so there I was..DS in hand... trying out the new Zelda for the second day in a row, specifically, trying out the multiplayer aspect for the first time...

the first game I was sorely pwned.. which is what i expected. it was one of those moments where I felt like I should have paid better attention to the manual...facepalm, but lesson learned. the player on the other side requested another game (it was their first time as well, according to the ranking stuffs) and I figured "why not?" I took my lesson from the last game and put it into application, this time being more strategic in where I was going to go and how to get there and it worked pretty well. I had a 30 point lead on the last round and then...

and then....

and then the other player shut off their system, and in doing so robbed me of my first rank point. my other experiences with DS wifi have been that if the other player quits, it's counted as their defaulting, so you are logged with a win. when the game locked up I figured that's what was going to happen. sadly, no. my first comment to myself was "What douchebaggery is this??"

i realized after getting over the irritation that the person on the other end could have been my brother (10 years my junior), or someone like him, and this raised an interesting question:

Is there such thing as a gaming philosophy? was there ever?

not less than 6 months back my brother was in town with my dad, glued to his DS (metroid). he took great pains to pwn every person he could, and then crow about how they never had a chance, of course, complaining that he had no allies to help him. big deal, right? well, when it came time for the household deathmatch he appeared to engage in everything that would get one banned from 'net servers... not the least of which was camping. oh my lordy, did he camp.

so after the game, with everyone in the house sufficiently irritated with him, I pulled him aside and explained to him that the reason he had no allies in metroid was that he made everyone else his enemy with his actions, specifically, that one day he would find himself with a deathmatch and noone will want to play it with him. I told him that pretty much everyone gets in on a game to have fun and yes, to win; but winning wasn't worth all costs... not for DM, not for any pixellated game. I told him basically that being a douche will eventually affect his reality-based ranking.

but then, I also feel as if sometimes I have been swept up in a current of gaming douchebags (see also: WoW), and perhaps I'm one of the few left from the old guard who actually play to have fun, or who remember fun as being less competitive and more likely to make you smile and laugh off a loss... I mean, sure, everyone knew that one guy who would whip anyone's ass in Combat or Warlords, but eventually we all stopped gaming with that guy because he was too intent on the competition and not so much whether everyone was having a good time.

bah, maybe I'm just getting old.