Ash and other post-nuclear debris waft through the air, a lazy flurry of grey against the ravaged urban landscape. It is eerily beautiful, when I stop to notice it. But I am a man of action, a Soldier. I must destroy my enemy’s base to win victory for my squad. I have been many things on this day: a lumbering Exo trooper, thick-skinned and armed to the teeth with gattling gun and rocket launcher; a Stealth operative, invisibly slipping behind enemy lines in [largely vain] attempts to singlehandedly disrupt the plans of my foes; even a Medic and Engineer, selflessly putting myself in harm’s way to come to the aid of my teammates. Yet somehow, I am always a Soldier in the end. My place is with the Infantry.
I’ve been in situations similar to this countless times before. In my past, I’ve brought down space stations, destroyed legions of grotesque alien enemies, literally won intergalactic wars single-handedly. But before was different. I was always augmented, upgraded, equipped with a whole arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. I was a Super Soldier, an elite commando, an Ubermann. A solitary island of death amidst a sea of enemy combatants, able to rely on my skills alone to get the job done. This time, I am merely a cog in a machine.
Oh, I tried to be the hero and win the victory for us all. Fueled by my confidence (or perhaps it was my ignorance), I charged forward, heralded by a rain of grenades and burst after burst from my SMG. From my familiar first-person vantage point, enemy soldiers fell by the legion before my onslaught of death.
And then I rounded a corner, and the turret shot me in the face. It was perfectly placed, and even had I known it was there, it would be irrelevant. The bite of my small arms fire barely scratched the paint.
Enemies, I can fight. I’ve killed countless thousands before. But this – this is something different. I am no longer fighting merely a series of enemy soldiers. I am fighting a whole war machine. The realization dawns on me that I cannot succeed without the aid of my team. My victory comes only with their victory. My personal aptitude is meaningless here. I have overstepped my bounds; I am not a hero, I am just a Soldier but I am still a part of the overall picture.
I fall back into line, now the Soldier instead of the hero. I plug in, allow myself to become a part of the machine. Instantly, I am inundated with information: 2 Exos pushing up the middle, I’m low on resources – take the eastern resource point. The instructions from our Commander pop up on our screens like the word of God himself, and we heed them accordingly. We all know what fate awaits us if we don’t.
At the heart of the machine sits our Commander. If we soldiers are the engine that drives our team to victory, our Commander is the schematic that we follow, the lubricant that makes our team run smoothly as a single unit. From his position in the command bunker, he views the battle from above. He is the only one with a view of the whole picture, deciding where to place the turrets, when to drop a supply station, and then erecting them with an omnipotence not shared by us grunts. We are fortunate – our Commander seems competent. Yet even he has a role within the machine – he needs us as much as we need him. His plan is only as good as we make it; we must provide him with resources, protect him, and when the time is right, we are the ones who ultimately strike the killing blow. We recognize this and respond in kind: We need Siege Kits researched so we can take down those turrets. Give us a supply station behind the eastern wall. Upgrade to rocket turrets, they’re attacking in force.
And yet there are problems. The hotter the machine runs, the more that the system is taxed, the more cracks start to show. I need a medic by the primary. Who’s our field medic? Do we have one? Is it my responsibility to fill this role? I check my HUD to see who our team medic is, and am frustrated to find no answer. I quickly scan my map to find the location of the nearest supply station, so I can refill my ammo and fight my way to my besieged teammate. Again, the necessary information is nowhere to be found. The game requires near perfect unison for success, yet its very interfaces fail to provide such crucial information. In spite of our more-than-competent Commander, when even the system itself cannot provide us with everything we need to know, roles get confused, mistakes get made, and things break down. Our success hinges entirely on each of us recognizing our roles, accepting our places as smaller parts of a much larger machine. That the game itself is stymieing us in this respect may utterly undo us. Through process of elimination, I determine we do not have a medic. I will fill that role for now.
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The battle wages on. Since only the destruction of the enemy base can bring us victory, we must fight until we win or are defeated ourselves. Along the way, some squadmates leave, and some join our ranks. And here is another problem – some of our new recruits are not communicating. They are not joining their information with ours’ and the machine is suffering. Our unit must be efficient – hyperefficient, even, and our success demands absolute cooperation. Not only are they getting themselves killed, but team performance as a whole is suffering. This gameworld has no place for the lone wolf mentality.
We press on. We have a new Commander, whose competence is noticeably lesser than his predecessor. The cracks deepen. Our research falls behind – our turrets are outdated and the enemy is slipping through. The cracks deepen still. Our own military hardware is now too dated to destroy the enemy structures popping up in our territory. Our base is now in danger of being destroyed, and defeat is on our doorstep. We opt to mutiny, and our Commander is ousted. His replacement steps in and begins picking up the pieces, without missing a beat. The enemy is repelled, the threat of defeat held at bay for now. We press on.
There are only a few of us left now, who were fighting from the beginning. New squadmates join the fray. The veterans can do nothing but wait to see how they fare, if they choose to accept their part in the larger machine. We are careful to maintain the flow of information; the new recruits either continue the loop, and we succeed, or they drop the ball and we are annihilated. It is a harsh, demanding environment, but we adapt. We have to, to survive. We accept our role as a small part of a whole. The machine continues to turn.
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Originally posted on Pixels or Death.