Now I Remember Why I Stopped Playing FPS Games

I used to play first person shooters for hours daily. Working at a games developer it is pretty common to play games at lunch time and sometimes even stay after work to have a big FPS session. Counter Strike, Unreal Tournament, Vietcong, Call of Duty, Medal of Honour, Wolfenstein, Halo, Team Fortress 2, Mafia, Doom, No One Lives Forever and our own game The Ship. There have been some great multiplayer FPS games over the years and nothing beats sitting in the same room as your team so you can actually communicate. The rivalry was fierce and epic gaming sessions would really spark the adrenaline.

I’m a really bad loser when it comes to games. Verbal abuse at work was always part of the fun though, or at least it was for me, but there came a time when the world of FPS combat lost its appeal and I stopped playing FPS games altogether. It wasn’t a deliberate decision there were just other games that I wanted to play. It wasn’t like I had fallen out with FPS’s or anything. In fact just recently I had to play one for a preview (Section 8) and I thought to myself why has it been so long? Welcome old friend perhaps I’ll play you regularly again. It soon became apparent why I gave them up.

Within five minutes of joining I had been killed three times before moving from my spawn point, stabbed in the face by a leaping hardcore nutter twice and been called a fucking useless noob by someone on my own team. Within half an hour I had the old aiming skills back and the adrenaline was flowing. Within an hour I had repeatedly raped the knife man and helped my team to back to back to victories. I would not be able to stop until I had fought my way to the top of the scoreboard and once I did after an hour and half I had to stubbornly resist the urge to type who’s the noob now you fucker! The truth is FPS games don’t bring out the best in me.

I shut it down before the next map could load up and suck me in and turned to see the horrified face of my wife holding my baby son. Having been subjected to a loud string of expletive laden screaming and completely ignored she was not best pleased. My son didn’t look bothered.