(The fog and absurd acts of kindness)

This is a most ridiculous kind of war story. We started as soldiers feeling our way through the fog. In the Pyrrhus Rise wasteland, fog is a wandering, blithe thing that crawls over the landscape in ambiguous direction. It obscures everyone and makes them into blurred shapes.

In the first few weeks, Killzone was a desolate place, an insane asylum abandoned by its doctors and nurses, the inmates left survive each other. But despite the pervading sense of communal distrust, there were some who are uncharacteristically social.

I once joined a public match on Southern Hills. Southern Hills is an unforgiving place. Every few minutes another siren wails and we all must find shelter before the next bomb. There is no telling who you might come across in the shelter you choose. I believe there must be some law that governs such things. A Law of Fog perhaps. Whoever you come across is who the fog chooses for you. Sometimes you find a soldier from an opposite faction and a shootout determines who survives the blast.

At the sound of the siren, I headed for the nearest shack, a sort of tangled mass designed perhaps designed by some Dada architect. The shelter was already occupied by a member of the other faction.

Before I could do anything, he pleaded with me not to shoot. He said that if I didn't shoot him, he wouldn't shoot me.

What else could I do? Never mind that the point of Killzone is, to put it succinctly, to kill. How could I fire upon another after such a plead for civility.

We waited together in that shack until the blast went off and watched while the landscape became a blinding white. Then the dust settled, the whiteness faded, and the Geometry of the wasteland reformed in the fog. We separated, going our separate directions.

"Bye," he said, as if the absurdity was lost on him. I believe that this kind of plea for companionship still occurs in public rooms, a year after the game's release.

In unforgiving places, where you are conditioned to fire at any stranger with a different color uniform, and where you are confined to a surreal purgatory between matches (where strangers try to scream insults over one another), absurd acts of kindness can occur.



(The fog and and the birth of a clan)

This is a most ridiculous kind of war story. Ridiculous in the sense that nobody in their right mind would call it a war story. But it is a war story nonetheless.

I used to listen to "Arjuna's Dilemma", a Douglass Cuomo chamber opera, as I traversed the smoky bombed out labyrinths. It is a sort of jazz and Indian mixture that has a tendency to magnify the surrealism inherent in an fps match with the surrealism inherent in Arjuna's decision of war in the Bhagavad Gita. It is a sort of dreamworld where lost, wandering soldiers are secluded together and told to kill. Where we live an infinite number of two-minute lifespans, dying over and over again, only to be spit back out into some semblance of life.

Sometimes at the start of the match, when we are all running, together, towards the promise of gunfire that the center of the map holds, and I hear the saxophone growl of Arjuna's prologue "The Gathering" or the otherworldly choir of "Stop my Chariot", it is suddenly easier to accept, as if we are the winds of a great Hindu skirmish, where nothing needs to make sense. I imagine that they can hear it too, but they hear music of their own selection, or nothing at all. The togetherness only lasts for a moment. Everyone soon finds themselves alone in the fog.

In a war of anonymous soldiers, some found unity among the cacophony and the nihilism. Most of these connections were formed in the wasteland. You might find them in the forums, but usually you found them in the fog. Who you came across is who the fog chose for you.

Some of these connections don't last. Some form into lasting clans, fixtures in the community. Without clans, Killzone has no history. Without clans there is no United Gamers dynasty, or Why So Serious? dynasty, or Here 2 Own dynasty. Without clans, Killzone is nothing but a hive of ants eating on each other. (With clans, it is hives of ants eating on each other.) Some clans had no motive but companionship. Loyal to each other until the end, but rarely the victors. Some wanted to conquer, friendship be damned. Some players betrayed their own clan members, trading their valor for a spot on a more reputable clan's roster.

Our clan really existed for two purposes. The basic mantra was teamwork. We didn't want to be a dominant clan, we didn't have the kind of time needed to be top-ranked clan. We simply wanted to play as a team, at a time when most other clans improvised. We wanted to dissect Killzone's brand of warfare like physicists of conflict. We wanted to follow detailed plans and scripts. I wanted to be a pioneer of Killzone strategy.

The other purpose evolved over time. It wasn't something that was usually spoken, it was just something that was understood. At some point, we established principles for new members: be modest, play fair. It was as if we were trying to carve out a refuge for humanism in a surreal online world of Killzone.

