What's In a Username? the Power of Gamer Tags 99
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."
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Just wait until they go up against PussyDestroyer6969
play their game by their rules (Score:2)
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Sometimes I go by the handle "a vehicle". Then when I kill someone, their screen says "you were killed by a vehicle". OMG how funny is that???!?!!!???!!! Sometimes even after the 100th time, I'm still falling off my chair, it's friggin' hilarious. I'm like the funniest dude in Halo with my supreme original sharp humor! OMG how 1337 am I?!?!!!!!
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My friend and I used to go on Christian Halo servers (no swearing allowed, but ultraviolence A-OK!) as "Jesus" and "Judas". He would then TK me for the obviously ban-inducing "Jesus betrayed Judas".
For lulz we would occasionally turn the tables and claim we were spreading the Gospel.
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Re:Well heck (Score:5, Funny)
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I need a handle, man (Score:3)
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Alright. How about the Master of Disaster, huh?
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Probably taken...but DisasterMaster is available...
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I'll be known as ...
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Whenever I see a name like DarkFyre, SoulRe4ver, or some other ridiculously angsty and pretentious name, you can bet it's a 12-15 yr old boy who thinks that name he came up with is the coolest thing ever. Bonus points if he's created a logo with black, red, and flames of any sort. I have fun imagining how embarrassed he'll be of that handle a few years from now.
I mean, admit it. When you were 13 you thought "DarkFyre" was a pretty awesome name too, right?
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When you were 13
1972 - Back then "John Wayne" and "Ringo Star" were cool names. Now get off my lawn you insensitive clod.
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*Starr
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In a few years, he'll change his name to SoulReefer.
I had intimidation factor on my side before (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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I really can't recall. This was back when the original StarCraft first came out. This was in the day where my internet was ISDN or maybe asymmetric 512k cable-modem down and 56k modem up. It was a small size map that had land all around the edges, but the whole center was water, mostly filled with an island that had one fairly short bridge to the outside land at one corner. The island had some crystals, and the outside ring had some at the 2 corners, with the forth corner opposite the bridge being a start p
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I created a UMS version of Blood Bath, where if player 1 (me) would move a worker to the far corner, it would start spawning 3/3 carriers with 8 intercepters in it. It was hilarious to see peoples reactions when a zerg player had 20 carriers a minute into the game.
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my Bro Jesus will have cool things to say to me when we finally meet.
"press alt-QQ for eternal life"
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Gag no...
It's up up, down down, left right, left right, b, a, start
[angels sing and a shaft of blue light appears around me]
See?!
Oh wait... or was it just plugh?
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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.
Is that website legit or some kind of piss take? I can't quite be sure :/
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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.
See, to me it just tells me that you are not that smart and I should treat you as such. Probably not your intention, but that's what it comes over as. Apart from suffering repeated mental... "events", let's call them, you are gullible enough to believe some guy making vague prophecies that were only written down long after they were kinda fulfilled. Apparently the power of your experiences didn't inspire you to learn anything about web design either.
I wonder what the reaction in-game would have been if you
Pure Evil (Score:3)
If you want your gamer tag to have real power, choose well...like this guy did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It may not be good power but it has power.
1337 names == cheaters (Score:2)
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I know they're cheating when they use names like 001l0l1O1l, they don't want to be reported.
And the obligatory comic from: [xkcd.com]
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On the consoles at least you're forced to use a name that hasn't already been used. Over time that means longer names with 1337 characters are a necessity.
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While GMing a game of Pathfinder (basically D&D 3.5 rules just not called "D&D") I told the players their enemy was a ranger named "XxHE4DSH0TZxX." They were not amused.
leet name generator (Score:2)
classic
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
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see also: http://gamenaminator.com/ [gamenaminator.com]
IP Packets (Score:2)
It's all in the name.
Significantly yours,
eyepeepackets
aka Killer, Marspoet, et al.
Ian Banks (Score:5, Funny)
Whenever I see one of those overblown handles that seem designed to intimidate and impress people, my first thought is that the player isn't good enough to do it on his own merits. I prefer names along the lines of how Ian Banks' Culture ships named themselves. To borrow a comment. "Let's see you explain to your admiralty that your fleet was wiped out by the Bureaucracy and the Red Tape, and when you tried to disengage you found yourself trapped by the Complete Lack of Morale and the High Command's Total Incompetency.".
Iain Banks (Score:2)
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Not a fan (well, I didn't like Consider Phlebas much) but it's Iain Banks. Stuff like this bothers me as much as people writing Tolkein.
To be fair, Consider Phlebas isn't the best book in the series. Player of Games was much better, Excession (spelling) was excellent.
But he's not for everyone. I guess having a British sense of humour helps when reading British/Scottish authors (a lot like watching Red Dwarf). I'd be surprised if you didn't have the same issue with Hamilton (Peter F).
But I see the GP's point, a culture-esque name like "So Much for Teamwork", "I Liked 1942 Better" or "Angry, Short Sighted and Armed" would be a lot more
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OK, I'll give Player of Games a try, thanks!
And surprise! I do like Hamilton, although his books are a bit hit or miss IMO. And I don't see anything that makes them similar in any way.
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Rasd-Codurersa Diziet Embless Sma da' Marenhide
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I am a fan, but not all the way through. I find the earlier books much better, as both Surface Detail and Hydrogen Sonata delve deep into Mary Sue territory (with both the human and AI leads). Especially the minds are absolutely omnipotent against anyone else in the universe and the sense of conflict and uncertainty the books actually attempt to build fails to become relevant. While both of the novels have their moments, I feel that they are no longer entertaining.
Also, what pisses me off is that at some po
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I was just triaging some old books and that went on the donate pile on the grounds that I probably won't read it again.
