rustic mongoose

Well probably lies, but anyway I wrote this article to try and convince my school that it was as, they shut down our LAN network N.B. Any mention to 'Littlefield' is a reference to the boarding house I stay in at school. Hope you enjoy.

Littlefield Gaming Society: A Cry for Justice

Michaelmas 2005 will be remembered for many different reasons by various people, but most notably to the Marlborough College Gaming world, as the birth of Halo in our school.

Master Chief’s shiny suit first graced the corridors of Littlefield over the exciting new Local Area Network. The game’s popularity spread rapidly throughout the Littlefieldian Remove (now Hundreds) and within weeks the entire house had become engrossed in Bungie’s marvelous creation; soon it was circulating the campus like the formidable b.alcra Trojan Horse Virus. By the Lent term, everyone who owned a laptop had Halo courtesy of our house.

Tragically, as many stalwart FPS gimps will have come to hear, Littlefield, the Eden of LAN Gaming, is now without a functioning network system, not through any technical fault, nor through any abuse thereof, but rather due to the completely false prejudicial allegation that is so often made against any form of electronic entertainment- that it “rots your brains”. I will concede that there are some manifestations of games that are repetitive and mentally unstimulating, but these are of the single player, management simulation variety, such as The Eidos™ Football Manager series. Even as I write this article, many fine shoot ‘em up veterans such as Frederic Puckle-Hobbs, are being claimed by the program’s addictive ‘mind rotting’ features. When LAN games were available, Freddie was able to develop confidence, conversing with other males using the anonymity of a gaming pseudonym as a safety net. Now he has regressed to his previous solitary state and refuses to even converse with his assistant manager in his futile efforts to keep Yeovil Town in League 1.

We in the LGS (Littlefield Gaming Society) believe that through multiplayer games, situations like Freddie’s can be prevented. We also have statistical evidence from various reputable studies that, whilst LANing, students are able to explore the virtues of what we like to call ‘The Three Cos’: Co-operation, Co-ordination and Comradery, terms often linked with various out door expeditions, such as the Shell OA trip and Devises to Westminster Canoe. Halo, and in recent times Unreal Tournament 2004 act as cheaper surrogates for these activities and allow pupils to partake more regularly in development exercises.

Yet how possibly can a computer game provide these opportunities? Simple. Co-operation is a necessity in all team based games. Pupils must communicate and utilise their mental powers to outfox their opponents and deliver the flag, via warthog, into their Blood Gulch base, ever vigilant until the score is secured of snipers and other adversaries.

Those crippled by the plights of rugby, or too feeble/lazy to partake in sporting activities are given a chance on a level playing field to maintain and improve their hand eye co-ordination skillz by pumping a super human’s upper cranium full of lead (or upper thorax if you suck), whilst dodging fire.

Many hierarchical boundaries are torn down and replaced by a vertically integrated house. In this world a large sixth former is no longer superior to a shell boy; in fact his substantial frame will only result in a lack of agility and serve as a larger target.

Alas it appears that despite the admirable services that gaming has provided our house, as well as many youngsters worldwide (and some sad forty year olds), the Littlefield network facility remains out of use and instead pupils are forced to return to games that are no more challenging then Cairo Station on Easy Difficulty.

So hear our plea wherever you may be- Marlborough College Gamers, as we beg you to combat our oppressors, not with our mice, not with our keyboards and most certainly not with our 2.9 GHz dual core processors and Intel graphics cards, but with the unified voice that is The Marlborough College Gaming Society and get Littlefield’s Gaming Network TURNED BACK ON!

Peter Robinson

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AH may be young, but ah can still shoot ah gun

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EnJoi

Awesome. And you did make alot of really good points about the whole "3 co's" Awesome. Hope you get your lan back.

FIF3

That is ridiculus, gaming does not in fact "rot your brain". Many games have actually shown improovement in hand-eye coordination. For instance, Before I was even into gaming, I couldn't type at ALL, no matter how much I typed, I just couldn't get the keystrokes I wanted. And as soon as I got into online gaming, I became better at typing, I didn't notice this until about 3 months after I started to play, but when I did, I couldn't believe it. I ws amazed.

Another example would be my father, he is a carpenter and somewhat of an inventor. My father uses his hands a LOT. Then about 3 years ago, he developed carpotunnel in his hands. Every time he tried to play, his hands would swell up tremendously, almost 2x the normal size. So it became so bad that he was going to get surgery, which was the obvious choice but he had to wait about 2 months on a waiting list. I came to him, and asked him to try and play video games more, to see if it could help at all. Before he could only play for about 30 min, and his hands would hurt, today, he can play for 2 hours and not even the slightest chance of them hurting, and it's all because he played video games for at least 20 mins everyday, and eventually, he played until his hands got use to it, so in the long run, this helped him work longer hours in the day and not have to take 30 min breaks every 30 min.

Anyways, that is complete bullshit when people say, "video games are no good for you", I say, Fuck them, they obviously don't know what they're talking about.

The only way I can think of videos games harming you, is if you had no common sense on reality, I mean, people killing people in a video game, where there are no penalties for doing so. In real life, if you believe you can do the same thing, you are mentally instable. Not the games fault you can't tell the difference between reality and a video game.

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