12-31-2009, 04:03 PM
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#1
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Rookie
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best paragraph ever
Recently I was thinking why our community is so divided on what’s acceptable game play. A majority of the crowd loves to play football. The rest of the crowd loves to win. Why is it then, that our video game series, Madden, separate from other video games? When I was debating this I thought, “why isn’t Halo a divided community?” “Why aren’t there guys out there saying certain tactics are cheap, and dirty?” “How come there’s such a massive following of Halo, and our community is essentially split in half?” To find my answer, I started comparing the games.
In short, the reason why our community is split and a game franchise like Halo’s isn’t, is because there isn’t anything to compare a video game like Halo to. In our game of choice, Madden simulates football. When we put Madden in the console, for most gamers, we want to play football the way we see it on TV — or in our heads — better than the way we see it on TV. We want to be the coach calling the plays, and running in the touchdowns. The catch is, that we want to do it in a fashion similar to what’s on TV.
So how do the Halo guys get a break? We can’t compare Halo to anything else. How can you compare shooter games to anything short of war? Even with that comparison, is there any such thing as ‘dirty tactics’ in war? These guys are playing a video game that’s like nothing else we know. There can’t be ethics, or morality in shooting the opponent dead. That’s what you play the game for.
Our controversy stems from just that. What do you play the game for? The Madden community is divided between gamers who are playing football, and gamers that are playing a video game. In Halo, T Squared is the poster boy. Does he double shoot, and jump onto things he shouldn’t for an advantage? Of course he does — and the masses love him for doing it so well. Would he abuse curl routes, or HB off tackles in Madden? Absolutely, and the masses would hate him for it. The division, although clear, is often over looked. He’s playing a video game, despite what disk is in the tray. He’s playing to win, and the only difference is that we compare Madden to the NFL when we should be considering it a video game. Madden is our version of war. We’re playing a video game to win, not to simulate the NFL much in the same way that T Squared is playing to win in Halo — only we can’t compare Halo to anything else. For this reason alone the Halo community is enormous, and ours is split.
Once you stop looking at Madden as football and start looking at it as a video game, you’re going to find yourself in a much better situation to win tournaments and challenges. Once you do that, everyone considers you a ‘cheezer.’
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