I would like to say first off the bat, that I have no issue with Social Gaming; in fact, Social Gaming as been around as long as there have been multiplayer games, this topic is not new. I have no problem with grabbing a few friends to exterminate your chosen enemy of preference, however, what I do take issue is that the Wii has been throwing around the term like it invented it.
My mother bought a Wii for Christmas, mostly for my step father, and now being able to have access to this device, I am still not impressed with it, and I must say, seeing my mother jump around like a crazy person while playing WiiFit, is not a way I like spending my weekend.
To be honest, Casual gamers aren’t that bad, as long as they remember that they are not gamers, they are people who use an interactive device to achieve an end result. I mean, a PC owner isn’t a gamer just because their device has the capacity of playing games; it’s their capability to play those games that make them a gamer, so I guess my issue is why n00b gamers annoy me…
As a genuine gamer, since the Wii has arrived, bundled with Lego Star Wars, I have found myself becoming a strategy guide to a man who’s first question when getting a new game is “Are there any cheats to it,” Not only is he asking questions that are answerable if he only read the book that came with the game, but he gets angry whenever he fails to meet objectives, stating that the game is cheating, but not admitting that maybe, it is his ability to play is at fault.
Just because I finished the game on the 360 eight games ago, does not mean that I know how to complete every single minor objective in the game, and if I get one single detail wrong, because of the fact that I finished the game rather quickly, I get chewed out.
Another factor that annoys me about n00bish gamers is that they do not have the respect for the device that normal gamers do. With that I am referring to button mashing. Button Mashing for those who are not aware is the habitual act of repeatedly hitting as many buttons as possible in the hopes of performing the same action that a more skilled gamer can perform by actually pressing the buttons required. It is often seen when an n00bish gamer faces a specialist gamer. When I mean Specialist gamer, I mean those that are practically unbeatable in their chosen genre of games, with myself its First Person Shooters and my lovely partner Tikara, its Fighting games.
Finally, my main issue with n00b gamers is their conduct while playing games. Other gamers will be able to relate to the conduct of the n00b, were vulgarity is not only the preferred method of speaking, but is the entirety of their vernacular. My Step Father is no different, the man swears when he loses a game, he swears when he kills an enemy, and he swears when the game starts becoming challenging. Other than his habitual swearing, it’s his obsession with cheat codes. While I have no issue with codes that unlock items that would otherwise be difficult to unlock, I do take offense to people who want to know the cheats to gain more resources, or invincibility, when they haven’t even finished the first level.
I honestly did not want to dedicate an article to n00bs, but looking at it, I feel it was well worth it, as I can hear strings of expletives from downstairs as I have refused to continue helping the n00b in my family.
