There comes a time in the life of every gaming girl and boy when we just hit a wall within a video game. It may be an individual game or an entire franchise, and it may even be something we’ve enjoyed playing immensely for several weeks, months or years. It might not even happen within every game we play, nor is it necessarily restricted to typically “bad” games. Make no mistake however that once that wall appears, it becomes rooted into your mind, forever forming a unshakable barrier between yourself and your enjoyment of whatever it is you were playing.
Last Sunday, this happened to me whilst playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The results may very well be irreversible…
If asked for an explanation as to why this happened on this given day and during this given play session, I don’t think I could provide one. Levels of visible cheating were at no greater heights than usual (although crucially, no less obvious either) and I was generally having a “good day” online, comfortably hovering in the safety of mid-table mediocrity within my team of eight. Nobody was being particularly abusive over the headsets either – rare in itself – and there was nothing about this particular round of Team Deathmatch that ground my gears to controller throwing levels of rage. By my own patchy standards and experiences with Modern Warfare 2 since purchasing the game on launch day, this lazy Sunday afternoon was very much an average stint of online warfare. Not my most thrilling hours of service, but far from the most irritating either.
Yet, as the post-match lobby re-appeared and informed me I had now progressed to Level 40, something in my head clicked. I put down my Dual Shock, arose from the ass grooves on my sofa, ejected the Modern Warfare 2 disc and powered down my Playstation 3. As I placed the Blu-Ray back into its case, I said aloud and to nobody but myself, “I am done with this.” At that point and seemingly out of nowhere, my fling with Modern Warfare 2 came to an abrupt end.
To try and offer some self justification, I will confess this fling has been one that has had its fair share of trials and tribulations since November. The fact that I have only now leveled up to 40 probably tells you more about my relationship with Modern Warfare 2 than I could put into words. I am a distinctly average competitor in the online FPS field, perhaps even a poor one, and have relied more on grinding out weapon upgrades than actual combat ability to gain experience points. At a time when many gamers are on their second, third and fourth prestige cycle – legitimately or otherwise – my humble numerical progress stands as a visible testament to both my lack of ability and the game’s failure to draw me into its world.
Perhaps subconsciously, my enjoyment of Modern Warfare 2 has been a fallacy. I have sunk hours into the online component yet have never stuck with the game for more than a couple of days at a time; rarely investing more than an hour or two of my evenings, for a maximum of one or two nights a week since my initial purchase. Somewhere between my limbic system and prefrontal cortex, Modern Warfare 2 just hasn’t lit up my brain with excitement. As a mediocre player, it seems quite likely that my eyes may simply have grown weary of watching other peoples kill cam’s relentlessly pick me off, or my thumb tired of pressing the square button to re-spawn.
Most likely, however, is that my long-term grievances with the community have finally pushed me over the edge. It should go without saying that the following rant is not a sweeping generlisation the entire Modern Warfare 2 online populace, but from my experiences so far I hold few reservations about calling out the majority on this one. The sense of community is just awful. Simply terrible.
Much of what makes this community so vile is hardly new to online gaming. People have shouted racist abuse and forced others to listen to their rubbish music since headsets have been a part of online gaming, but rarely have I had the displeasure of experiencing an online environment where such issues are so widespread. It’s barely possible to venture into a lobby of virtually any game type without encountering what seem like literally the worst people alive today. God forbid anybody from outside North America or the UK dare to speak in their native tongue, or show even the slightest hint of regional dialect or accent in the tone of their voice. It serves almost as justification to people like our Australian friend Michael Atkinson, who would probably think all his Christmases had come at once should he ever get embroiled in a 5 minute game of Free For All.
Particularly for Playstation 3 owners, it poses an interesting situation. Although all but the most basic Xbox 360 SKUs have come bundled with headsets since the console launched in 2005, Sony has been criticised regularly for not including headsets with the PS3; particularly after the announcement of the Slim, seen to many as a missed opportunity to right some of the wrongs from Sony’s initial, stuttering launch. The result is a distinct lack of online communication across the Playstation Network. Annoyingly, the major exception to this rule is Modern Warfare 2; a game that will make you wish you could block all vocal and written forms of communication entirely. Thanks to a complete lack of co-operation and devoid of almost any strategic gameplay, Modern Warfare 2’s chat system currently exists almost exclusively as a vehicle for abuse.
It could be argued that yes, the game does allow you to mute individual players. In the very worst case scenarios, muting abusive players is as easy as pushing 2 buttons. But can you block clan tags? No, you bloody well can’t, which means you can’t avoid the utter drivel which many choose to display next to their gamertags and usernames. Just last week, I ended up in a Deathmatch with a guy who chose to display [CUNT] as his clan tag. You can’t mute that. You can’t avoid it appearing in lobbies or flashing up on your screen whenever he kills you, presumably as a result of some sort of glitch or cheat.
