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THE TEEN MIND AND C&C

Rushing, Yuri haters, is it just psychological?

After watching a show named "The Teen Species" on TLC, some of you may have caught it or heard about it, I got to wondering if some of the points raised in the show explain some of the more ugly side of gaming. At least among the teen majority of gamers.

In the show, it stated two things that got me thinking. First off, are emotions. The more experienced and better players all have been called a cheater once in a while when of course, it was a legitimate win, or you are just plain yelled at and cussed at for winning and they lost. Basically acting like a poor sport. Now in teens, apparently the brain is rewired to process at far faster speeds. One of the first parts of the brain finished rewiring is the part that controls emotions.

Till the brain is completely done being rewired, emotions such as anger, love, and fear may actually be felt far greater. So what might simply be a bit of disappointment at loosing gets blown into the familiar assumption the other person is cheating cause there is no way "I can loose" or "they cant have that many units without a cheat". Also, the actual act of name-calling, and flaming is tied into the other point, which I will get to in a moment. So essentially, they overreact for the simple fact the part of their brain that's been rewired first is the emotions and doesn't know how to control them yet.

The other factor brought up was the part of the brain that controls various functions such as common sense, logic, and planning. Studies have shown, of all age groups, this part of the brain is almost inactive among teens. No reason is known why, but this would explain the tactic we all have a love/hate relationship with, the rush.

Rushing is clear cut and simple. You try to build the largest amount of tanks in the shortest amount of time, and attack your opponent before they can. Often games are kept short as a result of this action. This is cause the rush doesn't require much planning, doesn't require one to think of a solution fast should something crop up, after all, just build more tanks. You also aren't forced to think of a counter for what the opponent may have other than, build more tanks. All seems simple right? How about when a factor such as a Yuri player is brought into play.

You are the standard soviet rusher; you rush to find a few Yuri clones, maybe a chaos done and psy tower waiting for them. These alone spell doom for the first rush. So now you need to find a way around them, which requires planning. But you stick to the "build more tanks" thinking. You build a larger force of tanks and rush. This time they got a magnetron or two waiting with a mastermind and maybe a few lashers and gattling tanks, plus the captured tanks. They fend you off again. Now the Yuri player attacks before you can build more tanks (after all, he now has 8 of yours in addition to his own units against 5 tanks under your control). You end up loosing cause they deploy 2 chaos drones near your war fact and force all new tanks out to turn on you and prevent you from being able to counter the attack. At this point, you refuse to play in any game where a player may be Yuri (the exaggerated emotions kick in).

Now of course, all along this is assuming the players involved are always teens between 13-18 (the time that these changes in the brain are occurring). Cause you aren't using the part of your brain that requires planning, anything but the rush is not acceptable as a "Valid tactic". Why do people think of something such as a few ifvs with ggis or a boomer rush as invalid? Without the part of the brain the requires planning operating at full, or being tested by attempting to come up with something, you just use the same thing and die. All because you don't adjust to the situation as that's what that part of the brain is supposed to help you with, is adapt to the situation faced.

The examples used so far only mention ra2, so to be fair; I will mention a game that oddly, I find many players think of as "poor".

Now luckily, I was never around to hear all the supposed hype surrounding Tiberian Sun. When I first played the game, I found though games ran slow, the game was fun. Most complaints I have heard is the games are too long. After getting stuck in a game with a friend for nearly 7 hours and only ended cause my power went out, I can understand the problem with the game being long and drawn out. However, I also heard how people looked down on weapons such as the EMP Cannon as it would stop what? You guessed it, a rush, and allow the person using it the chance to eliminate your forces. In my opinion, this again ties into the planning and logic. You know they have an EMP cannon, but make no attempt to find some other tactic other than the simple rush to get around it so you don't plan right cause you think the rush is always gonna win, or don't want to bother coming up with one.

In closing, cause of the above factors, there really seems to be a psychological explanation for the "darker side" of gamers alike. Hopefully this has shed some light for many into why things such as the rush is so valued and hated among gamers. And why they, or you yourself cannot cope with using anything but the same tactic.

 

 

 



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