What's In a Username? the Power of Gamer Tags

An anonymous reader writes "Are pro gamers good because they're good, or just because their usernames make you think they are? New scientific research suggests it may actually be a little bit of both. What's most interesting about this isn't what it says about current players, but how up and coming gamers will choose their own handles in future, both to intimidate opponents — and pull in the audiences that help subsidize their budding careers."

Comments

I had intimidation factor on my side before

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Back when I was first to 1500 wins in Warcraft3 and #1 in 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, and 99% win rate in 3v3, I would have people be awed at me when they come into the game. They would just be happy to play against a big name in the game and express it like a kid who meets his favorite sports player or a famous person. They'd say things like,"Man, you're going to win, but its nice to even get a chance to play you." So my name had intimidation factor to it, but I earned that intimidation factor by first being actually good and having a great record. If you play Starcraft2 and you spend more than a few seconds making your screen name, you're doing it wrong :P

That said, I like this screen name more than my ol' gamer tag. If people go visit my website, they can be well on their way to eternal life, and my Bro Jesus will have cool things to say to me when we finally meet.

Re:I had intimidation factor on my side before

[Giant Electronic Bra]

I had the most fun with StarCraft back when it FIRST came online. I crafted a small map with an island in the center and a ring of land around it, and one bridge onto the island. One guy started at the outside, opposite from the bridge, and the other started on the island. The funny thing was you could equally well win with any race from either starting position, but you had to know EXACTLY what to do right off, even the most minuscule deviation from the optimum (and not 100% obvious) build pattern would spell certain doom. It was incredibly fun to pick off the really highly rated players. 95% of them would figure it out after the first inevitable loss, but of course I would always blithely agree to reverse positions and beat them again with the equally tricky strategy for the other starting position. It took a LOT of tweaking to get that map perfect, but I think I must have been around 90:1 win:loss ratio on it. Not that this means I was really THAT good, not at all, lol. I bet that map is still floating around somewhere.