First-Person Shooter Disease

As the spouse of a former competitive Quake champ, I laughed pretty goddamned hard at this video about life with "First Person Shooter Disease."

Living with First-Person Shooter Disease (via Scalzi)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Funny • Games • Happy Mutants

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

Zergonapal

@27 Yeah after playing Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel for about a week I’d be thinking about how many action points it would take to get a cup of coffee o.0
Anonymous

I used to play the old Command and Conquer with my girlfriend at the time. One day, while rolling through the parking lot of a grocery store with her in the car, a lady walked right out in front of me without ever looking to see if there were cars coming. In my head I heard the squish sound from C&C when the tanks roll over the infantry guys. I imitated it and set my girlfriend rolling in laughter.

Hilarious, but slightly disturbing.
dole

Shiiiit. I used to play Tribes so much, I’d consider the prime sliding points of hills in real life and how I’d jump/jetpack my ass onto the roof of nearby buildings.

I was hoping to see a vodka swilling guy in the end scene. :(
Dave Faris

Is the guy (@ 1:30) who moves his hands like Donkey Kong the Numa Numa kid?
Anonymous

Hilarious video, and some very funny stories.

My closest experience I can think of with these kinds of things was after playing Tetris daily for hours last year in college. I started getting the “Tetris Effect” where I would see falling shapes in my head while zoning out or sleeping at night, and would immediately start thinking about the number of rotations required to put it into a particular slot on the board.
O_o
Keeper of the Lantern

That guy with the Streetfighter stroke is killin’ me!!!!
nerak73

Brilliant.
mattofdoom

That guy needs to strafe more!

Mind you, the bit trying to get through that door is top hole.
Krutus

Having used my computer for too long one day, I tried to check the time when walking to work by looking into the lower right-hand corner of my field of vision. It produced in me the storied “wave of unreality” I had only read about in novels.
13tales

Former competitive quake champion?

Well cory, i guess we know who wears the Quad-damage in your marriage… ;)
Anonymous

I’m pretty sure I have something similar to this. Every time my hand gets near a keyboard it flies to WASD.
Anonymous

Tribes had me doing the same thing when i was younger. So many dreams and familiar experiences with the bottom few on the list. Do we all need to start group therapy?
phillamb168

@12 eustac
“Go ahead and laugh, you insensitive clods. My Half-Life 2 Disorder has progressed to the point where I need to wear a Bio-Hazard suit at all times…”

Also known as living in New Jersey?
spejic

It’s not all bad. You can climb ladders without using your hands.
weaponx

Hilarious!
slida

That was a good one. :)
Anonymous

dudes… my wife thinks this is actually for real. Gawd how much I miss donkey kong :-(
redrichie

Oh-ho-ho! Fantastic!
bcsizemo

Back in my Half-life multiplayer days of college I used to walk around campus and think about all the excellent hiding places for snipping someone with a crossbow. And occasionally I’d swear I’d hear sounds from the game…freaks you out when it’s 1 in the morning walking back from the library…
franko

[/came hoping for a world of warcraft reference, left disappointed.]
Daemon

I’ve always thought that FPSs were a virus.
eustace

Go ahead and laugh, you insensitive clods. My Half-Life 2 Disorder has progressed to the point where I need to wear a Bio-Hazard suit at all times…
Tdawwg

What about the dreaded third-person-shooter disease, in which one is eternally viewing the back of one’s body? In which sufferers can see around walls that they’re pressed up against? I’ve heard that in extreme cases people don’t even have faces!
Takuan

opens a whole new variety of playing charades.
nanuq

This may explain some airport security types I happen to know.
dross1260

Think of the children.
It’s only funny until it happens to you.
Anonymous

@26
I had a Half-life 2 bender. I went to get something out of reach at work and thought “Where’s my gravity gun?” Had to take a step back for a second there.
Ian_McLoud

Excellent!

@10, WOW is neither a First-Person nor a Shooter
Skullhunter

@27
I did the same yesterday after playing Left4Dead for about four hours straight. We were driving down the street and I saw what looked extraordinarily like a hunched-over figured with a hood (but turned out to be a fire hydrant wrapped in a plastic tarp). I almost shouted “HUNTER!”, which I’m sure my wife would not have appreciated while she was driving.
Simon Bradshaw

My friends and I identified Doom Syndrome pretty soon after it first came out in late ’93 – a tendency to get nervous as you approached a blind corner, with the pervasive feeling you ought to stop and peek round it first.
Anonymous

@IAN_MCLOUD: Donkey Kong, Street Fighter and 2D sidescrollers also aren’t first-person shooters.
Anonymous

You guys have totally forgotten about the dreaded second-person shooter disease. These poor souls live their lives in a repetitive cycle of standing around talking to comrades, being surprised by some guy who thinks he’s the center of attention, and then strangled, shot, or stabbed to death. Their bodies are constantly violated by being dragged around, thrown in odd places, stepped on, shot some more, or any number of other horrific acts that should not be performed on ANY carcass, human or otherwise. They lie dead for a while, reveling in the peaceful nirvana of eternal sleep before being “respawned” and suddenly placed elsewhere only to repeat the gruesome process. The only hope they have is that they kill the narcissistic intruder before he gets them. But are they given any warning? NO! And it doesn’t matter anyway, because this tool will keep returning until he kills our helpless subject and all his friends. There is no help for these poor people… until now. Please, please, please donate to the Fund for SPS Sufferers. Just click Remember, this could happen to you or your loved ones. My sister has it. Your sister probably has it. Or your mom. Or your daughter. For the children, please just contribute what you can. Thank you.
Anonymous

At least you didn’t resort to typing:

/who Stephen

when I was wondering where my brother was.

:(
FPF422

ROTFL… was expecting a Boom Headshot though
nosehat

Funny!

Reminds me of Dave Chappelle’s piece on “What if life were like GTA?”
Anonymous

LOL, great vid :)
Ian_McLoud

@18 – Very true… Perhaps MMORPG was off-limits. Or perhaps they wanted to focus on the classics…
Itsumishi

The first time I had the chance to play GTA3 I was at a friends house after he had to leave for something. Because I’d had a beer earlier (and was on my probationary licence 0.00 BAC in my state of Aus) I thought I should sit and chill out for an hour or so before I left so I started playing the game. In the end I sat there for about 3 hours before realising I really should leave. Jumped in my car, pulled out of the driveway and drove straight into the right hand lane.

It felt completely normal until I reached the roundabout and realised in Australia we’re meant to be in the left!

(Luckily the road I was on was a very empty near country road).
pelrun

I love Kitchen Gun!!
Ian_McLoud

I actually found “kitchen gun” to be a little disturbing. Not for any particular reason, but anytime a home-made video features a gun being pointed at someone, it gives me an uneasy feeling, even though I know that nothing will go wrong (as long as I’m not seeking out snuff films).

As a gun owner, perhaps this reaction is because the scenario(s) violate the primary rule of gun safety: ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. (A safe direction means that the gun is pointed so that even if it were to go off it would not cause injury .)

Why I don’t have this reaction to professional films is odd, particularly given the fate of Brandon Lee in The Crow.