I am not of an easily offended mind. If somebody wishes to drop the C-bomb in my general direction for a specific reason then fine. I’ll laugh, perhaps show some slight pity and move on with my life. What irritated me about this particular instance was the needlessness of it all. Such a basic disregard and casual use of such appalling language, aimed at nobody in particular and with no purpose or reason. It was to the English language what watching somebody kick a puppy is to our sense of humanity, triggering little more emotion than a disappointing sigh and the death of something inside us. It was also perhaps the perfect summation of everything that makes playing Modern Warfare 2 online such an uncomfortable and difficult experience.
I have tried to cast off such issues and disregard them as an overreaction, but nearing some 5 months since the game’s release and little appears to be being done. If anything, the abusive bile appears to be increasing at a time when my patience with having to hear it has plummeted faster than a hang gliding elephant. Infinity Ward’s subtle-as-a-sledgehammer approach to drugs-related innuendo’s and “spliff” motifs for unlockable call signs and emblems perhaps tells me that my moral objections and discomfort are now an exception rather than the rule, with the current community base very much consisting of both the developer and the publisher’s target audience.
Perhaps I am being over critical, but I don’t see it as a coincidence that my “hit the wall” moment with Modern Warfare 2 appeared just days after my run in with Mr. [CUNT].
Regardless of whether it be the glitchy and cheat riddled gameplay, the awful level of community or a simple failure to attract me to it’s charm’s, my time with Infinity Ward’s record smashing hit has come to an emphatic end. The wall has most certainly appeared and I no longer have even the slightest inclination to attempt to break through it.
Email the author of this post at matc@tap-repeatedly.com.
“It was to the English language what watching somebody kick a puppy is to our sense of humanity” – Poetry.
I didn’t make it a month with Modern Warfare 2. Before cheating had even become widespread, I was already tired of double shotties and people dominating the games with airstrikes and helicopters. COD4 already gave way too much leverage to players who were doing well, once someone hit the nuclear option in MW2 I knew I was done.
Ironically, I was doing better than I ever did in COD4, I just didn’t see the point. I didn’t mute individuals, I hooked up my headset and then muted myself and turned the volume all the way down. I realized I was not playing the game with other people and was treating them as little more than bots. I tried to play the game with friends, but the constant parade of jerk-offs and utter lack of team work made the game less than enjoyable.
I was playing simply to unlock that next level to get that next upgrade so I could unlock the next level to get the next upgrade. I won’t be contained by a Skinner Box, I broke free.
I don’t see MW2 as an improvement. Only in features and technical achievements did it improve. From a gameplay and story perspective, huge step backwads in both single and multi-player.
Oh Mat, you crack me up. Great stuff, and welcome aboard!
And… that is why I don’t play on-line games. Except for Left 4 Dead, and then I only play with my friends. I don’t tolerate foolishness.
Your “hitting the wall” story reminds me of one of my own…. It happened about 13/14 years ago or so. I was living in an apartment complex with my man Steerpike in my year between undergrad and law school. I was playing “Heroes of Might and Magic 3”. It was late at night in the spring/summer, the windows were open and I was quite pleased with my progress in the game. I had a formidable army of nice mix of powerful and fearsome fantasy creatures.
All of a sudden I start to hear some woman crying out and moaning. There was an alleway between our complex and the one next door. I turned the sound off and listened closely, the moaning continued. I went outside to see if anything was going on and then noticed that it was the girl in the apartment across from and above ours was having sex. I couldn’t see anything, but once I was outside it was pretty obvious where the sound was coming from.
I promptly returned to my room, closed the window, and turned off the game. I had hit the wall. My glorious fantasy army and its many great accomplishments had lost a bit of its luster upon the realization that I was sitting at home playing a computer game into the wee hours of a weekend night while the hot girl living above me was having sex.
I am not sure if I ever played “Heroes 3” again.
Mat, your article sums up perfectly my feelings on Modern Warfare 2, and more frighteningly if we are to believe this is the blueprint for the coming generation of online shooters: my fears of the future itself.
To mention any of my own complaints at the game (I play the PC version and the community is just as non-existent) would only be echoing your words. Instead I’ll offer my thoughts on the continuing decline of online communities in gaming.
I think first and foremost the biggest problem we face is “instant match-making.” Game developers’ apparent gift to us, the “community.” It will make life easier, they say. No waiting in queues or lobbies, it will benefit everybody, they say. Rubbish, I (and many others) say.
