At Long Last...(Pt. II)

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And now, the exciting conclusion to "At Long Last"...

So, I spent about two weeks, earning my stripes in COD4 (sort of literally; after all, it is a military game). And I was doing pretty well at it. There are few gaming experiences cooler than going into a match in which you are the lowest ranked player, and coming out with one of the top three performances of that match. It makes you feel like a wild card, one that no one saw coming.

Now, something really cool started happening in these two weeks. As I mentioned, I had started to be an active member on the TRS forum, posting fairly frequently, having back-and-forth’s with a few people, even going so far as to speak up on someone's behalf when they were rather unnecessarily attacked.

Well, something surfaced that tied everything together; all of my new gadgets, all the functions they served and the opportunities they provided. It was simple. A thread moved its way back to the top of the forum, a thread that asked for Playstation Network ID's and what games people were currently playing. After putting up my information, I began using the list to send out friend invites to those who were playing any of the games I owned and with my name being new on that thread, others were sending me invites in turn.

Suddenly, I was not only playing games with very specific people, and communicating with them as we played (through headsets), but they were fast becoming anything but strangers as we had video chats. Even as many as six of us were able to have a group video chat; sitting around, talking about games we had played together and games that were coming, talking about TRS (our most common thread), and things about ourselves such as where we're from*, etc.

Now, the neat thing about being a member of the TRS forum (as I suppose is the case with many forums) is having a common interest, a starting point for any interaction. TRS is about all things rad, yes, but it's pretty widely understood that those involved speak to and from the geek culture. Indeed, most are proud members. As Jeff (one of the hosts) says, "Geek is the new cool." With video games having pushed their way in, to become a mainstream pastime; and with so many people knowing a little bit of coding these days (at least enough to customize their Myspace pages), I think it's safe to say that there's some truth to that statement. Of course, the fact that I'm saying this in a blog probably ensures that I'm preaching to the choir.

While I consider myself a bit of a geek, and am therefore familiar with some aspects of the culture, there's quite a bit for which I knew nothing.

As I've been mentioning, I recently began learning about the world of online gaming. Something I was happy to learn, upon building up my PS3 friends list with TRS fans, was the level of interest in forming clans** for many of the games. Naturally, most of this group was eager to be a member of a TRS clan, for any particular game that had enough people interested.

And so, I became a member of the TRS clans in a couple of the games I had begun playing online. This meant that I was not only playing with people I knew, but we had decided to make the effort to strategize, to work as a team. The strategizing didn't always work (still doesn't always), but we all at least knew that someone had our backs.

This started a great new side to my (somewhat humorous) social life, and I had begun to see some pretty great friendships coming out of it. But, as these things will go, I would soon find out first-hand, not everyone is looking for good times with good people.





*Surprisingly, I have ended up talking to and playing games with a lot of Canadians. Three of the guys I play with most, all live in Canada. Canucks like to play video games. Who knew? What?! I kid, I kid.

**Being a member of a clan just means that someone starts a group. This group will have a call sign (clan tag) that displays in front of all members' names, ingame. It signifies what group someone is a member of, and games tend to keep clan members on the same team.
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Late Start

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Well, I have tons of other things that I intend to write about, and I realize that I'm taking forever to actually get this blog going, but I decided that I wanted to write about something really quick, while it's fresh.

I just had my very first online multiplayer experience. I decided to jump on and play Skate earlier. I saw one guy jump on, we were skating around for a second, and then he hopped off. After a second, he came back. I had a headset on, but didn't know (the first time around) that I had to hit the button to activate chat ingame. I know, blah blah blah.

BUT, when he popped back in, I just hit the button on my earpiece (it's a bluetooth headset like you use for a cell phone). It took me a second to realize that what was happening in my ear was the sounds of this other guy playing the game. What a bizarre experience! We just sat there for almost 5 minutes before it was clear to me that there was someone there. It was this strange mix of the feeling you get when you pick up the phone (a land line, not a cell phone) and there's no dial tone. Like, if maybe you were picking up to dial at the exact time someone had called you. So, you don't say anything because you are wondering why there's no dial tone, and they're not saying anything because they're realizing that it's not ringing. Weird. Just...weird. It was a mix of that sort of thing and some crazy...I don't know, awkward.

So, I made a few audible responses to things I did in the game (like landing a trick or wiping out). Once he did too, I just decided to say something like,"What's up, man?" You know, casual. Well, casual in a situation where two people form a sort of unspoken agreement to ignore the fact that they just had a full 5 minutes of extremely awkward interaction.

You know what it was like? It was like trying to talk to a girl, back when you were in middle school. You simply couldn't trip over yourself worse, or make yourself more a fool, then when you completely lose control of that situation!

Well, anyways, all told it turned out to be very, very cool. We played for some 2 and 1/2 hours or something crazy like that. A couple of other guys came in, some dropped out, some new guys joined us. It just turned out that the two of us were the only ones with headsets, so we just ended up talking about all kinds of cool stuff - entirely about the game, of course. I mean, I will tell you now that I don't know shit about the etiquette of this whole online-gaming-interaction thing, but I can guess that there are some things that would just be retarded to talk about. So, I stayed clear. Mostly.

I just find it really trippy that there is an entire generation of kids for whom this sort of interactions is completely normal. That's just...really F'ed up. I mean, I don't think it's bad or anything, but how freakin' nuts is that? And here I am, this 30-year old guy who just played his very first online game. I was definitely a late bloomer. But, it's cool. Now I can say I've started. Before I know it, I'll have gathered the nerve up to join an online multiplayer, squad-based military game (I own Call of Duty 4, but haven't gone anywhere near playing it online). Soon, I'll be running and gunning and having the time of my life.
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