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Happy camping.
Jan. 15th, 2008 09:37 amAbout fifteen years ago now, I had a university friend who was something of a computer nut when this was still a minority interest. He had several computers in his house, linked together with cables - I was very impressed by this as it was the first network I'd ever seen in private hands.
One day I went round to his house and found him in a state of gleeful excitement. He'd just got his hands on an exciting new computer game which unusually was being given away free to drive future sales. It was called Doom. Would I like to play?
I was blown away by the astonishing 3d graphics and thundering 8-bit midi sound. I was even more astonished when I learned it was possible for people playing on linked machines to play the same game co-operatively, sneaking down the ill-lit corridors blowing away demons. As a gaming experience, I'd never seen anything like it.
Of course, me being me, it didn't take me long to realise that it was possible to play the game un-cooperatively, and it was even more fun to shoot my partner than it was to kill monsters. After a while of this I realised that, when killed, we always re-appeared in the same place and there were oodles of merriment to be had standing at that point with a plasma gun waiting for him to reappear and killing him again and again.
He quickly got sick of this and became loudly abusive, but when I said he'd do the same to the next person he played with he laughed, and said yes, he would.
So there you have it. It's a sorry confession but a true one. The history of computer gaming is a long and varied one involving millions of people, and it's possible that my only contribution to this process was the invention of spawn-point camping.
Pretty much every first-person game (either FPS or MMO) has spawn points; pre-set areas on the map where killed or new players appear, and it's considered the height of bad form to kill at this point before someone has got their bearings.
This is why everyone does it, in a process which is technically known as 'pwning n00bz'. There are few greater joys in life than to sit with a sniper rifle and a direct bead on an enemy spawn point, capping them as they appear. On the other hand, I remember a few years ago sitting for several hours in slumped boredom watching someone play a MMO, in which all he did was stand in a cave with half a dozen other people. Every couple of minutes a monster would appear in a twinkle of magic fairy dust and they'd pile on it and hack it up, making their characters incrementally tougher in the process.
I think I've mentioned before that I don't see the point of MMO's. This is why.
Thinking about spawn-point camping yesterday, it occurred to me that it's a phenomenom not just limited to the gaming world. It happens in the real world too, and it happens all the time. Predatory types hanging round real-world spawn points looking, in one way or another, to 'pwn n00bz'.
Politics: Sellers of the Socialist Worker newspaper hang round outside student unions during fresher's week, waiting to pwn n00b students with their rag.
Prostitution: In a bizarre real-world example, I remember there was a bit of a fuss in the South Yorkshire Times a few years ago when it became clear that the local prostitutes in Doncaster were hanging round on the benches outside the town-centre Post Office on pension day, looking to pwn newly-paid OAP n00bz.
Medicine: Paediatricians hang round in maternity wards, being possibly the greatest real-world example of a spawn point.
Religion: In the Islamic paradise, your 72 virgins become virgins again every morning, regardless of what they did the night before. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that there must be virgin spawn-points in paradise, and we can but imagine various beardy types camping at that point to pwn n00b virgins.
Any more?
One day I went round to his house and found him in a state of gleeful excitement. He'd just got his hands on an exciting new computer game which unusually was being given away free to drive future sales. It was called Doom. Would I like to play?
I was blown away by the astonishing 3d graphics and thundering 8-bit midi sound. I was even more astonished when I learned it was possible for people playing on linked machines to play the same game co-operatively, sneaking down the ill-lit corridors blowing away demons. As a gaming experience, I'd never seen anything like it.
Of course, me being me, it didn't take me long to realise that it was possible to play the game un-cooperatively, and it was even more fun to shoot my partner than it was to kill monsters. After a while of this I realised that, when killed, we always re-appeared in the same place and there were oodles of merriment to be had standing at that point with a plasma gun waiting for him to reappear and killing him again and again.
He quickly got sick of this and became loudly abusive, but when I said he'd do the same to the next person he played with he laughed, and said yes, he would.
So there you have it. It's a sorry confession but a true one. The history of computer gaming is a long and varied one involving millions of people, and it's possible that my only contribution to this process was the invention of spawn-point camping.
Pretty much every first-person game (either FPS or MMO) has spawn points; pre-set areas on the map where killed or new players appear, and it's considered the height of bad form to kill at this point before someone has got their bearings.
This is why everyone does it, in a process which is technically known as 'pwning n00bz'. There are few greater joys in life than to sit with a sniper rifle and a direct bead on an enemy spawn point, capping them as they appear. On the other hand, I remember a few years ago sitting for several hours in slumped boredom watching someone play a MMO, in which all he did was stand in a cave with half a dozen other people. Every couple of minutes a monster would appear in a twinkle of magic fairy dust and they'd pile on it and hack it up, making their characters incrementally tougher in the process.
I think I've mentioned before that I don't see the point of MMO's. This is why.
Thinking about spawn-point camping yesterday, it occurred to me that it's a phenomenom not just limited to the gaming world. It happens in the real world too, and it happens all the time. Predatory types hanging round real-world spawn points looking, in one way or another, to 'pwn n00bz'.
Politics: Sellers of the Socialist Worker newspaper hang round outside student unions during fresher's week, waiting to pwn n00b students with their rag.
Prostitution: In a bizarre real-world example, I remember there was a bit of a fuss in the South Yorkshire Times a few years ago when it became clear that the local prostitutes in Doncaster were hanging round on the benches outside the town-centre Post Office on pension day, looking to pwn newly-paid OAP n00bz.
Medicine: Paediatricians hang round in maternity wards, being possibly the greatest real-world example of a spawn point.
Religion: In the Islamic paradise, your 72 virgins become virgins again every morning, regardless of what they did the night before. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that there must be virgin spawn-points in paradise, and we can but imagine various beardy types camping at that point to pwn n00b virgins.
Any more?
