A Rage Into the Past

January 17, 2016

A Rage Into the Past

“Nerd-rage,” or “butt-hurt syndrome,” is a tale as old as time. Up until the last five years, I never really had a name for it, as I’m sure you, the readers, might not have, as well. Let’s focus on the gaming end of this spectrum for this article. It’s an interesting phenomenon that I’ve only recently really thought about. It was always something we acknowledged as it was happening. However, with a sound mind and all of our controllers safely away from anything breakable, let’s compare what it was like to “rage out” before and after online-gaming became a thing.

For referencing purposes, let’s make the PlayStation 2 the middle ground that bridged Local to Online gaming, with the GameCube, the Dreamcast, and all consoles before them pegged onto the “Local” banner, as the Xbox, Wii and everything after will be put under the “Online” Flag.

Before Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, and even the Dreamcast-AT&T network (to some extent), we had games that caused us to rage for a select number of reasons. Let’s explore a few, shall we?

Unforgiving difficulty: contrary to the pandering today’s games displayed to their player-base, games back then were difficult, and rightfully so; you needed your games to have a long shelf-life. As such, you didn’t want your players breezing through the game and calling it a day in one sitting. However, this didn’t come without its frustrations. Many a broken controllers have been made at the hands of that one part of the level that required a precision jump, perfect reaction time, or just a relentless amount of endurance and patience to truck through a seemingly endless wave of baddies before the next checkpoint (if the game in mind were so inclined to include such a privilege).

Frustration also came as a result of poor game design. This was a deal-breaker to a game back then, because once a game was a released, you bought it on an “as is” basis. Whatever glitches, hiccups, broken code, and exploits that were present at the end of development and shipped out to stores were there, and they were there forever. One huge luxury we, as gamers, have today with modern games is that all these bumps and bruises that are in a game at launch can be patched as time goes on. Sometimes, these quirks added to a charm in the game, other times… They were abysmal and rendered a game completely unplayable (I’m looking at you, Superman 64).

Then, you have awkward game mechanics and learning curves, which called for a lot of effort on the side of the player. You were either given a jump mechanic, in which case you can change your momentum at will, or you had to commit to the direction and you better hope that leap of faith didn’t cost you a life and a ticket back to the beginning of a level. Suffice to say, having to learn a mechanic, especially ones that stray away from industry standards, can become frustrating and lead many to just huff and puff and blow away their TV sets, with the speed of a major league pitcher gunning for the strikeout with a fast ball.

Online gaming became common place around the time of the Xbox and PlayStation 2 era (Oh, Resident Evil: Outbreak, we miss you so bad), and with it came a whole new level of frustration, anger issues, and pure, unadulterated raw emotions ever to come out the mouths and body of seemingly normal human beings. For starters, most games are now multiplayer, meaning you are subject to opponents/teammates of ALL playstyles. Fun in theory, but mind-numbingly difficult when you lack the coordination and communication to achieve your objective. Alas, it’s what you sign up for when you log on.

Oh, but the buck doesn’t stop there, you also have conflicting personalities and behavior to put up with as a result of developers throwing you all into a map and saying, “Go!” You’ve got your trolls, your solo artists, your AFKers, your wannabes, just name it. The ideal is that everyone understands the objective and will work together to achieve success, pride and prejudice aside. I laugh at that last statement because games like Left 4 Dead, Halo, and other team-based games have shown me that everyone wants to be the “hero” of their session, which will inevitably lead to conflict, and you wouldn’t believe how quickly teamwork and understanding get tossed out the window like the controller of the player who just spent weeks trying to beat Super Ghouls ‘N’ Ghosts for the first time and was just told they have to repeat the whole game again for the real ending.

Although, let’s not get things twisted, this can also happen when you’re grouped with your own crew of ragtag misfit gamers. Even when you have the communication and coordination bit all figured out because you have your posse to back you up, when things start to go south, the rage can (and will) be bridge-burning. Play a game of Smite, or League of Legends, with your friends, get your team to the point when you’re Win-Loss ratio is above 50%, and screw up for 3 games (I’m being generous here), and see how fast that one friend will blow your ear drum out via your headset faster than you can say, “Get good.”

Reasons of old are still prevalent in today’s games, but the addition of the human factor completely overshadows why we are ready to destroy our homes and relationships as a result of being consumed by our emotions. (Want a fun example of what rage can do to you? Google “Silverstein Wins the Internet” and you’ll see how horrible it can be at an extreme.) The way we have dealt with it has remained the same, only today, we have new venues through which to poorly express ourselves. Before online-gaming, we had the luxury of screaming, yelling, destroying, and crying in the sanctity and privacy of our own home. Your parents, roommates, or significant other would check to see what’s wrong, tell you to chill the f**k out, and go about their business. Today though, we have ourselves venues such as hate mail to verbally “assault” other gamers and you can show just how much you can invalidate their gaming prowess by letting them know just how much they got into your head. Social media users has also have their fair share of outbursts as the result of games gone wrong. Go ahead and look on YouTube for gaming meltdowns. I’ve linked one to you earlier in this article, but there are more… oh, so much more! Sadly, this really only adds fuel to the fire, as people can feel they can gain notoriety and infamy by being a turd to other players and showcasing their “exploits” to the world.

Honestly, I’m sure a psych student can tap into this for a dissertation and make a thesis out of the subject. However, I am not a psych student and I would be straying from the topic at hand. I’ll leave you, the readers with this: “butt-hurt syndrome,” “nerd rage,” or whatever you’d like to call it, is bad, incredibly bad, to both the player and the community. It can ruin your real life situation and give you a ton of therapy-rich issues, if left ignored. Do yourself the favor, should you ever feel hot in the face and ready to shot put your controller for the world record in distance – swallow your pride, and walk away. Your wallet, your friends and family, and your heart-rate, will thank you for it. Write down your hate mail into a notebook, and throw it away, get it out of you without giving your source the satisfaction of knowing they got to you.