What about choice? Why can I not choose what I want? Why am I restricted from having a list of my favourite dedicated servers that I can visit with ease and be assured that I will be playing with and against good people that I know? Where I can trust the server admins to banish racists, sexists, bigots, and all-around trouble-makers? What’s that, there are no dedicated servers?!? Sigh …
Another failure in my eyes is the disappearance of sponsored game lobby software. Maybe it was inevitable? I don’t know. But I remember the days when you would see game icons listed, and to your right a list of all the people hanging out in that lobby with you. You could talk to them, and a lot of them weren’t bad! You could organize clan matches on the spot or just agree on a server to hop in that you could all easily spot in the list. Whether it was TEN (Total Entertainment Network), MPlayer, Heat, The Zone (later known as the MSN Gaming Zone), or as recent as Ubisoft’s own software (the name of which escapes me right now), that died around the time the Rainbow Six series was bastardized by the fourth installment, “Lockdown,” a sense of community was there.
That is now exchanged for the apparent convenience of gamers worldwide. I’d like the lobbies and dedicated servers back, please!
I could rant on forever, but your piece did a fine job of that so I’ll quit while I’m ahead.
I don’t play online much any more for reasons mentioned elsewhere but from what I’ve experience I totally empathise with you.
I remember an occasion where I was playing Mario Kart DS with my girlfriend over wi-fi, and considering the game has no chat functions to speak of, some players had used their custom kart logos as a means of drawing phalluses and spelling out racist abuse. I couldn’t believe it. If it had been a mature game or one with a chat feature I would have half expected it but to see others being so resourceful in such a innocent game was shocking. My guard was down.
@ajax: Oh man, ouch. A brutal realisation. I hope she was done shortly afterwards, that stuff plays with your mind.
Great article, Matt, and I completely agree about the sophomoric un-community of MW2. They are, indeed, just really smart bots. I played upwards of 60 hours of Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Counterstrike, Battlefield, and a few others, and though they were also subject to typical Internet fucktarddery, I experienced teamwork on a grand scale in most games, be it with friends or random individuals.
I have yet to encounter substantial teamwork in MW2, and the game does little to encourage it. Sure, the game is fun in its own carrot-on-a-stick and murder-Internet-assholes kind of way, but there’s very little tactical gameplay unless it’s in a 1 v 1 level.
I don’t know if it’s because I played the aforementioned shooters on PC or not–I know friends who tried TF2 on XBox and made similar complaints about a individualistic community. From time to time in MW2, someone will lob a smoke grenade to cover me while I defuse a bomb, but most of the time every map plays like Team Deathmatch while a few dedicated individuals pursue the objectives.
Indeed, I enjoy the game as you do, Matt; it’s fun, but only in small doses. I mute all the other players despite having bought my own headset because after 15 hours of gameplay with the sound on I rarely heard tactical planning. I did, however, hear taunts, rancid music, and semi-intelligible babbling.
As a multiplayer game, it fails to establish any sense of community or teamwork, especially when compared to the fine Battlefield 2 or Team Fortress 2. I’m glad I’m not alone in this, even if I feel that way online.
As a footnote, I wonder if my lack of friends with a PS3 and/or a copy of MW2 may contribute to the shitty community. I doubt it, however; I didn’t need to know my teammates in the above games to experience tactical teamwork. Sure, not everyone was on board, but I could always find enough.
The gameplay in MW2 actively discourages teamwork. Respawn points change constantly, making it difficult to find my buddy when he’s on the other side of the map. More than likely, one of us will be killed by the time I move to his position, and rinse and repeat. Sure, if were “teh l33t,” we wouldn’t die as much, but if I need to achieve godlike skills to experience meaningful teamwork, then your multiplayer game sucks. Battlefield 2 gave players the option to play in squads and made it easier to do so by allowing respawning on the squad leader. TF2 uses one spawn point and the different classes force players to work together without seeming oppressive, and L4D’s squad gameplay actively asks the players to save one another from the undead. Gah. It’s maddening.
I’ll keep playing MW2, I think, though it’s tempting to sell it to GameStop to take a bite out of Bioshock 2’s cost. Without realizing it, I’ve learned to treat my enemies as you have–as bots.
Poor Ajax. I remember that. He was never the same since. Told me about it the next morning.
Of course, we did kind of get our revenge, when those two girls threw a party and we went up there, drank literally everything they had, and left.
Cheers for the feedback guys, and for sharing your own experiences.
Retrospectivley I’m a little dissapointed I didn’t elaborate more on MW2’s anti-team work gameplay in the piece itself, but thankfully were covering that here! As an interesting observation, the PS3 online shooter MAG is very heavily co-operation based, and reportedly has a good community with nowhere near the same problems. Unfortunatley, I don’t think MAG is a particularly great game, and will struggle to hold it’s own in a flooded market long term (sadly ironic that a game with 256 player support will eventually plateu out to accomodate for the few who value the community and stick with it)
As an aside, I’ve recently been playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 on PS3, and that seems to a wonderfully happy medium between MW2’s hopelessly mercenary run’n’gun and MAG tactical approach. I also think it’s a better game generally. Perhaps that may warrant an article of it’s own later, though!
