270: The 12-Year-Old English Kid Who Carried Us to Victory

[porschecm2]

Great article. This is why I only play Tactical servers. You still get a little of the headless-chicken running, but it's greatly diminished, and the chances of a both a leader stepping in, and the team's willingness to follow him, seem to be increased.

 

[SomeBritishDude]

Xbox live; the birth place of leaders.

God save us all.

 

[Necromancer1991]

NO believe me, when you have a team of bucket-headed ass-hats you have a tendency to listen to the guy not cursing every 3 seconds because he died, this is especially true in games like TF2, when 3/4s of my team is a bunch of Fairweather Medics complicate things).

 

[tenny20ca]

Great article. If you want to truly enjoy Xbox live though form a solid friend base and make a party. You'll be the team of snipers eating alive the guys with buckets on thier heads. My friends and i aren't great players, we have jobs, and lives and families and all that. But take a group of average players playing as one vs a disorganized mess and the team will always dominate the group of singles. Plus your party can have party chat, no need to hear all the other jerks on Xbox live.

 

[Impluse_101]

Let my day be when I'm actually running around in in COD: MW or 2 or something when I run into a leader like that and then let it be Pip. Cheers Mate *Clinks glasses together* Now go out there and have some good fun.

 

[civver]

You know, I don't understand where people are playing or if matchmaking just screws them over. I have played so many Ground War (read: huge, up to 18 players in a lobby) games of MW2 lately, and the chances of someone talking on the mic is somewhere around 1 in 100. I really want to know if this is just a case of negativity bias or are people's poor perceptions of player palaver backed by statistics. Yes, anecdotes are interesting, but they seldom represent the thing that creates them.

 

[JunebugJuJuBee]

Very well written and I laughed throughout the article. I have a similar experience where we were pinned down by snipers in Halo 3 and a 14 year old girl came up and told us their locations and took several out with grenades, one of which was from across the field. Best match ever.

 

[MinishArcticFox]

Sounds inspirational and all but I'm too much of a cynic to believe that anyone would work together that kid would have to be the re-incarnation of Winston Churchill I understand all the thought behind the counter arguments I'm just too cynical for my own good.

 

[postzit]

something like this happened in WoW in pvp on AB as it started we were all running around trying to get the highest kills on the bored but one man said as we captured the lumber mill 'if you want yo win follow me' and so 6 of us travelled like locust decimating the horde tree druids pulverised there frost magi and stomped on there reti paladin capturing the basses one by one and as we did more people joined this little band of men led by a fine shaman i do not remember his name i just remember that he help join a us to victory and so every time i join a game of AB i look for that shaman hoping he can led us to VICTORY.

 

[Wrath 228]

I try to make every online experience like this. If there isnt someone "in charge" within a few moments of me being a game, I will try to rally people. This is met with varying responses, obviously. However, I believe that part of the blame falls on the structure of the game itself (as someone else said in this thread). Games like Call of Duty and even Battlefield track so many individual stats and promote self-advancement that many people are only in it for themselves. They see teammates as nothing less than people with blue letters above their heads that they can't shoot, and nothing more than occasional tools to be used for further self-advancement. If there were a way to make games more about the team as a whole (while still allowing people to have fun and track their stats), it might lead to more team-oriented gameplay among the masses.

...I think I'm going to go make a seperate thread about this...

 

[Gerhardt]

A very interesting and inspiring story. It's a very moving thing in it's own way. While it may be said that it is 'just a game' it's still a game that makes an attempt at simulating a real and dangerous adult world, and in it we see here a child, someone who should not have any real knowledge of combat scenarios, who takes the reigns of leadership.

Pip actually reminds me a lot of Miles Teg ( for those of you who haven't read Dune I have some homework for you) in that despite his age and appearance, seems to have that gift of decision. It wouldn't have mattered as much if his orders were not necessarily the right ones, but the fact that he could say "You go here and do this. You go there and kill that"

I don't really know where I was going with all that, but it was a great story to hear, and it's great hear about really good people who shine through the seemingly endless ocean of shit that is online gaming.

 

[Kenko]

Doesnt take a twelve year old to do this. Whenever I played Project Reality for BF2, I always commanded a squad and we always won. I gave short simple orders constantly and had the squad communicate with eachother and teamwork. Whilst I kept a tactical overview of the situations presented and had them act accordingly. Victory was often, Victory was sweet.

Moral of this comment ; Do as I say or you'll eat fething dust.

 

[8bitlove2a03]

Huzzah, Pip m'boy!

 

[Valdsator]

Good article! I've never really had this happen to me on a more solo-based game, but I love playing team based games just because it's so satisfying when things work out, and it's a lot of fun.