The truth is, we didn't always adhere to those principles. But we did make an admirable effort. We never taunted, thanked the other clans for the matches, always said "good shot" when fragged.

We started with four original members. For each of us, Killzone was our first online fps. Luna played the tactician class. I later learned that he was a chemist. Masala, who as far as I know was a musician, played as an engineer. Eprim, a student, played as a medic. I was the lmg user. I had just returned to the US after working in China for several years. Killzone was an inexpensive hobby that I could use to pass away evenings in a boring town where I knew no one. We gave several months to the clan. Some of us regretted it, and some didn't.

Luna was the real leader. This was undeniable, except for the fact that we claimed I was the leader. People respected Luna. He was the voice of reason. In the first few months, he chose the clans we would play, arranged the match ups, and scheduled practices. I considered myself the coach, the strategist. I drew up diagrams and emailed them to Luna, who would then comment and offer suggestions. We practiced twice a week, for an hour or more, where I explained opening positions, positions for each objective type, scripts for clearing out rooms, defensive setups for protecting the target in assassination, etc.

Our first matches took place while we were members of an inactive clan that had sputtered in the first month of release. We joined tournaments and basically went up against anyone. We lost. We lost a lot. Everyone seemed to be in a different league, and we seemed to be stumbling around at half-speed. Our grenades sailed wildly over the heads of our enemy, while in response, their grenades bounced around corners and landed at our feet, tauntingly, as if to say "See what I did there?"

Our second purpose, the mantra to be a humanizing force in the wasteland, seemed meaningless. Sportsmanship usually goes unnoticed when you lose. To set an example, we needed to be a clan to be reckoned with.

After each defeat, Luna and I emailed each other, finding a few minutes here and there at the office. We reviewed each round and made suggestions. "We did better this time." "We came close to winning this objective." "We aren't that bad, we just need practice." We revised our strategies and went optimistically into our next defeat.

There was one defeat in particular that stayed with us. A clan named Samurai Hustlaz beat is soundly and completely for four straight rounds. It was as if they understood the metaphysics of the game and we were struggling with the fundamentals. Then, after the fourth round, they all left the match. There were still three rounds left, but they had already won. It was as if the match had been a chore for them. They methodically dispatched an inadequate clan and then didn't even stick around to enjoy the victory. It was as if we were a nuisance, not even worth the time to play.

There were times when frustration nearly reached the boiling point. Luna kept everyone (in other words, Eprim) cool as the voice of reason. After a loss, it was therapeutic to play in a public room where the level of competition was much lower. It reminded us that we weren't really all that bad. Our competition was just obsessively good.

Despite the fact that we hadn't come of age yet as a team, we left the old clan to start anew, as we had been planning to for some time. Luna nominated me as the leader, although we all knew that it was in name only. We would be called Springtime for Helghan.


(A new start)


With a fresh slate, a clan record of zero wins and zero losses, we started off by seeking out clans of similar skill level. We found clans that had similar playtimes and kill-death ratios to ours. Our weeks of running scripts in practice and memorizing positions seemed to come together, and we felt like a highly functional machine.

Despite our second purpose, despite the principles, I took pleasure in hearing the frustration of the clans we played. We thanked them for the game and complimented them on any rounds they had won. It felt like we were spreading an infectious disease, surprising them with our friendlessness, as if they were unaware it was possible to play an online fps that way. If this sounds arrogant, it is because it was. At the true heart of the second purpose was, for me, arrogance, although it may have been genuine for the others. It was a disguised form of taunting. It was a way of demonstrating that we could not only beat them, but we could do it while being polite and fair at the same time.

Through our second purpose we unwittingly invited a different kind of beast into the clan. There will be some who are attracted to a refuge of civility and family because they misconstrue it as being something else. In those early days, we accepted a recruit, Drew, who was fervent in his enthusiasm for the clan's principles. Later, this sentiment would turn for the worse.

After ten matches we were still undefeated. It wasn't something we had planned on. There had been close calls, such as the time when Eprim and I were disconnected from the match, leaving Luna and Masala to fend for themselves. They used a little known glitch at the time to spawn on the other side of a wall, and reach the winning objective unseen, while their opponents guarded all of the passageways leading to the room, unaware that they were inside. We had assumed the losses would come often, as they had before. But suddenly we were an undefeated clan, and the pressure to maintain perfection became intense.

