Not everyone is good

+ I'm talking to YOU

After reading my fellow menversus.com bloggers post ?The Convenient Fan,? I started thinking about how this topic could apply to gaming. Obviously, you don?t see fair-weather gaming fans out there, unless your talking to someone of the opposite sex. However, what you do see is every guy who plays games claiming they are the best individual to ever pick up the controller. I mean I can?t tell you how many times I?ve been involved in a conversation and Halo or Madden comes up and some guy starts bragging about how amazing he is. Now one would think that this behavior would have stopped with the development of Xbox Live, the Playstation Network, etc. I mean its pretty easy to ask for someone?s gamertag and check their stats out, but do those numbers tell the whole story?

I like to consider myself an upper-echelon gamer. My specialty are first person shooters, especially ones that require a little more strategy. In shooters I can hang with just about anyone. I have played Wolfenstein, Halo 2, and Rainbow Six Vegas all competitively. Now if I told my team was ranked in the top five in Return to Caslte Wolfenstein would you believe me? I?d like to think so, but in reality there is no way I can prove that, because the ladder we participated on is a site that is no longer active. How about if I told you my Halo 2 clan was ranked for a while? Yes, you can look at those stats (or at least you use to), but the numbers became so inflated that my accomplishments then look feeble now. My point on this matter is that games reward players more for the amount of time they commit to the game, rather then their ability. Someone in COD might be a level 10 prestige and your only a level 1, but that doesn?t mean they are a better player then you. It could simply mean that a person has way too much time to commit to a game.

On the flipside of my argument a gamer that has strong stats online will most likely be the alpha dog among his social network of friends. So if you dominate in Madden online and your friend doesn?t when you two eventually play, the writing will be on the wall. Furthermore, a person that normally plays a game for an exorbitant amount of time learns some ins and outs that casual gamers don?t know about. Whether it be certain play styles, angles, or spots to chill. However, in my experience the individual who goes out of his way to bring up how good they are at a game is most likely trash. If you are good at a game, let your friends validate your ability, and if your friends are unaware then make an example of the big mouth and invite him to play with you sometime. This way he will be an advocate of your ability for the rest of time.