(Head)Set me off...

Another gaming blog.
To make up for this expect my next 5 blog entries to be about Czech animator Jan Svankmajer.

I bought Max Payne 3 a month or so ago, great game, I recommend it...bla bla bla.
Anyway, I was on Multiplayer mode when the expected happened, I saw somebody had a headset on. Fair enough, par for the course, he was obviously talking to friends and team members. He was probably also playing with the controller at a inelegant tilt and a guffawish expression that is the bastard child between innate confusion and sexual thrill. Just like HOW EVERYBODY PLAYS EVER.

There's a high probability that the controller is plugged into nothing .

5 minutes went by and it was clear that he wasn't using his headphone to communicate with other players, he just had it on because HE HAS A HEADSET AND IS AWESOME FUCK YOU EVERYBODY. So every so often I'd just hear a crude electronic garbling of 'FUCKING HELL' and 'GOD DAMN IT', like a  bootlegged recording of a member of Daft Punk stubbing their toe. What's the point of communicating to other players if it's going to be nothing but a tirade of anger and rage on par with something the neighbours would report.
He abruptly stopped later on, I've no idea why but I'll pull something out of a hat to explain why...........
'You will find good earnings in a friend'.
Ok, well those are fortune cookie notes in this hat....I'll work on that later.

When he came back it wasn't just him, it was his entire family joining in. In the background arguing. Having muted conversations between overlapping sentences. I could hear everything that was going on in his immediate area, it was disconcerting and a rather uncomfortable breach of somebody's private life. I felt like a member of the Stasi.
I wasn't getting the shrill, vulgar side of the generic (yet prominent) spectrum. I was getting a candid expose into 25 minutes of this persons family life, and the sheer nonchalant bravado with which he failed to care made me uncomfortable...


Headsets aren't compulsory, this isn't a Seal team infiltration mission or a Mcdonalds drive through, wearing them for a game seems somewhat insecure at times. As if you feel indebted to a headset, because you MUST GET YOUR MONEYS WORTH OUT OF IT OR ELSE IT'S A WASTE AND YOU KNOW IT IS. It'd be nice if people thought before they purchased one, a few integral questions would benefit everybody.
() Am I going to use this for games that need it?
()Am I just going to wear it and shout at/belittle other players?
()Am I going to play music/have it too close to the screen so EVERYBODY else gets an irritating fluctuation of jabbering sound.
()Can I string together a cohesive sentence that doesn't need to be built upon the stonework of profanities, racism, and being a sore loser?

For lack of a better adjective, wearing them myself feels rather...awkward. It's laborious to describe, leave me alone OK?! It's a jarring social experience with regards to communicating, it's what I imagine translating for a hostage is like, or calling a phone sex line.

"Stop using the noob tube you fucking retard"

They're a double edged sword. For me personally, I find them rather awkward and less 'socially expansive' than they'd appear to be, muted silence with the occasional forced responses or orders, that may be just like a real combat experience sure, but like a real combat experience, that doesn't exactly strike me as fun on the bun. But at the end of the day I can always just mute everybody, lest I have a gaming experience on par with when Professor X's powers spaz out and he can hear the everybody's thoughts.

So much racism...