A few days ago I made a post declaring my love for the Battlefield: Bad Company console game (Released later this month) However today things turned very sour as I realised that some of the folks I was playing with online were bad company indeed. Many complaints were made against the Battlefield: Modern Combat and it’s “Teamkillers”
For the uninitiated Teamkillers are members of your own team who purposefully kill or attack your vehicles. From time to time genuine mistakes are made.. like that grenade you shouldn’t have thrown or reversing into someone whilst in command of a tank, it’s a pain but it happens. Teamkillers on the other hand play the game for the sole purpose of killing their own team and will often have dedicated game accounts so as to not affect their online scores. Sometimes Teamkillers can be players who don’t get their own way, who might for example believe they should have the tank or helicopter you are driving. Either way it’s distasteful behaviour and in the worst cases is online bullying: often Teamkillers pick out one or two players for their attention.
Three days after the launch of the Battlefield demo and the Teamkillers have made their presence known. I had three idiots consistently hunting me down today trying to kill me and shooting up every vehicle I got into to… pretty annoying, upsetting as they seem to be picking out only one or two players for their little game.
So what is the solution? well many games allow players to ban or “kick” disruptive players but past experience I’ve had shows that just doesn’t work usually the “kick” has to be put to a team vote and in severe cases the teamkillers can make up a third of your team, also if other players are unaware of the situation or not using a headset it’s hard to even ask them to vote never mind explain your reasoning.
So why do game developers allow it? I only wish I knew, at worst Teamkilling is bullying, and by allowing it to continue developers and publishers are encouraging an environment where bullying is allowed grow.
The only effective solution is to disable friendly fire… don’t give them the opportunity in the first place.
