Since the good ol’ days of Team Fortress Classic my favorite kinds of online gaming are objective-based. Whether it’s capturing a flag or a base, I find it more satisfying to win as a team than having a deadly 8-year-old on my side. The skirmish mode on Halo 2, as you might expect, once consumed most of my Xbox Live time. Lately, though, it’s not as fun.

The cause: Masterbunjee.

Of course, blaming him/her for the problem is like attributing global warming to the Hummer. But that gas-guzzler isn’t helping, is it? The real problem is quitters: People who are teamed up with you on a match but quit during the game when the team is loosing. Since the launch of the game this problem has only gotten progressively worse. And of all the game modes, I believe skirmish has suffered the most.

When I decided to write this I realized I needed a picture to go with the piece. So I went to my Xbox with a camera to see if I could take a snap of a player list with quitters on it. That didn’t prove difficult. We had quitters on all three games.

The problem is obvious and it is clearly hurting Halo 2. What can be done? Not much at this point, but maybe Halo 3 can be spared the same fate before it goes gold.

Here’s my solution for Bungie: Separate those players that have a dropped connection from those that quit by manually leaving the game or by disconnecting their Xbox. Assign a worse category to the ones that quit when their team is full and be more forgiving to the ones that quit when one or more team members are missing. Then tag the bastards after enough offenses.

What can be done to them once tagged? Reprimand them? Ban them? No. Just match them together.

When tagged quitters go into matchmaking, just assign them to games with other quitters. The same principle can be applied to others, like teammate killers or superjumpers (I know it’s technically legal, but come on).

I wouldn’t be surprised if Bungie is already working on something like this, but in case they aren’t I hope this helps. One less group of assholes to deal with on Xbox Live should be an improvement.

Now, does anybody have any ideas on how to hunt down racist 12-year-olds?

UPDATE (8.4.07)

Here’s an interesting counterpoint from FuckBungie.Net.

It took me months to reach 690 page views on sheer, brutal honesty. After changing my profile 10 days ago into a glittery and animated mess I have now reached 850: An increase of 23% in just 10 days. I’ve had 6 friend requests, and accepted 4. Apparently I reeled them in with fake muscles and snatched them with a messy profile.

What did I learn? Fuck if I know. Maybe women are like cats. They like to be distracted by something shiny and jangly. Perhaps I can make a clean yet animated profile I can be happy with. Hmmm…

I had the wrong idea about MySpace. I believed that if you only wrote about yourself in a clear and open manner you’d have interesting people flock to your online presence. It seems that in actuality your attractiveness in MySpace is correlated to the amount of gif animations in your profile.

I realized this today when a friend told me to check-out a video she put up on her profile page. It took a while to load because of the… ehem… complexity of her design choices. When I commented this observation she replied that that’s how she has quadrupled my page views in a quarter of the time. I thought she may be on to something. Maybe that’s how she gets all this attention. Well that and she has boobs and it says “single” on her profile.

But can a boob-less guy like myself get more attention on MySpace? To answer that question I have completely redesigned my page. It’s decorated with Fight Club crap to give it some masculinity, but it’s sprinkled with 8 years worth of internet memes to portray a progressive sense of humor. Also, it has the one characteristic most popular MySpace profiles have: It’s unreadable. Actually, any attempt to read it could induce a seizure.

Finally: A picture of a shirtless, muscular torso that is definitely not me. I mean, what’s the internet for other than portraying yourself as something you’re not?

Right now I have 690 page views. We’ll see how this goes.

A growing number of Evangelical Christians believe there is a revival underway in America that requires Christian youth to assume leadership roles in advocating the causes of their religious movement.

JESUS CAMP, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, directors of the critically acclaimed The Boys of Baraka, follows Levi, Rachael, and Tory to Pastor Becky Fischer’s “Kids on Fire” summer camp in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, where kids as young as 6 years-old are taught to become dedicated Christian soldiers in “God’s army.” The film follows these children at camp as they hone their “prophetic gifts” and are schooled in how to “take back America for Christ.” The film is a first-ever look into an intense training ground that recruits born-again Christian children to become an active part of America’s political future. [Trailer]

Nothing pisses me off more than a good documentary. That’s because they’re so good at presenting people that they can get a reaction out of me. I say “piss” because a lot of the documentaries I see are about selfish people doing bad things (Fahrenheit 9/11, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room).

Now here is Jesus Camp: A documentary about some of the things that tick me off more than anything else.
1. Indoctrinating children.
2. Imposing religious believes on others.
3. Using political power for the previous two.

Why is it so hard to understand that no matter what you believe in, you are a minority to the rest of the World?

Allow me to rant a bit.

A few months ago I got a Playstation 2 after been submitted to the inescapable joy that is Guitar Hero. Now, it’s kinda stupid to have a console just for one game, especially when I’ve never played a PS2 title. A lot of them are really cheap now. So, while at GameStop, Last Dojo suggested a brand-new game called Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. It’s the latest thing.

I’m familiar with the Metal Gear franchise and its creator Hideo Kojima. But I’ve always considered myself a Splinter Cell guy. In a way, both games are opposites within the stealth genre. Splinter Cell encourages you to go though the level without being seen, although you can take out everyone in many, many ways. Metal Gear Solid, on the other hand, requires you to interact with the environment so that you can hide in brightly lit spaces. I mean, you have to: It’s way too hard to fight back. Now I understand why their fanbase is so divided.

After three Splinter Cell games it’s hard to get into Metal Gear (I’m sure that also happens the other way around). But once you get used to the rules and controls, the gameplay can be extremely fun. That is, when it lets you play. And that doesn’t happen much, because there are more cutscenes than there is a game.

Now the rant: Why the fuck hasn’t anyone told Kojima what a video game is? It’s a GAME that may or may not have a story thrown in for the sake of entertainment. If I wanted to see a friggin’ movie, I’d see a friggin’ movie. Not only do I have to put up with the seemingly endless cutscenes so that I can know what to do during the mission, but they’re also pretty bad. Sure the action and the shots are cool (and the Snake Plissken reference is awesome), but the voice acting and dialog are almost unforgivable.

Still, I paid good money for it ($6), so I’ll be damned if I stop playing it. Might as well use walkthroughs to know the objectives. I just want to skip those cutscenes like they were Wayan Brothers movies.