Everyone who has ever played a competitive, online game that features a chat function has been in this situation before. You’re playing the game in a way that allows you to get more kills, but in a manner that most of the community deems unacceptable, or cheap. Over the headset, you hear the rage building in the other players as you continually attack them and brazenly flaunt the noble and time honoured traditions of said game. While not official rules, there are certain things you just don’t do out of respect for the game and other players.
“You f***ing camper, that’s such bullsh**”
“WHAT THE F*** I’LL F***NG KILL YOU”
And the granddaddy of them all
“If I find out where you are I’ll come to your house and kick your ass in person!”
Idle threats. First of all, who takes gaming seriously enough to follow through with this? Turn the game off, put the controller down, and forget about it. Secondly, it’s easy enough to talk smack when you’re potentially thousands of miles away from the person you’re threatening, or on the flipside, the person threatening you, so you can continue to berate and annoy them with no fear of reprisal.
Every now and then however, the combat leaves the virtual battlefield and jumps into reality, and the idle threats become just and violent retribution.
A gamer in Thailand discovered this first hand recently, when an opponent tracked down his real location, and showed up in person to exact his vengeance and rain fury down upon him.
During a match, the victim was allegedly “camping”, much to the irritation of his fellow players. After repeated requests to stop, the gamer refused, and the shit talk began. Unfortunately for this guy, after telling another player to “get rekt”, he offered up real-life location in an act of arrogance that cost him a few whacks to the head. He reportedly said if anyone wanted him, he was “chilling in Quan Lon Cafe if anyone has a problem.”
Well, someone did have a problem, and decided to take the trip down and present his argument in person. He opened the debate with a right hook to the back of the head, followed up by a flurry of punches. Not to be deterred, the purple-shirted camper gets out of his chair to retaliate, and after a brief altercation actually subdues his attacker and sits on top of him until management gets involved and forces the attacker to leave.
On the one hand, it’s nice that this fight was only fists and didn’t get worse, with both parties ending up relatively unharmed. On the other hand, and not that I condone this sort of thing, part of me wants to high five this guy for calling the bluff of a dishonourable camper who felt invincible behind his screen, only to find out that in this day and age, it’s not hard to track someone down and take things to the next level. Hopefully, this heroic act of childish violence will inspire others to tone down the chirping, and just have fun with the game. But probably not. And hey, it’s better than swatting.