The clan was beginning to grow. We called the original four the "Alpha Squad" and new members were put in subsequent squads. While the new recruits didn't have an understanding of the strategies and scripts Alpha Squad used, most of them were better players. AX was an aggressive player with a talent for the shotgun. Snap was the most balanced player I had ever seen. He could play any class well. Kev was the guy with the insane 5.0 kill-death ratio. The first time I observed him in a public match; he killed around fifty, and only died twice. He was a notorious camper, but his accuracy was spot on.

Kev was the opposite of Eprim. Whereas Eprim would rush in unprotected and try to complete an objective by himself, Kev would never risk his digital life for anything. He always hung out in the peripheries of the map, picking off members of the other team. He had been kicked off a top clan, perceived as useless and selfish. He was probably just looking for somewhere his play style would be accepted, and I felt there was room for a player like him. If everyone else was aggressive, if everyone else was out there among the grenades and the stray bullets, in the twisted center of it all, it helps to have a guy on the outside, cleaning up the mess. Usually he was the complement. Either we were the distraction while he got the kills, or he was the distraction while we attacked head on. If we all managed to die in the field, he wasn't just the complement. He was the last stand.

Kev didn't play in our first loss, but he was spectating. We had made it to the final round of a 6v6 tournament. When the match started, our strategy of holding a key center room, and controlling all of the entrances with LMGs seemed to be working. But AX was disconnected, and we found ourselves short a man for the rest of the match, against a team that was too good to play handicapped. Luna made the only tactical mistake of his career, placing a spawn point directly in front of a mounted machine gun in desperation. We had our first loss. We were 15-1. Luna and Masala never played again.




(The Elite Squad)


"When is Luna coming back?" other clan members would constantly ask me, subtly trying to hint that my leadership was only temporary. I didn't know. He had stopped responding to my emails. Later, I learned that he had some family troubles and went home to England. Masala played because Luna played. They knew each other personally. Without Luna, Masala had no reason to log on. Without Luna and Masala, the Alpha Squad was dead. Despite this, the clan flourished. The new recruits stepped in, and I rescinded into a manager role.

We recruited a player called Sameji. He was one of the best in the community, and even a year after release he probably still is. I have only played a handful of players who could compete with him. He was difficult to hit, and seemed to have perfect accuracy even while dancing all over the terrain. I used to listen to the other teams' conversations while spectating, just to hear their frustration at how unkillable he was.

With Sameji, Kev, and Snap, the clan had far surpassed the abilities of Alpha Squad. We no longer limited ourselves to playing mid-tier clans. We played some of the best. I formed the elite squad almost by accident. AX once asked me who was on the roster for a match. The opponent was a formidable clan, so I announced: "Kev, Snap, Sameji, AX"

AX: "Oh my god, we are bringing out the heavies." The elite squad was born.

The rest of us would fill in as backups. The elite squad was perfect. Aggressive players combined with defensive ones. Springtime for Helghan beat some top clans, a feat unimaginable in the clan's early days. But the age-old question arises, when you change out all the parts of a car, at one point does it stop being the same car?

The other twenty-five something members of the clan began to feel frustrated. As our record became more and more impressive, I became more protective of it. They weren't getting playing time. They expressed disappointment about the "elite squad" taking over. Eprim probably deserved to be on the elite team. He really did have a special quality, an intangible, but I just couldn't find a role for him. Several of the players left to form their own clan, a clan where anyone could join, where anyone could play. Eprim considered leaving with them, but decided against it. He was still counting on Luna coming back.

We were the original ragtag clan. When we started, we were wastelanders. Unskilled, but scrappy. Now these guys were the true ragtag wastelanders. Their name even announced it: Horse Thieves Intl. They challenged us, and lost badly. They hardly ever won a match, but while they were famously bad, they were also famously stubborn. They would end up outliving us, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were still around today.

Our second purpose seemed less pronounced now. The elite team didn't have any members from the original four. They came from clans where trash talking was the norm. They followed the principle by keeping silent, but outgoing friendliness that used to be our trademark wasn't there. It was a different clan.

