Call Of Duty: Black Ops – Midnight Release

Bill Cammack — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 05:47:58 +0000

Call Of Duty: Black Ops – Midnight Release
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
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Video Games & Dating, Part 01

Bill Cammack — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:54:33 +0000

Ladiesâ€¦ If you really want to learn about your man’s personality, hang around him when he’s playing video games.

All of y’all that are dating gamers know I’m telling the truth.

The way he plays his games is the exact same way he’s going to interact with YOUâ€¦.. umâ€¦ assuming that he cares as much about YOU as he does his VIDEO GAMESâ€¦.. which isn’t likely.

What game are we playing, anyway?

I don’t know much about dudes that play Mario Bash Bash or Dance Dance Revolution or whatever cutesy, corny games they make these days. I know about FPS. First Person Shooters. War Simulations. They’re still called “games” because Atari was a game. You had a little cutesy tank and would shoot a little square at the other cutesy tank and try to hit it more times than it hit you.

Technology has improved to the point that these so-called “games” are now being utilized as preparations for actual war.

I found this out from watching my friend Baratunde Thurston‘s show Popular Science’s “Future Ofâ€¦”.

One of the episodes is about the future of Combat, and it’s rather enlightening…

Popular Science: The Future of the Military — Perhaps

Drones have become common battlefield tools in the past decade but are typically controlled at the company or battalion level, which respectively have about 135 and 650 soldiers apiece. FCS wants tools like the UAV at the platoon (approximately 40 soldiers) and even squad (10 members) level. The vision is also to expand the range of applications. The Massachusetts-based company iRobot manufactures a PackBot currently deployed overseas, which the military uses primarily to scout for improvised explosive devices, while the SUGV, also made by iRobot, may one day lead infantry assaults like the one I witnessed. A single soldier can comfortably tote a SUGV, and the controller, copied almost directly from that of an Xbox game console, was designed to be intuitively easy for a young recruit to use.

Look Familiar?: The controls for FCS unmanned
vehicles are modeled after those used for video
game consoles
Photo Credit: Brent Humphreys

One of the soldiers handed me the controller; I donned the head-up display and started driving. The robot crashed into a wall. After practicing for a few minutes, I was able to steer into one of the buildings and scan for insurgents. There was something exciting — and faintly disturbing — about the notion that I could help battle insurgents with technology that felt only slightly elevated from the R/C cars of my childhood. But I wasn’t totally sold. Removing the display, I asked what would prevent an enemy from shooting the SUGV as soon as he spotted it. “Nothing,” replied one of the soldiers nearby, Lt.-Col. Ed House. “But if he does, we know he’s there, so the SUGV has accomplished its mission. Better to shoot a robot than a soldier.”

So.. Laugh all you want while people call our war simulations “games”, but that’s not what’s actually going on.

Dominance

One of the things that a lot of women can’t grasp is why guys do the confrontational things we do. We fight. We go to war. We remain in the rat race when we’re already rich and have more money than we’re ever going to spend during whatever’s left of our livesâ€¦..

This is because we’re built to prove that we’re better than the next man.

This is why we cheer for our home team.

New York is better than Philadelphia on this day in Football. Montreal is better than California on this day in Baseball. Our country beat the living **** out of your country in a war, so we get to tell you what to do and/or steal all of your oil.

This is our lives. This is what matters. This is what moves us. This is what we’re passionate about.

THIS is what’s going on when we’re online playing video “games”. YOU stepped to ME on an equal battlefield where you had the same opportunity to select guns and power-ups as I did and I *WAXED* you!â€¦ SIT. THE. ****. DOWN! :D That’s what it’s all about. Proving minute after minute that you’re better than someone else. If you don’t understand how good that feels, you’ll never understand hardcore gamers.

I’ve personally (thanks to my teammates and other people I’ve made alliances with via gaming) been #1 in the world in a game that took two months to play. When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, I was BY FAR the #1 base capturer, planet-wide. There were players from the USA, Japan, England, France and a few other scattered countries that were represented in the game. Also, the guy I left in the dust at #2, I happen to know he was cheating, because I know him and played with AND against him.

