I Fear Zombies!

Here's my Operation Fear Liberation (OFL) snapshot for the third week of February. Once again, I've forced myself to do something new.  

Week #7: Play a first-person shooter video game on an XBOX 360.

Why it’s on my list: First off, as far as I know, I have never played anything on an XBOX or an XBOX 360. So it is an official new thing. 

 Scary XBOX! (Photo by Wikicommons user Javier Donoso [CC-BY-SA-3.0])

Also, I heard an interesting story on NPR last year on author and game designer Jane McGonigal discussing ideas that she shares in her book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. While working on her doctorate in performance studies, McGonigal looked at people's behavior as they played World of Warcraft. She found that playing such a game with a kick-ass avatar increased confidence, confidence which the gamers often took out with them into the real world and which resulted in more success in real-world social situations. As part of her research, she also played the game herself. She noticed that even when she failed at a quest repeatedly, she still was improving her abilities, becoming a stronger and smarter player. "This is obviously meant to model what would happen in real life if you kept tackling an obstacle," she told NPR.  That's a pretty compelling idea, I thought, maybe I should start playing more video games so I take more confidence out into job interviews and the like.

But the main reason playing a game on an Xbox 360 is on my list is because I have a ridiculous amount of fear towards almost all things video game. Sure, I can handle a little Tetris on an old school GameBoy. Sure, I was down with the original Super Mario Brothers. And I was a huge fan of Pole Position back in 1985. But all in all, I am super intimidated by video games and video game players.

Hang Ups: Let me say more about this. I guess I am afraid of losing. Call me sensitive, or call me a sore loser, but I don't like losing. And let's face it, if you don't know there is a posse of zombies lurking behind that virtual wall, then you're probably going to get offed on the screen the first time (and maybe the second, the third, and the fourth times). In the arcade, I don't like plunking money down to see my avatar get punched out three times within 30 seconds. Plus I kind of suck at navigating all those controller buttons, remembering what does what to successfully move my avatar around the screen. I get overwhelmed, my avatar starts spinning on screen, I get dizzy, and then my avatar falls off the edge of a volcano instead of jumping successfully onto that overhead cloud. The whole thing intimidates me, especially if I have an audience. Which I am most certain to have, since I am never going to purchase one of these things for my private residence.

Eek! So many buttons! (photo by Wikicommons user Jon 'ShakataGaNai' Davis [CC-BY-3.0]

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Conquered: Saturday, February 18, 2012.

Where: My friend (G)SW's houseboat. 

How: I played Left 4 Dead 2 on his Xbox 360. 

The Experience: So Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative survival horror first-person shooter video game. Cooperative-play video games allow you to play with (not against) other gamers who are either with you and using another game controller, or are playing with you online. So in Left 4 Dead, you are one of four-to-eight survivors (your hypothetical fellow gamers would play other survivors) of an apocalyptic event where it appears everyone else in the world has been turned into zombies by a rabies-like virus that causes psychosis. (I guess the survivors are immune to this virus, but not to zombies in general...?) Anyway, I played alone, with (G)SW standing by to instruct, and I picked Rochelle, the low-level production assistant reporting on the evacuation for a local television station, as my avatar.

(We will now adopt a present tense voice to help recreate the feeling of playing the game.)  

As the game begins, I, Rochelle, am armed with some sort of gun (sorry, I am also hopelessly ignorant of fire arms) and I am supposed to lead my three fellow survivors (high school football coach "Coach," gambler and conman Nick, and talkative mechanic Ellis) from the roof of a zombie-infested Savannah, GA, hotel down to the ground floor floor by floor. Right. O-kay. Here we go.

It takes me about three minutes to figure out the game controller buttons adequately in order to maneuver myself through the door of the stairwell. Getting down the stairs to the floor below is no cakewalk either. When I finally open that floor's door and the zombies start running at us, I mentally flip out and start hitting every button possible in rapid fire. Yes, I'm shooting at the zombies like crazy, but because I'm also spinning, I'm also shooting at my fellow survivors. The XBOX admonishes me, "Don't shoot your teammates!" "Well, I didn't mean to!" I yell back. I think to myself, get a hold of yourself already. My AI-controlled teammates and I somehow manage to kill the first attack wave (and not each other) and we proceed down the hotel's hallway.

Zombies in Fremont! (photo by Flickr user "garann" [CC-BY-SA-2.0])

And so it goes, in almost every zombie-packed room and hallway and floor we enter. I freak out and start pounding on the controller buttons, I almost shoot Nick or Ellis, and occasionally, the zombies get me. I also fall out of a window or off the building's ledge quite a few times, and I also catch on fire! Luckily, Coach or another survivor resuscitates me or heals my burns or gives me an antidote or catches me before I really bite it. Most of the time. Man, am I drag on their survival campaign! I do not gain much skill in using my fire arm to smack zombies on the side of the head, though I think my shooting aim is satisfactory enough. Well, not really, but at least I can figure out how to shoot and I am not spinning around wildly so much anymore. Ultimately, however, I do die one too many times. The coach's healing arts can't heal my wounds this time. Rochelle is kaput.

(G)SW asks me if I want to play again. I say, "err, no, thank you." 

The Verdict: Yeah, I'm not a natural and, honestly, I'm not that interested in the game to invest much time building my virtual zombie defense skills. That said, it was kind of fun. I think I could build some gamer skills if I wanted to. I also liked the cooperative playing with the AI-controlled teammates. *Almost* every time I thought I was dust, they brought me back to life; this made me less afraid of taking risks while playing and more relaxed in general. That definitely made the whole experience more enjoyable for me.  Still, I really don't expect to be hounding (G)SW to let me play Left 4 Dead 2 every time I go to his house from now on.