I once looked up Samurai Hustlaz, the clan that had beaten us and left after the fourth round. After all this time, I felt we were ready. A rematch would have been poetic. Eprim, me, and two members of the elite squad. But when I looked up their clan profile, I saw they were inactive. They had not played a match in months. I studied their stats and realized that they paled in comparison to the kind of stats we posted now. They played in a simpler time, when ninety percent of the clans playing hadn't learned the game yet.

All of this made me think the joke was on us. They had gotten out after a few months, and here we were, so intent to rise to the top, when our original ambition had simply been to play as a team. We were Springtime for Helghan. A mid-tier clan, ranked in the top two-hundred, that had managed to beat a few top twenty clans. Yet despite how far from the dregs of a twenty thousand place ranking we had risen from, we still had little respect. The top clans saw us as a scrub clan. We had more respect back when our reputation pertained to our principles, not our record.


(Beginning of the End)


It was September. The population of wastelanders that had dug into Killzone since February were migrating to Uncharted 2 in mass numbers. The clan was shedding members.

Drew suddenly seemed troubled. Part of it was that he was upset about the "elite squad." Despite that, he stayed in the clan because of the principles, and because of his trust in me. But religion came up once during a conversation, and he learned that most of us had nothing to say on the topic. He realized he had misunderstood what the principles were all about. The clan wasn't what he thought it was. Though it had never been discussed, he thought it was a Christian clan.

If you thought Christianity and Killzone were contradictory obsessions, then you wouldn't understand Drew. Drew played Killzone more than anyone in the clan. He was the only one of us who had achieved the Commander in Chief rank. Yet he failed to see any contradiction Killzone might have with his beliefs.

When we played Killzone, it was about teamwork. When Drew played Killzone, he played it to kill. Moreover, he killed righteously. Every imaginary kill he made was a kill for Christianity. He considered himself a Crusader, hacking down heathens in waves. He had thought we were one of him. I suddenly understood his fervent support of the principle. He thought we were a Christian clan bringing the word of God into the wasteland.

"Devil child! Devil child!" he screamed at us. I wondered if he was daring us to mock him. Someone suggested that being good to people should count for something by itself. Someone reminded him that he was accepted among us, despite his beliefs, and asked that he do the same for us.

"Do you really think God cares about Killzone?"he screamed at us. We were dumbfounded. I wanted to ask him the same question.

Drew, previously the most diehard member of the clan, resigned and joined Horse Thieves Intl. Kev and Snap were becoming inactive. We had new members, but there were fewer opportunities for matches. I scheduled a match that I figured would be our last. A four clan 8v8 tournament. Kev, thought I had marred our record. We never had eight people show up for one match. I suggested that the other clan probably wouldn't have eight either.


(The Last Match)


The night of the match, we initially only had two or three players online. The other clan in the first round only had a couple as well. But before the final round started, other players began to show up. We had seven, and at the last minute we had eight. Unbelievably, the other clan had eight as well. Even in the first few months of the game's release, I had never seen a full eight versus eight clan match.

The other clan was called 30somethings. We had played them several times before and had always won. They consisted of players over thirty years old and had similar principles to us. Both clans had always had a good relationship, and it was a fitting final match. We thanked them for the match, and they thanked us as well. It felt like a grand finale, and it was.

Except that Eprim and I continued to play. Eprim and I were members of the original four. Now we were the last gasp.

It is November. All of the other clans are unfamiliar to us now. The infamous top clans had all dispersed.

We played two versus two matches, clan doubles. For a while, we seemed to be unstoppable. Then we played against two players ranked in the top twenty individually. We lost 0-7. After the first few rounds, they started to teabag our bodies. After nearly a year spent mastering the game, the teabag culture had out-survived us. Sportsmanship usually goes unnoticed if you lose.

That was the last clan match. No one plays anymore. My year of working in the States came to an end. I packed up my bags and prepared to move back overseas. I played a few final matches in public rooms, surrounded by strangers. I had returned to the fog.

Before turning off the machine for the last time, I left a final message on the clan bulletin board:

"Here lies Springtime for Helghan. It was fun."





The members of Springtime for Helghan are:
Luna, Eprim, Masala, Tango, Kev, Snap, Utlol, AX, Sameji, mod, Azure, vandido, Makaveli
Final record: 77-10