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| photo of a random 2000s era US cybercafe |
After School
Sometimes on Fridays after school, a bunch of us would meet up to play video games.
We went to a cybercafé called CyberLab, which sounds like the generic yet clearly evil corporation in an 80s action movie. But no fancy cyber word reflected the reality of this place: a dingy room filled with surplus office furniture and overheating computers. It was probably more than a little smelly. Yet it was ours.
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| photo of a random strip mall |
Our parents were immediately suspicious. Why were we handing over our lunch money to sit in a small dark smelly storefront in the old strip mall behind the gas station? Was it sex or drugs or both? But after a brief onsite inspection, they were satisfied with how pathetic it all looked and left us alone there. It was cheaper for them too; this way they didn't have to buy expensive gaming computers or fast internet. For just a few bucks an hour? What a bargain.
Like many teenagers, we mostly just needed somewhere to hangout away from our families. And at the time, teens were hanging out in a multiplayer shooter called Counter-Strike. The military realism was pedantic enough to attract the gun nerds, and the constant sudden death gameplay was fresh enough to hook the normies.
Neither of those reasons explained why I played it. I didn't really care about the guns nor the competition. Instead I was a little weirdo trying to hide how gay I was from the other boys. I was there for the fantasy.
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| screenshot of the original cs_assault in Counter-Strike v1.6, in an anachronistic 16:9 aspect ratio |
My favorite map in Counter-Strike was cs_assault, a totally unbalanced setup where a SWAT team besieges a big warehouse full of freedom fighters who've taken hostages.
As a young rising avtoritet of the Phoenix Connexion trusted by all my men, it was my solemn duty to begin each round by executing all the hostages, thereby shocking the other team and buying some extra time for me to hide in the corner and prepare a tactical ambush. When the cops inevitably breached the doors (probably because I was hiding in the corner and not covering the doors) that's when I would sneak behind them, drop a smoke grenade, and "spray n' pray" all over their backs with my trusty little MP5.
Unfortunately no amount of brilliant psychological warfare metagaming could compensate for my terrible aim. My ingenious strategies rarely worked. But when I did occasionally score a lucky headshot, I would listen for a delicious sound from the other row of computers across the room -- an annoyed groan of disbelief. If I was extra lucky, there'd even be a knowing moment of shared eye contact. It was very homoerotic.
I was playing virtual cops and robbers. I was also playing as a straight boy in that room together with other straight boys. Together we crossed the no mans land of our petty arguments and school cliques, declared a truce, and then shot each other in the face. Sociologists call this "homosociality." It's when dudes feel gay for each other but are too scared to do stuff.
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| screenshot of fy_iceworld, from my article "The legacy of fy_iceworld" for Rock Paper Shotgun |
The biggest danger to my fragile sense of masculinity was a painful little map called fy_iceworld, a claustrophobic snowblind box with nowhere to hide, nowhere to set a masterful ambush, no space for fantasy. No spray nor pray was possible in this sexless godless little freezer. And besides, why would the Phoenix Connexion deploy in the arctic? As avtoritet, I had to protest. This was not our way.
What if I could fix this, what if I could make a special map just for our LAN clan? I would make a map better than fy_iceworld, filled with weird corners and ambushes and stories for me, as well as constant action for the other boys in the room. They would laugh and cry and remember my gift, earning me their approval and masculinity forever.
To forge a more enduring love, I decided all the inside jokes and shared references had to remind them of our bond in the real world -- that is, our school.
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| screenshot of cs_ppc, a "school map" that lovingly recreates a German school |
Now in 2002, there were two kinds of maps you didn't put in first person shooter games. First: no September 11th themed maps, obviously. Second: no school maps.
Since the first modern school shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, countless parents have feared their teen outcast fail-sons rehearsing fully automatic revenge in a creepy digital recreation of their school. Contrary to the rumors, there's no evidence the Columbine shooters ever made their school in Doom. Online archives show that the furthest they got was throwing together a few random boxy rooms, a pretty mediocre amateur attempt.
I proved to be a mediocre amateur as well, and my school map also never materialized. Turns out our school resembled a few big blocks with long straight alleys and nothing in-between, much like fy_iceworld or perhaps a maximum security prison. No fantasy of shared boyhood was possible in the real world school nor the virtual one. I would've been creating a world I hated.
I also discovered that making a school map was actually a lot of work, probably more than public education ever prepared me for. To measure every wall, count every window, remember every detail, you have to study your school to a degree that suspiciously resembles love. Imagine spending weeks (outside of school!) crafting this obsessive 3D love poem to this place that no one particularly cares about.
And then when you're done, what, you really thought you and all the other boys were gonna sit in a small dark smelly room and hangout in this virtual play school? On a Friday afternoon?
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Eventually everyone got bored of CyberLab and stopped going. The gun nerds preferred the hands-on feel of realistic-looking airsoft guns, and the normies moved on to the drama of kitchen table poker games. Yet I wasn't quite masculine enough to shoot at people in real-life, nor was I butch enough to stare down boys over cards, so instead I just sat alone at home and watched anime.
CyberLab permanently closed down soon after. Sometimes I still hangout there though.
I measure every wall, count every window, and remember every detail of this awkward copy of the real world -- where being one of the boys was easier when we had screens between us.
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| screenshot of heavily fragmented 3D scan "TU CG lab" by pongsason, under CC-BY license |