In Alien Swarm, I'm basically always the medic with a healing pack, and the medic gun, and I find myself assigning people jobs, like one watches the back constantly, and another one has the job of protecting me. I normally don't take control because I'm kind of shy, but it got us through the whole hard campaign without failing the mission once.

 

[atomictoast]

Moments like this are really why I play online games, for moments when a team really rallies together like a true military force.

I've had experiences like this in games, mostly in Team Fortress 2. I personally have found that I'm apparently a strong leader in games with co-op. Out of my friends or even random online players in Alien Swarm, I always take control of the squad as leader, usually making the game successful.

I met someone like pip once in a match of Insurgency on steam, and since then I've always joined when he was online, because he simply was a good leader.

 

[Om Nom Nom]

I think I may have actually met this person... can't be sure though, especially since the game used neither Xbox Live or Windows Live.

I was playing Modular Combat on Team Deathmatch mode on the dm_datacore map, playing as Resistance (Super Tank and Runner hybrid build). We have less numbers than the Apature and Combine teams; they were both taking turns curb stomping us while they weren't busy shooting at each other.

Then this random squeaker pipes up over voice; "Oh that fucking does it".

We had a rather weak collection of PvM styled builds (excluding myself - my builds are exclusively PvP/DM), and yet he took charge and ordered us all around; placing turrets here, a mag mine there, deploying our various minions around the perimeter. He tightly organized us, since... well, we were losing anyway, right? He turned that around. That smallish hall became lethal to enter. Anyone that dared to were ripped to pieces. Nothing could come close; cloakers were slain by the magmine and laser mines, tanks couldn't withstand the concentrated firepower more than a few seconds, teleporters were invariably forced to flee if not instantly murdered.

That squeaker turned the whole match around. We didn't win, naturally, but he managed to rally a loose group of soloists into a close-to-crack squad of defenders.

The remainder of the round was dominated by calls of "footsteps left/right", "c-ball left/right!!", "tank left/right!", "X - need heald", "cloaker lurking left/right", "grenade left/right/on the magmine/turrets!", "assault left/right/both!!!", "go out left/right - flank them!", "turret/minion down left/right!", "fire/ice/MIRV grenade out left/right!"... etc.

It was the most manic and fun match I have ever played. I like to think I played an important role; as I had heavy tank and speed, he used me to scout around and to fetch important items (like the ar2 alt fire ammo, RPG, AR2 rifles... I didn't mind as it was fun for me to sprint around at break neck speed while almost constantly under fire from the other teams and carrying extremely important items for my team).

 

[The Random One]

Great general of the British Isles or not, prepubescent boys should not be playing a Mature game.

 

[Dejanus]

My old clan had a few of these. Eventually the group self-destructed due to greed and general dickery, but I keep in touch with a few kids around 14-15 that proved themselves mature and sensible. One of them was the best Gears player I ever met, you couldn't touch the guy and he never fired a shot, all melee. Really something.

 

[Aenir]

Great read. Moments like those are rare, and help show that age doesn't matter nearly as much online.

 

[Silva]

There is no question that I've had similar experiences in online FPS games. Of course, in death matches, teamwork like this is normally irrelevant. But in Counter Strike: Source, an old favourite of mine, becoming a squad leader or microphone strategist is a role that I often aspire to.

Yes, you have to be a good communicator. You have to know about the strats that may win you the game. You have to be good at figuring out how your team will respond in a pub server, who will follow, if any, on your first round, and who will not. You have to build trust over time, work the emotions of your comrades by being right with your strategics time and time again. And of course, you need to be good at the game itself. If your score is low, no one will listen, even if your strats are straight out of the mouth of a tourney pro talking into the microphone for you.

The natural selection of leaders in such a lawless realm is a real point of interest for social scientists. I think that the article's right in implying that, ironically enough, if we were to lose games, we would lose a really great example of what a place without rules would be like, and how people would make their way through it in one piece. Leaders are not born in a place like this. There are no dynasties in a public server. You don't go in rich and well-resourced, ready with an empire half-made. You have to start then and there and work like a maniac to win. (Of course, you do have some advantages being rich in the real world while playing games - like the microphone itself, a big widescreen monitor to see enemies at your sides, and the like. But these are not necessarily social advantages to becoming a leader for that game and consequential ones.)

The article is right that it is incredibly rewarding to find victory because of strong leadership. Not least if you are said leader. Take it from me: there is nothing like, upon a victory both personal and team-based, listening to someone else you've never met say into the microphone: "it's been an honour to fight with you today, [and your name]." Yes, it's a fake world; there are no real consequences, but there has been a great success in game design when it comes to emulating the best of warfare - that is, the brotherhood of the team against the odds. I hope that one day, this fake experience of wartime friendship will be all we need to have, in the face of a lasting peace.