Still, Clear Air Turbulence is a good name for a ship. I wonder if it's named after the Gillan album, the flying annoyance or something else that I totally failed to grok.
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You named your ship what?
"She's one of ours, sir!"
You're flying around on the SS She's one of ours, sir!...
"Yeah, we figure it'll give us a couple rounds of confusion on their bridge."
Players. Never underestimate the amount of sheer crazy brilliance that players will occasionally pull off.
I miss dynamic name changing (Score:2)
I used to play a lot of Day of Defeat, and my name usually mocked another player who sounded pretentious. There was a guy named Army Of Darkness, which I made Army of Dorkness. About that time I found a server I liked (coorsbuds), and started playing a lot there. Long story short, I had several names, all starting with Army of. My final name was
Random (Score:1)
If a game has a function for it, I hit 'random' until something that seems suitable pops up.
Long names? (Score:2)
Speaking about the attraction of simple names, Alter told Red Bull âoeIâ(TM)d imagine that simpler names are more memorable, more recognisable, and easier to repeat mentally when people are thinking of the other players who occupy the same gamescape. Itâ(TM)s hard to think of a time when a simpler name would hurt a gamer or a team, but easy to imagine that gamers with very complex gamertags might get lost in the mass of names.â
In-game and in real life, anyone with a *long name can easily find it shortened by the people around them.
It's not so easy for me to imagine that "very complex gamertags might get lost in the mass of names."
Even someone as not-complex as "Nightmare" would easily get shortened to "Night" or even "N" during team activities.
*more than a syllable
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And it will. Trust me on this :)
A *long* time ago (BBS-time, before the 'net), I went by the name 'Nightwing' (and I still like that song) that came from an old D&D (pen & paper) monster's translation. As soon as "online" became more common and I frequented things like IRC, that very, VERY shortly became "night" on "nw". Therefore I shortened it to "Nite", which seemed to go ok and was very rarely shortened to anything. Once or twice with "N". I use that occasionally even today, but mostly after som
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A few (6-7) years after I chose my nick, all of a sudden another guy started using it around the web. All of a sudden we ended up in a sort of Cold War rush to secure our (my!) nick on various sites and services. I'm thinking I've won, since his activity has dwindled.
That username gets about 14000 hits on Google, and the majority of them are related to me.
I've fought so hard for it, I get a bit annoyed when people abbreviate it =)
Let's see... (Score:2)
... handles of League of Legends players in the LCS (highest-profile US and Europe tournaments):
(Spaces added to evade filter)
Crumbzz
Goldenglue
Imaqtpie (best name ever)
Kiwikid
Cruzer the bruzer
Dyrus
TheOddOne
Reginald
Bjergsen
Wild Turtle
Xpecial
Balls
Meteos
Hai
Sneaky
LemonNation
Nien tonsoh
Dexter
Link
Doublelift
Aphromoo
They don't seem too overbearing to me...
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Popular Culture... (Score:2)
So gamers will be popular either because they are known to be good or simply because they choose the right name and get publicity...
So this is like the difference between Morgan Freeman and Kim Kardashian.
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Thanks for the daily laugh :D :D
That's exactly that :D
It's a fine balance (Score:2)
up and coming gamers will choose their own handles in future, both to intimidate opponents
Most newbies won't have the experience to choose a good name - hell: most parents don't even have that skill. They will also bring all their own fears, preconceptions and biases to the naming party, too. So most of them will choose names that give the impression of a callow youth trying to grossly overcompensate for their (obvious) inadequacies.
Not only are these individuals easy to spot, their choices are more likely to make them targets for scorn and derision rather than convey the impression they are be
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I think there's definitely something about gamertags that impacts the way people respond to you. I remember when playing Gears or War or Halo there seemed to be an unspoken policy of avoiding being on the team of someone with an all-lowercase name, because it at least seemed to often be the case that such a person was a young kid or a newer player. Of course, looks are deceptive. There are many good players who use all-lowercase gamertags. But even if we cognitively know that our assumptions are fault
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better to imitate very closely gamertags of players who *are* intimidating
essentially mimicking nature, where lots of animals, bugs and plants take on the form of nasty, poisonous entities in the hope that looking like a badass will stop them getting eaten.
Gaming imitating life! Nice.
I don't know about good... (Score:1)
Or bad...
But someones username is an easy way to weed out the morons you will want to avoid. Or target.
xxNAMExx or numbers in place of letters. These people are morons. and the more x's or #'s. the greater the moron.
any combination of pwn or own or elite. Or some vauge sexual pun of any sort. these people are children. or have the mentality of a 12 year old.
any obvious 'black' name. little white kid with more money than sense. these make excellent targets to scam. very easy to influence.
for wome
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any combination of pwn or own
So what about "Gordon Brown" then?
Oh, wait, Never mind...
Realsilly . . . (Score:2)
. . . because an adult woman was playing an on-line game several hours a day.
. . . because it invoked a sense of light-heartedness when playing.
. . . because young family members always said I was real silly.
It was a clean screen name, it's what I've used for forever.
Where I come from (Score:1)
The best of the best were the best and the names were nothing. Wargod (Wargoat), xxAngelxx, Sith Bandon (Sithz), Propolis, Painball, Selene, Shin Ra. The names were random at best, but when you fought with or against the best of the best, the skill far exceeded the name.The highlight of my years was beating Painball and two of his mates solo as a completely green pilot too stupid honestly to realise I was taking on the best and then some. Later I flew with him, and he was 10x the pilot I ever was. Good time
Sigh... (Score:2)
Never judge a book by its cover.
A priest named 'Leakage' (Score:1)
Oh well! (Score:2)