Slashdot Mirror
Playing With Friends Makes You a Better Gamer
An anonymous reader writes "Computer scientists at the University of Colorado and the Stevens Institute of Technology have shown that gamers that play with friends play better. The study used the blockbuster FPS Halo: Reach as a testbed, and combined ground truth data on friendships from an anonymous survey with data about the multiplayer competitions extracted using the Reach Stats API. They found that the more friends you have on your team, the more assists, the fewer betrayals, the more you score, and the greater the probability your team wins, and that this 'friends for the win' effect goes above and beyond the benefits of playing with skilled strangers. (They also show that older gamers are statistically better than younger players, contrary to popular opinion.) Study lead Prof. Aaron Clauset, writing on his blog, says that friends 'may be able to effectively anticipate or adapt to each others' actions or strategies without an explicit need for verbal (and thus time consuming) communication or coordination,' and 'these effects may be fairly universal, and not merely limited to the traditional domains like sports and war, where practicing together has a long tradition.'"
This just in: teams of people with mutually-known skillsets perform better than teams of people with no mutually-known skillsets. Film at eleven.
I honestly believe that I would have been faster at playing through the co-op modes of these games with a stranger than with one of my best friends. The number of times I dropped him (and him me) into the acid, grinding machine, flames or caught him (accidently!) with a rocket launcher is phenomenal.
We engage in friendly competition to find extremely creative ways of killing the other person that I'd never do to a stranger.
If you got friends or clan buddies on your team, chances are huge you also have them on audio coordinating what you do. That hugely increases your odds and is something most don't do with random strangers.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Anyone who games any amount should not be surprised by the "friends ftw" factor.
However, as for the younger games being better than older debate: my experience is that their reflexes are generally superior (see citations below) and they have a lot of time to practice, but their ability to think strategically can be pretty limited and consequently it is possible to outmaneuver them.
I'm not that old yet at 29, but I'm definitely noticing I'm not as good as I was at 15.
Citations: It looks like late 20s might be the fastest age group due to a superior combination of youth + experience:
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/biology/lesson-plan/63835.html
http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2009/Projects/J1319.pdf
Can anyone find any other sources on this? I used to believe teens had the fastest raw reaction time of any age group, but I'm unable to find any support for this.
Most of the "older" gamers got tired of teenagers shouting abuse at them and generally sucking the fun out of multi-player FPSs. Those that remain often do so for the pleasure of being able to beat the annoying little twerps. Now get off my lawn .......
I've noticed while playing TF2 with some people who don't chat or speak during the game that they just... adapt. They know when you want that uber charge, they know when to sap the sentry, they know where they are needed. Granted this is with people I play with often and not new players, but it's rather neat seeing how they just seem to fit in where they need to without instruction, therefor, a better gamer.
Practice Static Safety - Hack Naked
Because playing with yourself makes you blind.
Something like that. Though actually, i'd say it's not even just KNOWING the skillsets, but being used to doing certain things as a group.
It's something that's been known in the army for example for, oh, maybe a couple thousand years now: a legion of 5000 people acting as a group and already being used to act as a group, beats a horde of 10,000 uncoordinated barbarians any day, even if maybe individually they're better warriors.
Furthermore, that as long as a unit stays cohesive, it has a fighting chance, and when it lost cohesion it's pretty much already defeated. They just may or may not know it yet.
I wouldn't even necessarily write it under "being a better gamer". It's more just about the group. If everyone is used to the rest of the group acting in a certain way, and viceversa, essentially they've formed some group tactics. It doesn't even have to be stated, and in fact it's even better if you don't have to. You just already know that that guy will try to flank, that other guy prefers to keep the distance and snipe, etc, and most importantly you found SOME way to do all that, that SOMEHOW works. And that by itself will beat the same number of uncoordinated players, even if maybe individually they can aim better or react faster or whatever other "good player" criterion one may take.
And it's not just about "knowing" that that guy's skillset includes sniping, or that other guy can sneak around, which might still leave one wondering if they will. It's already being used to what each of those will do, and already being used to dash in a certain situation because you're already used that there's someone counter-sniping for you while you do that.
That said, if army taught me anything, I'd say that limiting their conclusions to "friends" is misleading. Sure, you want bonding between them and all, but ultimately what matters even more than friendship is exactly that being already trained to apply the same group tactics as a group. If I had to go to war and had to choose whether to entrust my life to my best buddy who can't tell a gun's butt from its muzzle, or to that guy I thought to be the biggest douchebag in the company, I'd pick the douchebag any day. Because friendship is grrreat, but already having the reflex to provide cover fire and when to provide it is better.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.