The Scrubs Have Won

David Sirlin is right ; WoW does teach our kids poor lessons about life and about competition. In 1991 the fall of the Soviet Union showed the world that communism quite simply doesn’t work. Yet here we are continually subscribing to this sort of social communism every day when we try to pull the potentially “harmful” aspects of competition from our games. At what point we diverted from viewing competition as a healthy motivation for self improvement to something that is damaging to the egos of our children is beyond me. This mentality affects our gaming experience. We have created a world full of scrubs that want some pleasantly compassionate experience manufactured for them in which the worst case scenario is losing to a preprogrammed digital monster that doesn’t contain the capacity to ridicule you.

Someone said to me today “Shadowbane (A popular MMORPG with a player versus player focus in which players could kill each other freely with no “safe zones”) saw the dominance of the most sociopathic among us”. First off I disagree with this statement entirely, but let us assume for a moment it is true. My response would be a resounding “So what?” Just as there will be bleeding hearts who wish to shelter the world from the competitive aspects of gaming there will also be the social predator whose sole goal in winning is to defamate his opponent. On both sides of the MMORPG “PvP” and “PvE” spectrum there are losers. What a true gamer seeks isn’t the freedom to mock or degrade but the freedom to improve in an environment of constantly evolving competition. Instead what we do is make the competitive gamer suffer the most by out casting him and labeling him as a “griefer” or a “bloodsucker”.

Comically we reduce the freedom in our games in order to coddle the scrubs who can’t handle being outdone by other players. Mainstream games like Street fighter, 007 Goldeneye, Half-life, and Starcraft all center around player vs player conflict. Notice the the list of MMORPG’s is absent. The RPGers have done well in keeping their tiny pocket of scrubdom isolated from the rest of the gaming world. They’ve managed to add their own spin to gaming and shun anyone with a different view of what a game entails. Most traditional anti PvP RPGers will argue violently against the use of PvP in MMO’s saying that it goes against being immersed in a world. They’ll also argue that PvP goes against the very core of how RPG’s have been played since back in the D&D days. Never mind this pen and paper RPGers interjection that the dungeon master himself is a player and creates all of the conflict for the “adventurers”.

This is a load of crock designed so that what has been a quiet niche can now fight the ever evolving status quo of gaming that has impeded on their “sacred grounds”. The problem is amplified now because gaming companies like Blizzard Entertainment are changing the way we view games in an awful way. Now games are about how much time you can invest, how many powerful items you have, or how sexy your character looks in his/her new Eternal Chainmail of the Gods. The competition has been removed completely. In WoW even the battlegrounds which present a diabolic façade of competition have no true competitive nature. They are simply another time sink masked as PvP to deceive players into believing that their personal skill or talent factors into the game in any way shape or form.

It is disgusting to me that I see an entire generation of gamers coming up to embrace scrubdom. The part I really love is when PvE types argue that PvP takes away from the casual nature of the game and adds an unnecessary level of frustration to it. Here is where your author lays some truth on you. It isn’t about casual gaming or fun for these people. It is about a pattern. It is about a grind. It is about accomplishing things in game that require no skill or talent, only repetition. Otherwise how can anyone argue that fighting against preprogrammed monsters is any different than playing against players? In many games if you die to a monster you can lose experience, cash, loot, or item durability. Why aren’t players complaining about this? If time and loss is really the issue here for a gamer that wants to “play casually” or “just have fun” then why are they playing these games without complaint? The truth is because that monster will do the same thing every single time you fight him. He will move the same way, cast the same spells, and attack the same player. This is a no talent way that these scrubs can progress in their ideal game; by doing the SAME THING OVER AND OVER.

What's the difference between losing experience to a monster upon death or losing your gear to another player upon death? Well for starters that monster is never going to change. He’s going to sit there and do the same damn thing he’s done every other time he’s been engaged. A player changes, grows, and improves. This creates more of a CHALLENGE. A challenge is precisely the thing these so called “traditional RPG’ers” are trying to avoid. The second thing is a personal deflation of ego. The monster will never tell anyone he beat you. He wont laugh at you or mock you or make you “feel bad” about your loss. Like I said earlier, he’s just going to sit there. What a perfect scenario! An opponent that never changes or improves and has no capacity to make you take accountability for your loss! This is mainstream online gaming today folks. We have fed the appetite of thousands of scrubs and now initiate millions more per year through campaigns of marketing “appeasement” by companies like Blizzard who want nothing more than to pick our pockets. Good Game.