clearly and unequivocally, I am not advocating that your gaming pleasure should come at the expense of someone else's. If you sign up for a 12 man raid and have a specific role to play, then do so to the best of your ability. Fooling around has consequences in such a scenario. However, that is not what is being discussed here. Nope. What I am suggesting is that you should take your pleasures, where you can find them. And if they have no tangible impact upon other players, then you are totally entitled to play your game of choice in a manner that suits you. It’s a simple axiom, yet it still proves to be very difficult for some gamers to comprehend and more importantly accept. Allow me to explain by means of an example.
I was playing Call of Duty Warzone a few nights ago. I like to play Solo Battle Royale mode, which consists of 150 players parachuting into the warzone in a free-for-all fight. Now not being the world’s best “runner and gunner”, I try various different tactics to keep me engaged and occupied when playing this game. On the occasion in question, I decided to grab one of the helicopters you find dotted around the map and took to the skies above Verdansk. Now this doesn’t come without risk, as you can take fire from players equipped with LMGs and surface to air missiles. If you alight upon a rooftop, you are at further risk as there’s full access to these areas via stairwells. Players can also call in airstrikes and artillery bombardments. So if you decide to fly a helicopter as a means of avoiding the firefights happening at ground level, you have to keep moving and keep an eye on the contracting “safe zone”. Well to cut a long story short, this is what I did. I managed to stay aloft and get into the last three players, however I eventually succumbed to the gas and crashed.
Now for me, this was just an amusing experiment and diversion. It’s not something I intend to do continuously but I’ll certainly try it again with another type of vehicle. It’s a means for me to keep engaged with the game. However, it has come to my attention that “this sort of behaviour” is an anathema to some CoD WZ players. And you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out who. Every game has their own version of the “Fun Police” but it seems to be especially more endemic to PVP genres. There’s a certain type of player that considers their own approach to the game to be the only relevant position and doesn’t care for any form of dissent on the issue. They’re self appointed arbiters of what is and isn’t (in their opinion) the correct way to play. It’s an utterly intellectually bankrupt position but we sadly live in an age of such dogmatic tribalism. And it was some of this brigade who were most displeased with my shenanigans as they felt it wasn’t in the spirit of the game.
It will come as no surprise to you that these baseless complaints fell on deaf ears. My activities incommoded no one and as there is no universally accepted game code, such complaints are irrelevant. If you want to ensure that everyone you play with cleaves to the same ideology as you, I would advise not joining public groups but instead creating private games. All of which can be done easily in CoD WZ. But such people would much rather have something to complain about and see every minor social interaction in life as some part of a wider ongoing culture war. The best way to counter such entrenched stupidity is to mock it. Therefore, I strongly advocate and extol the mantra of “play your own way”. You are not beholden to slavishly follow someone else’s interpretation of the rules. Do what brings you pleasure and fun. If you want to collect all the shinies, then you do that. Roleplay a Bolivian, amputee, bee keeper if you see fit. Only play a specific zone in an MMO if that’s your jam. Dress up alts, eschew levelling, ignore the prevailing game meta if you like. You are free to do what you want, how you want within the terms of service. Angry arguments to the contrary are just white noise from the socially dysfunctional. Bollocks to them.