That’s the flag I planted. I planted it for myself. I planted it for my team. I planted it for my country. It’s in the books. It’s a done deal. You can NOT take that away from me, EV*A*R. This is what we do. We represent ourselves. We represent our friends. People talk about us in languages we don’t even understand, because they respect our skills and the dignity with which we carry ourselves whether we win or lose. If you’ve never felt this, I can’t explain to you how important it is or how good it feels. If you’ve never gone into matches where people wrote you off because they’ve never heard of you and then you defeat a team that everyone agrees is one of the tightest squads playing the game today and then people STILL don’t want to give you your propers.. I can’t explain how that feels to you. If you’ve never beaten up A SECOND HERALDED TEAM in the same tournament and the peons don’t want to give you your props, but both of the teams you beat have respect for you (and you for them) that’s lasted to this very dayâ€¦ I can’t explain to you how that feels. :)

Dating

What does this have to do with dating? :D Wellâ€¦ Before that day we got drunk and went out to the club and you were looking good and we decided to kick it to you because you were HAWT and turning us onâ€¦ We were gaming with our homeboys.

Before you got added to the roster, we already had a bunch of IRL friends and online friends. You’re going to have to make your way up the ladder. You don’t get instant props because you’re the “girlfriend”. Going to your moms’s house for Sunday dinner isn’t high up on our list of things to do.

Sitting around on a bench with the other henpecked boyfriends at the mall while you shop for duplicate pairs of black shoes that you don’t even need to waste your money on isn’t high up on our list of things to do. That chick-flick you rented on DVD might never see the inside of our XBOX or Playstation3, ya dig? :D

At the same time that you’re at a decided disadvantage if you date a gamer, you also have an unique opportunity to be around him when he’s being REAL. You’d be surprised that some of the most calm, intelligent, cerebral dudes will be screaming and cursing at the top of their lungs when people mess up and do the wrong thing or the game jerks them. huh Some friends of mine didn’t know who I am and challenged me to one-on-one games of HALO. I hadn’t even PLAYED HALO in months, but thank God my skillz came online after about 10 minutes and I pistoled and sniper-rifled them to death so many times that both of the top dogs at the party quit and didn’t want to play anymore. I would have been severely embarrassed and depressed, had I lost to them, considering that my boy Mak and I used to whip ass on the guy that won the first HALO tournament and his crew DAILY before he won and received his MLG contract (meaning we never saw him again, or else we’d STILL be whipping his ass to this day). I tried to lighten the party’s atmosphere by informing the guys I beat that there was no way they should have beaten me anyway, because I’m a World-Class FPS gamer, but they were still shell-shocked haha :D

It’s easy for a guy to be cool, friendly & gentlemanly around you when you’re out on a date because nothing important’s happening. Yeah, he’s trying to convince you to give him some, but that’s really a reflection on YOU. When he’s gaming, it’s a reflection on HIM and his self-esteem and self-perception. Dating is basically wasting time waiting for the chick to give it up. It’s a bunch of downtime until you get to the nitty-gritty. When you’re the last guy (as usual) left on your team and it’s up to you to defeat three or four other players and accomplish your objective, that’s when every split second counts and life gets REAL.

If you have the opportunity to be around your SO when he’s in this zone, you’ll see who he really is. You’ll see what matters to him.. what makes his heart pump faster. Ask him to take out the trash now, and you might get a response you didn’t expect. Ask him if he loves you now, and he might ignore you completely. He probably didn’t actually even HEAR YOU because he’s so immersed in the game. Tell him you’re ready to go to church, and maybe he’ll quit the game to drive you thereâ€¦ maybe he’ll put the controller down so he can see you to the door and lock you outâ€¦ maybe he’ll ignore you completelyâ€¦ maybe he’ll split the difference and without looking up from his game, say “PAYCE!!!â€¦ Don’t let the door HIT’cha where the Good Lord SPLIT’cha! :D”

~ Bill Cammack | @BillCammack/@DatingGenius

Bill Cammack » Video Games

Call Of Duty: Black Ops – Midnight Release

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