Greg Kasavin Executive Editor	Now Playing: Command & Conquer: Generals Zero Hour (PC), Dynasty Tactics 2 (PS2), SimCity 4: Rush Hour (PC), Halo (PC), Age of Mythology: The Titans (PC), EverQuest (PC)

Do Unto Others

Now that online gaming is ubiquitous, the truth has come out: You and I both, we pretty much downright suck at games. At least compared with some of the freaks out there. You hear that, you freaks?

There, I've just encapsulated the entire experience of playing games online for you. The bad parts, anyway. For a number of years now, I've struggled to understand exactly why I don't like playing online multiplayer games quite as much as I'd expect myself to. And, recently, I think I've finally figured out why: I don't like playing games against people whom I can't lean over toward and punch.

An abstract painting of me in a shootout against Ryan Mac Donald on a Counter-Strike server. Thanks to this site for the abstract painting.

That's maybe a crass way of putting it, so let's back up for a moment. First, the predictable disclaimers: I love competitive gaming, and my years spent playing games, in general, have made me proficient at picking them up quickly, which gives me a tendency toward winning instead of losing, which is nice. More specifically, as I like to point out, pretty much all throughout the '90s I seriously played various arcade fighting games--not because I liked thrashing the AI, but because I liked playing against friends and random strangers in arcades.

You'd think this same spirit of competition would draw me right into competitive online games like Counter-Strike or Warcraft III. And, to some extent, it does. But for all the hours I've spent playing shooters and real-time strategy games over the years, and despite how authoritative I try to be about these types of games, I know full well that I'm simply nowhere near as good at them as a lot of people are out there. It would be easy for me to make excuses about how I don't have as much time as some people to play Counter-Strike for eight hours a day, or whatever. But I'll admit it straight-up: Even if I did do nothing but play Counter-Strike (or insert_game_here), I'm quite sure I'd never have the skills to be considered a truly competitive player. Which is fine.

Anyone who plays online games knows it doesn't take much for some jerk to spoil all the fun.

Well, it's kind of fine. The problem is, my years spent playing games have made me dislike losing. And, though sore losers can be pretty irritating, there's nothing I dislike quite like a conceited winner. You know these guys. They snipe you, or something, and then make a comment like "HAHAHAA OWN3D!!!! LMAMALAMLA." They're trying to rub it in your face, and you know what? It works.

Now, if this same guy sniped you, but the two of you were playing over a network in the same room, I bet you'd be hearing something different from him. You probably wouldn't be hearing anything from him, actually, because the Internet makes us smugly cognizant that those whom we're communicating with have no physical access to our persons. You'll have to wait a while longer for my treatise on how the Internet represents the downfall of humanity (thank you very much), but I'm getting at it right here. Playing games online against others just brings out the worst in people, and this is a well-known, oft-talked-about subject. I'm just pointing out that it's the reason why, actually, I would sometimes rather play against a computer opponent than some jerk across the country, who's either going to call me a loser or a cheater, depending on who wins.

I'd probably rather shoot this than shoot you.

It's not that I don't have thick skin. You can imagine the sorts of messages I have to read from time to time as part of my job. But just because I don't take personally what some abusive idiot is spouting while I'm playing an online game, that doesn't mean I like it. In the '90s, when arcade gaming was popular, you needed to watch your fool mouth if you didn't want to get beat up. I lost matches against bigger kids on purpose sometimes, and I'd courteously acknowledge a match well fought at every opportunity back in those days. But, most importantly, I didn't talk much at all. It wasn't about the trash talking; it was about the game.

So you understand by now that I have two fundamental problems with playing games against other people online: One is that I prefer to win rather than lose. I don't like getting trounced by someone who is either flat-out, hands-down better at a game than I am or has simply invested many more hours in getting good at the game than I have. Two is that I think online gaming brings out some really despicable behavior in people, which I don't particularly mind but that I certainly don't like.

These issues are solvable, ultimately. The key is to introduce the same sorts of disincentives for poor behavior into games as there are in real life. In real life, you typically try to avoid acting like an abusive idiot for fear of getting beat up, arrested, sent to detention, whatever. The penalties are often quite steep, because the actions themselves shouldn't be tolerated. Are these actions morally wrong? Maybe they are, but the point is only that other people don't like them. The old saying goes: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. There isn't necessarily an underlying morality to this recommendation--it's just a practical bit of advice.

Some game companies are catching on and are actively trying to accentuate the fun parts of online gaming by eliminating the annoying parts. They have devised rather effective player-matching services for their games, which do a pretty good job of trying to pit you against similarly skilled opponents. They have introduced ways of banning or muting obnoxious players. All that's great, though it's not foolproof. Not yet, anyway, and until that time, I'm glad I'll always have some good, old-fashioned enemy AI to fall back on.