For a long time I didn’t really get first person shooters. I played some of them if they fell in my lap, like Goldeneye, Dark Forces, and Chex Quest, but it was never a genre that I sought out. I would look at the Unreal Tournament box or the Tribes game boxes in Target and then set it down for Age of Empires II or The Sims. I didn’t touch the big series like Call of Duty. I only played Timesplitters and Star Wars Battlefront because of a girlfriend.
Then, sometime in 2009, I picked up Team Fortress 2. I was in graduate school, recently single, and alone. I started playing a lot on arena servers. The 9 cartoonish characters made it easy for me to conceptualize what a character does: offense, defense, support. I would die early and spectate the rest of the round, learning what crafty things others did. I started to form a solid mindset about multiplayer shooters, one that was not just the roam/spray/pray I’d do in Goldeneye. It became an evening routine.
I realized I was kind of good several months in when, during an arena round, I was jumping around corners as a Heavy and eviscerating folk with the minigun. “God, that guy is a beast,” someone commented in the end of round chat. That felt good. Soon I’d branch out into other characters and game modes (my most common played were Medic and Engineer, but I tried everything).
Then, because servers were community-based, I got to know the hosts of a server and started hanging out with them more. I understood the value of voice chat that wasn’t toxic or about informing someone else what would be done unto their mother. I formed friendships that are still an important group I play with online today.
Since then I have enjoyed several multiplayer FPSes. I tend a bit more toward cartoony over realistic (like Overwatch or Apex Legends), but I’ve also enjoyed PUBG and a few others, and I’m currently doing a lot of BattleBit Remastered. I’ve also at least tried some of the FPSes of yore I missed, like Doom and Tribes. It’s good stuff.
