Enough With The Noob

One of the many reasons why I choose not to do online multiplayer games anymore is because of the way the community can respond to certain types of players, especially if they are inexperienced.

It’s been widely accepted as an ongoing joke to anyone who is new to the game and is say, still learning the gameplay, as a way of shunning them. I have never liked this term and it is called “noob” or “n00b”.

Why do I hate it? It’s simple really. It feels like a big middle finger to new players of any game. Let’s just say you’re playing Halo and you’re not very good at it, you might run into other players who start to call you a noob and say other things like you need to “git gud” or whatever.

So in other words, you’re stuck with only one option to learn the game yourself no matter how long it takes or give up and don’t play the multiplayer mode anymore, stick to story mode where you don’t have to deal with idiots trying to bring you down. It’s just you against the enemy.

I don’t like this approach one bit. If I was an avid MP type of gamer who had a lot of skill and then I ran into some inexperienced players struggling in a match, I would offer to help them instead of straight out calling them noobs just because they can’t play as well because they’re new to the game.

Nothing is worse than joining a match or a forum and as soon as people realize they’ve never seen you before or that you don’t know how to play yet, they pelt you with messages calling you a noob.

Of course, that’s not the only reason why I don’t play MMOs and other multiplayer games, but this one has always been one of my pet peeves, I think it divides communities a lot. Most people seem to think it’s just a joke used to refer to any new players.

It sounds a lot like one of the very first episodes of the show Recess when Gus Griswald was the new kid at the school and King Bob declares him to be ostracized by the other kids on the playground as the new kid and nothing else. Gus eventually grows tired of this treatment stands up to Bob.

So how does someone get out of the “noob” status other than the possible reasons I mentioned earlier? Hell if I know, but this seems no different than Gus’s new kid status granted to him against his wishes.

So noob has become a popular piece of slang in gaming culture through memes and multiplayer games as a means of self-deprecation. Why can’t we all just get along? Stop calling that person a noob just because they’re camping, maybe they’re not ready to go out into the fray only to die repeatedly. Maybe they’re camping because they don’t feel confident enough in their skills and this could be the best way to learn how to play the game for them!

If we want to welcome new players into any game, then we should be giving them encouragement, not tearing them down, but that’s just me.

Thanks for listening.

👽Emily