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Fraidy Cat Gamer
Allen Cook, over at Gamers With Jobs, talks about the problems of being a 'fraidy cat gamer'. Horror games are awesome, no doubt about it, but it's really hard to actually play through one if your fear takes hold of you. From the article: "I can watch most horror movies without any problem. The trick has nothing to do with my horror movie constitution but simply knowing the formula. At the beginning of any horror movie, I subconsciously pick out which characters are going to die. It's like a stupidity test. You watch the characters being introduced and whenever a character passes below a certain stupidity threshold you know they will end up dead. Probably at the hands of some supernatural force, a mask-wearing psychopath or some otherworldly parasitic infestation. It's a given part of the formula that most of these characters will die. When it happens, I may be surprised by how they die, but it doesn't emotionally scar me. With horror games though, there's no switch I can pull to stop caring about my character. That's me in there in the inexplicably short mini skirt and tall boots, surrounded by flesh eating zombies. Why the hell did I wear that anyway? Is that standard issue zombie hunting gear where I'm from? It doesn't matter, a zombie just tore a chunk out of my skull."
There's not so many games anymore that really draw you in like some of the old ones did. I remember playing Alone In The Dark, and getting really scared at some points. For a game to scare you, it has to really draw you in, so that it's the only thing you are focusing on. I find that I got scared a lot playing Metroid Prime. Not because it had a horror theme or anything, but because the atmosphere of the game really drew you in, and when some enemy jumps in front of you when you are already on edge, you tend to jump a bit.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Realize from the outset that you suck at this game and you're going to die.
Ok, now that you've disposed of his real life problems, how about doing the same for his problems as a gamer?
KFG
"Speaking of campers, what's with people who hide under the stairs in FPS and wait for someone to walk around the corner? Are you afraid of real combat?"
That IS real combat. It's sneaky, it's underhanded, and you never, ever, give your opponent an even break. Unless you think of combat being the way the British fought the revolutionaries, or how the Civil war was fought where people just stand out in the open blatantly shooting each other.
If you can't handle real (simulated) combat then take you noob ass to another game... I suggest something involving Barbie dolls.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
When you willingly put yourself into a game that would not normally scare you, your imagination can eventually take over and make the game a whole lot more enjoyable then it otherwise would have been. :)