no plato, no halo

by chris at 04:26 AM on May 27, 2005

I'm losing because I'm old! That's what I told Victoria as we walked down the street and I was trying to explain why I keep having my ass handed to me by 12 year old kids while playing Halo2 on the xbox online. At my graduate school commencement ceremony my graduate advisor introduced me as having built up a reputation as one of the best gamers in the department. I remember being embarassed at the time, as I didn't think it was true - and even if it was - how could she possibly know about it? I played a few video games late at night between experiments and somehow that's how I'm being remembered? I guess I did get pretty good. But there's no way she could have known that!

My big innovation was to be able to shoot, side-step, and turn all at the same time so that I could simultaneously circle a target while anhilating it. When I watched other people play they never incorporated the side-step effectively into their maneuvers, whereas I had mastered it.

For Bungie's Myth the Fallen Lords - a non-first person game in which you had to organize a little troop of archers, Scottish warriors, dwarves, and spiders against an opposing team and then watch them fight it out while directing them during battle, I actually bought and read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". Applying a few principles of the ancient wisdom to my battles made me an emperor in the online community in no time (although Emperorship was always a temporary reward as it's reserved for the top 100 players in the world). I still marvel at the notion that the ideas in such a book could influence little moving characters in a computer game.

What a difference a few years makes. The controllers these days are complex and side-stepping while turning is as novel as discovering one has an opposable thumb. They are also a study in analog comfort. No more splaying one's fingers across the awkward flatness of a computer keyboard.

I had intentionally avoided the temptation of signing up for an xbox online account, because I'm busy and I knew it could be addictive. But then one day I received an email from some of my cousins and a friend back home. It turns out they all have xboxes, and had all bought Halo2. With headsets in tow we could meet on line, catch up on the family, and kill each other over and over again.

I've found xbox online to be a mostly scary and horrible place. The day I was to start playing online, there was a story on the news about some guy who had suffocated his little baby so he could continue playing his video game without being bothered by a crying child. Note to self: don't let your insanely impulsive boyfriend do the babysitting unattended. Even just the screen names people choose for themselves is enough to make me question whether I want to devote any time at all engaging in a common activity with some of these people, even if the object is to hunt them down and kill them in a virtual setting. When a game pops up on the screen and I see that my opponents are KKKrazywhiteman, lickmyballz, alwayshard, vaginalicker, and tacorapist, I feel like I've stumbled into a dark hole of humanity. This is Halo2, the most successful and popular game of all time. This is a main stream attraction with a community of millions of players. This isn't some small, unknown, esoteric society of miscreants, and yet these people openly identify themselves with white supremicist acronyms and mysoginist monikers.

If I ever had any doubt that racism was alive and well in America, all I would have to do is turn on my xbox. The controllers are headset enabled, so it's possible to communicate with other people in the game while playing. Usually a game is made up of 8 people. The other night during a game of rumble pit (where the object is to try to kill everyone you see), two guys started insulting each other. The environment is extremely homophobic, that's a given. Calling someone a fag or a homo is as common as saying hello. But occasionally, race comes into play - even though no one knows the color of anyone's skin. One guy sounded white, one guy sounded black. I don't remember how it started, but I remember one of them saying, "Man, I hate all you white people. You're all the same...." The white guy's response had something to do with money, and the black guy retorted with, "Man, I own 6 Duncan Donuts. I got mo' money than yo' whole family!" It was a little tense and uncomfortable, but the game soon ended and I was on to a new game with new players. Then it happened again. Right in the middle of the game, there was a network glitch (usually caused by someone quitting in the middle of the game) and a blue screen appeared halting all the action. It's not that uncommon. During these usually brief hiatuses, while the xbox re-establishes the connection and sets up the game again, as players you are still connected to each other by voice, so you can hear each other very clearly.
"Wanna hear a joke?", someone said.
"Yeah, what's that joke?"
"I got a good joke."
"Let's hear it."
"How do you know if a black woman is pregnant?"

My heart sank, and I felt my sweat glands tense up, as I could tell that any illusion of social politeness was about to vanish from the virtual room. The punch line containted the words banana, pussy, and monkey, and doesn't bear repeating. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I was so stunned all I could mutter in response was something along the lines of "racist asshole". During a game, when someone speaks, their identity appears near the bottom of the screen so you can see who's talking. If a player is abusive (as is often the case), you can leave feedback about them on the Bungie servers. But during the blue screen game interruption, you can't see who's speaking. It's just a voice in your ear.

As I sat reeling from what I had just heard. The voices quieted down, and one person spoke up.
"I got a joke for you."
"Why do black people only have nightmares?"
The voice sounded slightly African-American, but was very calm considering what had just been said.
Someone answered, "I don't know. Why?"
"Because the last one that had a dream was assassinated."

The game started up again. It was the last game I played that night. I was so disgusted I had to quit and turn off the machine. Whoever told the second joke didn't get mad, they got smart. I was impressed by their response.

Why is it, I wondered, that this device which offers anonymity in communication brings out so much anger and hatred among people who don't know each other? What does it say about our society that this black box sitting in my living room serves so often as a conduit for ugliness?

But enough about the darker side of the game. Occasionally I find myself in the group that I expect to be online. The friendly sounding nerdy types who can annihilate you with a head shot from the battle rifle, laugh with you about it afterwards, and who would sooner catch a fly and let it outside than swat it with a fly swatter.