First Person Campers

If you’ve ever stepped inside a first person shooter game in multiplayer, you’re surely familiar with the term camper. Every time I see someone type the astute, “omg wtf.. y u campn,” or the more expressive, “fU campre fagget!11,” I have to laugh at both the rage that it spawns and the fact that these players seem really obsessive about something that relates to pitching tents.

Cheap shot aside, if you’re unfamiliar with the term:

Camping in computer gaming jargon describes the practice of a player staying in one area of the game world waiting for enemies or useful objects to appear or to come to the player rather than actively seeking them out. Players camp in order to gain an advantage over their opponents.

Fair enough description. Pretty accurate too, in my opinion. Though the gaining an advantage point could be argued against in some situations. So, to continue:

Camping, while a legitimate strategy in most games, is considered unsocial and is often frowned upon. Among some players, camping is considered tantamount to cheating, especially in deathmatch-type games.

Now the above I have issues with.

Tantamount to cheating? Give me a break. Even in a deathmatch situations I would hardly call someone squatting a position they’ve found to be strategically advantageous, cheating. It’s called not wanting to be laid waste to every 10 seconds.

In some games, such as Call of Duty 4 online, staying alive as long as you can is even encouraged.

If you can accumulate a certain number of kills without being killed yourself, you earn rewards. For example: 3 kills will let you activate radar that helps you and your team pinpoint the opposing players on the map. I think 5 kills lets you call in an airstrike. And then 7 kills, without yourself dying, lets you call in an attack helicopter to ground pound the enemy until someone shoots it down. Pretty useful little extras to work towards, if you can stay alive long enough.

In other games, such as America’s Army (AA), you don’t respawn after you’re killed. You have to sit and wait for the round to finish before you get another shot. So dying within the first 30 seconds and then having to sit out a possible 10 minute round can be highly annoying.

About the only time I personally feel people camping is annoying is if it’s a game like AA where you often have an assault team, and a team on defense. If you’re on assault and camping a spot, that’s just ridiculous. Your job or objective is to assault the other position and either eliminate the team or reach some kind of a checkpoint usually. Camping your nook on defense is just retarded and I’ve seen it often call for a vote kick.

Other than that, no, I really have no problem with people that like to camp advantageous spots.

It’s annoying being killed suddenly in game, whether it’s to someone camping or not. So what does it really matter? Getting butthurt about it and whining in chat isn’t going to achieve anything other than people snickering at you for wasting time trying to trash talk someone who probably is too busy tagging other players to care about what kind of e-threat you’re keystroking to the screen.

A final, and really rich, example of someone over-reacting to the camping stigma, and which I personally find hilarious, is when someone that’s just been taken out by sniper fire yells “camper” to the screen. Please tell me you aren’t serious.

A sniper isn’t supposed to Rambo his way around the map hip firing his Barrett like a machine gun at anything that moves in close quarter combat. A sniper’s whole career is camping a spot, utilizing it, and then moving on to a new one if that one is compromised. Doubleyou Tee Eff?

Alas, no matter how much this is discussed or reasoned to death, there will always be annoying in game chat that attempts to ridicule or ostracize another player for utilize their own particular strategy and play style. Best thing you can do is just play the game and ignore the comments, if you happen to be the camping type.

As for me, and most likely with a lot of people, my first introduction to the shooter genre was with games like Wolfenstein which was single player. Once the games advanced and we saw titles like Medal of Honor and such go multiplayer, play styles altered drastically.

And so sometimes, I do personally enjoy playing the sniper type that lurks in a high cover position, taking out people unaware to my presence. And at other times, camping a spot regardless of weapon, can be really boring.

In those cases, I’ll switch off to a close quarter weapon and door to door it. It means I die a hell of a lot more, but it’s also a lot of fun zipping through buildings and around corners and being on the offensive.

All in all it’s just about having fun. And I think people forget that, sometimes.