@Steerpike: Classic.
@Jason: I miss Battlefield. After buying BF1943 for the PS3 I was horrified at how brain dead everybody was especially after being reared on the PC versions. Not that they were immune to plagues of imbeciles. It didn’t help that DICE never fixed the fucking mics on BF1943. A multiplayer game with no mic facility. Nice one DICE.
I distinctively remember a moment on BF1943 where I commandeered a tank and was later joined by a squad mate who manned the machine gun. I stayed back and moved with our own troops, keeping a good line. The two of us helped secure a point with relative ease. Remember, no mics. Anyway shortly afterwards I received a personal message from the player thanking me for being such a good team player and of course I thanked him for sticking to the machine gun. It was a great moment, and regrettably the only one of its nature.
@Mat: Just missed your comment. I’d love to get BF:BC2 because I’ve only heard good things about it. As I’ve said above, I miss Battlefield, especially after sampling the Frostbite engine in BF:1943. Hiding behind a wall only to see it disappear after a tank shell hit it is thrilling.
I went out with a girl like that once, Mat… wha?.. oh, it’s a *game* you say?
I’m a firm believer that we form attachments to objects/experiences as we do other people. Usually it’s only when we’re dealing with other people we call these attachments ‘relationships’.
For what it’s worth Mat, at least you were the ‘dumper’, not the ‘dumpee’. And it’s always liberating to get out of a toxic relationship – sure, you’ll feel a little sad initially as the relationship ends, but a new world awaits (well, for us ‘gamers’, many new worlds await). Which is a nice way to say, ‘There are plenty of fish in the sea’.
Haha very good Mat 🙂
Surely the problem here lay with the accessibility of consoles, and the fact for the most part that a younger demographic have access to such games as MFW2, when really they shouldn’t.
I remember going round to my friends and playing Gears of War online for the first time. I was greeted by a 10 year old American who continued to call me a British c**t, and I had literally only just logged in!
I mean, being called a c**t by someone who’s balls haven’t even dropped!
Perhaps PS3 and 360 online accounts should just be banned if any abusive language is seen.
Accessibility is an issue here, yes. When you sell X hojillion copies of a game it’s inevitable that you’re going to get your fair share of bad apples in the community. I also think Call of Duty as a franchise is now very much in the same situation as Grand Theft Auto.. nowadays more a part of modern culture as appose to “just another” game. Thankfully with GTA at least, online play isn’t the main focus, so you can happily enjoy the game without encountering any human players.. not possible in MW2 unless you bought the game exclusivley for the 6 hours of nonsense single player.
Community games and headsets can work on consoles. Like I say, MAG is apparently a hugely enjoyable experience for team players with very few reports of abuse, racism etc. As for stopping it in MW2? I don’t think it can be stopped at this stage. If people are happy to be a part of that atmosphere then that’s their choice and all power to them. But I don’t think it can be changed now. It’s too widespread and set in too deep.
Its strange because when I’ve played MWF on the PC, people actually work together. Ive yet to encounter someone doing things you mentioned and I honestly believe its because of the demographic. The very nature of PCs (and their installation annoyances etc) could be the reason why the majority of owners are significantly older and arguably more mature (that’s not to say you don’t get complete arseholes on the PC) however I have encountered very few recently.
In fact, I’ve been kicked off servers before in Battlefield 1940whateveritis because I was swearing. Not particularly my fault, but really because my microphone wasn’t on push-to-talk so people could hear everything I was moaning about while dying. 🙂
TF2’s community is good, I play regularly with Trigger Happy Gamers, PCzone and PCGamers servers and they are very good.
There was a period at the beginning of Left 4 Dead when you could reliably sign into a game with strangers (on PC) and find pleasant, accommodating, team-oriented people nearly every time. Something about the game not only forced teamwork, but forced a certain degree of friendly camaraderie. That lasted a good month before the griefers showed up.
Well, I traded in MW2 at Gamestop (they have a 50% bonus to trade-ins at the moment) for Battlefield: Bad Company 2. We’ll see if it’s still as awesome as I remember, despite my playing it on a console…
I had one particularly bad experience with griefers in L4D but I found it was the rage quitters that ruined most games. Getting to that last level on any campaign was an achievement in itself.
[…] the game was sat – bought and paid for – on my desk at work. For some of the reasons outlined in my first article as a permanent writer at Tap, I have long since abandoned Modern Warfare 2 and never envisaged […]