Griefing and it’s elevation

Griefing, for you not in the know, is something spawned from the general unpleasentness of people, the flexibility of video games and the fact that you have no answerability to anyone in most situations.

The most common form of griefing is people shooting their own teammates, which is why in most games friendly fire is at the most an option that stays left off. This means people have to get creative with their griefing. There’s countless videos on the internet of people teleporting people to inconvenient places, blowing people off edges, tricking them into an ally of sentry guns, but mostly games are ‘grief proof’, thank god. (This discludes enemies of course, that’s just good sport!)

Normally the griefers give up, going to easier games probably. But extremely rarely you get people that simply just want to annoy people  so much they exploit the smallest oversight or unfixable situation to stop people having fun. I don’t know why they do it, but occasionally you get people that have taken griefing to an artform.

There’s a couple of chaps called ‘Team Roomba’ that have made some videos called ‘Team Fortress 2 griefing” which show them teleport enemies into sentry fire, blocking doors by jumping RIGHT into the right place, even stuff simple like blocking sniper scopes with flamethrowers.

It’d be annoying beyond belief it is was to happen to me, but it’s still hilarious for some reason. They even use the door blocking technique to make the players answer triva questions so they can get out.(which would be something I’d actually want to happen to me.) It’s extremely well presented and somehow hits all the right buttons.

I bring this up because I had a similar experience a couple of minutes ago (that and I forgot to write again and this was convienient). Me and my friend found the Left 4 Dead VS servers were pretty dead, so we tried out campaign for old times sake. Then 2 chaps named Angry Otter and Larry Fitzgerald  (I assume their pseudonyms) showed up and started running ahead. I figured they just liked rushing, which is basically running ahead alone to prove your awesomeness (keep in mind that you need teammates to get off the special zombies).

But not only were they running ahead, they were taking all the medpacks as well. I didn’t notice at first, thought the server had glitched or something, however we soon twigged they were doing this. Now this game has friendly fire on by default, they could have just shot us or something similar, but instead of griefing by aggression, they were griefing by denial. We couldn’t heal and they wouldn’t protect us, and yet it was HILARIOUS. The fact they’d gone to so much effort was hilarious.

Course things got a bit tense when they required us to go up an elevator, and the next map they killed us a couple of times, I think they baited a tank towards us as well. I managed to survive the finale on the last try by hiding in a closet with a shotgun (my friend was already dead by this stage), and hoping they wouldn’t shoot me when they came nearby to get ammo. I even saved one of them from a smoker, being a prisoner of gaming morals. I got to the helecopter with 5hp left just as it was landing, and then one of them turned around shot me, killing me.

It was too funny to be mad, the perfectness of their  practice of ruining our game was too funny to not laugh, and I probably had a better time in that game than I would have in a serious one.

Normally I’d have a conclusion but to be honest I’m too tired to make a point out of this. Just some rambling about the topic. Maybe I’ll write a review when I don’t have an neverending supply of assignments flowing in.