Clean Up Gaming with Ken

I’ve actually stopped writing the post I’d started in order to share this with you. I’d already broken off from that to do the long overdue dishes. Break off from the dishes (ugh….pots, always a chore, never a pleasure) for five minutes I thought I’d see what was happening on YouTube. There was new post from Ken Burton which I think is very important. I’m not going to introduce it, just have a look/listen:

Watched it? Rated it? If not, watch it before reading on.

Now, one thing that Ken was on about was what happens when someone gets on a game, gets abuse and basically sticks their console under the bed for a month. Seems a bit much doesn’t it? Well no, it’s not because it happened to me. And I wasn’t/am not a kid either.

So here’s my story:
Shortly after I got my Xbox360 I had Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (I think that’s what it was). Having come from the PC FPS background I wasn’t that keen to go into the console FPS world, but what the hell, one of my friends had the console and game and were loving it. So I had a go of the campaign mode and once I got used to the controls went into multiplayer – one of the team deathmatch type games.

As usual I joined part way through the game and straight away heard some guy from the South East of England abusing some person who was actually from Mexico, but that didn’t stop him from calling him a “Yankee”!? After a couple of minutes the Mexican guy had had enough and left, but the abuser was obviously so caught up in his own vitriol that he missed that part so I thought I’d inform him. This is basically what happened:
Douche: Oi Yankee! You’re very quiet Yankee. Not got anything to say for yourself Yankee?!
Me: He’s left
Douche: You what?
Me:The guy you were abusing has left, and he wasn’t American either…
Douche: Oh, you’re his bum chum are you? Is that it?
Me: Erm…no, I just thought you’d like to know….
So I was now the target of the abuse which mainly comprised of statements of how I live in the basement of my Mum’s house (very original), what I look like, well….just general douchery.

I played to the end of the round and then left, reported the player to Microsoft (not that they EVER do anything about such reports) and added him to the block list. But more importantly – I did not play online until Call of Duty 4 came out. And even then I was actually anxious about it – would it be the same, would it just be hatefilled arseholes yelling down their mics? It wasn’t I’m pleased to say. In the couple of months I played CoD4 I never got any abuse, but then, I never used a headset either (and still don’t to this day). In some ways I’m missing a major part of the online gaming experience, but on the other hand I don’t have the time, inclination or patience to deal with other people’s bad attitudes.

Perhaps if I ever get enough people on my friends list I will use a headset and join in some game chat, but for now, it’s not worth the hassle (especially as most people don’t seem to know how to use their mics anyway).

So there we are – Ken Burton, attempting to make a change to the gaming douchery that we all seem to accept, or at least tolerate. If you’re not a douche, then back his campaign. If you are a douche (you won’t have read this far anyway but….), I hope that one day you get everything you actually deserve and not what you think you deserve.

p.s. apparently Wings of Redemption has been less than complimentary to Ken Burton. I unsubscribed to WoR last week due to other douchey behaviour so it seems that he’s just trying to see how low he can go. Interestingly, OnlyUseMeBlade put up a video in which he gave tips on how to become a popular commentator on YouTube. His advice was basically, if you’re a douchebag in real life then it’ll come across and people won’t like you. Judging by the amount of “unsubbed” messages that are appearing on WoR’s channel his real character must now be showing through.

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE