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You've probably met one the last time you booted up Halo multiplayer, Dashing straight for the rockets or sniper and laying waste to your face. You may have seen one in Modern Warfare 2. That dashing fellow who found that perfect combination of perks and kill streaks to destroy your team with a dance of two fisted buckshot death.
You've been nuked, you've been sniped, you've been corpse humped. Now I ask you to pity them.
They know not what they do
These poor tortured souls are 'victory addicts'. People for whom 'playing to win' eventually won. Kills are their water, multikills their food, and a high kill/death ratio their only comfort.
I should admit I often times partake in small doses of victory. I will learn to play a game well enough to succeed and sometimes to be impressive. Still I tend to stay away from the hard stuff. The exploits and glitches,the spawn camping, snipers and power weapons are all dangers that must be avoided. The people who succumb soon become TOO good and find themselves in a vicious spiral.
As an example we should observe the montage. A series of impressive gameplay clips set to music has often been a popular past time for FPS players. Long ago, before online play became as mainstream as it is today, the montage was an entertaining aside. Fun clips of people having fun in their favorite game were plentiful. The player would occasionally do impressive things but their were plenty of simply interesting or amusing clips.
[embed:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_YgDbpSPYE ]
Hey that's pretty cool. I think I could do that!
Now, the montage is a shadow of it's former self. As victory addicts desperately try to one up each other, the montage ends up as a display of only the most impressive feats of aiming skill. Close range kills with a sniper, long distance kills with sticky grenades, multikill after multikill after multikill clutter the montage with nothing but robotic execution of the most efficient tactics.
Even when the players do things that most players could only dream of they are criticized by their enablers. “That clip wasn't montage worthy” they say “You missed one of your headshots.” The victory addict is not even content to stop competing when no longer playing the game. There is no joy in the VA community, there is no good enough. There is only E peen.
[embed:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJbtyFpi7zU ]
Hey that's pretty fucking impossible!….sweet music too.
Like any good addiction, no hit is ever enough. You are never able to catch the dragon. No sweet snipe provides enough lolz to keep you from moving on to think about the next hawdcoa no-scope.
This epidemic has become so bad that game after game is being swallowed up. Modern matchmaking systems can't tell the elite from the 1337. Games lose large swaths of players a year or so after their release because the victory addicts find ways to win so completely that the other team can't possibly enjoy themselves.
Then the game whithers on the vine, until every game is filled only with those so addicted that they quit any game where they don't get the rocks first. The victory addicts end up a shadow of their former selves, unable to dominate without the newbs they relied on for sustenance and forced to cannibalize their own kind. This usually comes at great cost to their once Uber stats. Like the Highlander, in a match there can be only one Super Rad Dood.
Oh NOEZ! He gots sniper first! I am cry!
The only cure to this addiction is to never start. Pick up a small weapon and learn it's nuances. Play to have fun and say 'GG' when you lose a close match. When you do get a mad kill streak, say 'no big deal. I had the sniper. It's OP.' and then move on.
This isn't just about saving yourself from the dangers of victory abuse. This is about the fate of the gaming nation. Unless we learn to fight the temptation of 'sick skillz' we will find half of our population completely consumed, and the other half afraid to go online for fear of being tea bagged into oblivion.
Remember kids, when someone tries to pass you the win button. Just say no.
It wants your soul