Bizarre Habits Gamers Have Picked Up Over The Years
Every gamer is a unique, special individual. But that doesn't mean a lot of them don't pick up strangely similar (and bizarre) habits and quirks over the years. Here are some weird, yet common, habits gamers have developed since picking up a controller and using it to control colorful pixels became a thing:
Rage-quitting
Every gamer gets frustrated every now and then. Maybe Dark Souls is too hard, a Final Fantasy boss is unfairly balanced, or your Call of Duty opponent won't stop shooting your dead body. But there's a huge difference between getting frustrated, and getting so angry you loudly (and sometimes violently) boot yourself off the game in disgust. The latter is rage-quitting, and despite YouTube being filled with examples of people doing it, it's not exactly something to be proud of.
KnowYourMeme describes rage-quitting as "the act of suddenly quitting a game...after either an argument, extreme frustration, or loss of the game." Simply quitting is one thing–it's better to walk away from your fun hobby than have it frustrate you to the point where it's no longer fun. But the rage part is what truly makes this a silly habit. If you're screaming and swearing because somebody made a Super Mario Maker level you can't beat, something's wrong, and you either need to find a new game, or a new hobby.
If, like in this compilation, you're actually screeching at people and destroying your hardware because your monitor won't sit right, or because somebody keeps beating you in multiplayer, something really isn't right. At that point, your rage-quit habit has spun out of control and is actively harming yourself and possibly others. Put down the controller and seek help–sitting down to enjoy a lighthearted romp in League of Legends clearly isn't what you need at this time.
Spawn-camping
If camping (finding a good position, staying there, and shooting anyone who comes by) is annoying, spawn-camping is much, much worse. It might work, but that doesn't make it less of an aggravating, game-breaking habit.
Spawn-camping, as seen in the above Modern Warfare 2 video and this Overwatch one, is when a player camps where other players spawn into the game, and mows them down before they have a chance to breathe properly. It's primarily an online multiplayer phenomenon, since it requires other players' defeats. It's also the cheapest way to "win" a multiplayer game this side of making your cat player two. Unless you're the one doing it, chances are you despise spawn camping. An exchange recapped in this Overwatch thread sums it up perfectly: the spawn-camped player asked the campers why they did that, and the camper responded, "because we can." Players like that are why Jeff Goldblum's "your scientists" quote still resonates to this day.
Perhaps the solution to ending the spawn-camping habit is for the games themselves to bust it. This Escape from Tarkov forum suggests more games make spawn points completely random, changing them each time and with each new player, so campers can't hang out in one area and sentence opponents to death before they're even born. Since most gamers don't have an ESP habit, this idea might just be crazy enough to work.
Hoarding
It's one thing to grab items while you're gaming. After all, only the most hardcore of adventurers can reach their goals without a little extra health and ammo along the way. But some gamers take it way too far and become hoarders. That's when they impulsively grab every item they can, in the unlikely event one of them will become useful eventually. It's like buying lottery tickets: hey, you never know.
Hoarding things like ammunition makes sense, but once you have the game's strongest machine guns and sawed-off shotguns there's no need to pick up thousands of pistol shells as well. But at hoarding's most ridiculous extreme, like in the above Fallout 4 video, you can grab thousands of items and ultimately do very little with them. Will collecting endless aluminum cans, ashtrays, and cleaners help you be a better Wasteland survivor? Almost certainly not — it's hoarding for the sake of hoarding, or for comical dumping.
Hoarding's only practical use is to eventually sell off all that garbage for money. But even then you need a ton of garbage, since most won't net you more than a couple gold pieces. This Epic NPC Man video is a parody, but as any Skyrim player who's spent ten minutes selling off hundreds of bones, chairs, fishes, and garlic bulbs to afford that helmet they've had their eye on can tell you, it's also spot-on.
Hitting buttons extra-hard
Analog sticks aside, it usually doesn't matter how hard you press a controller button. You could tap the button or pound on it, and Mario will still jump the same height, while Master Chief will still shoot bad guys with the same bullet speed as always. And yet so often, gamers will find themselves overcome with excitement, and they'll start slamming their thumbs down on the buttons, even though they absolutely know it won't do anything.
This usually happens during bouts of button-mashing, probably in some part due to the name. On its own, button-mashing is a legitimate strategy for many a fighting game and quick-time event. But even then, all you really need to do is rapidly press the buttons to beat Liu Kang into oblivion, or to help Lara Croft avoid becoming a wolf breakfast. Jackhammering those poor buttons is completely unnecessary, yet players often find themselves almost instinctively pounding. We need to make 100% sure Sonic gets the point that he needs to jump now, apparently.
For those looking to effectively button mash while preserving those poor buttons as long as possible, YouTube has plenty of tutorials that show how to mash methodically and still maintain the speed necessary to beat M. Bison or conquer that annoying QTE or win Mario Party. It's likely, however, that many gamers will continue to hammer away on the buttons, because it's the heat of the moment and they just can't contain their excitement.
Constantly reloading/charging weapons
Obviously, you have to reload your weapon or charge it up. It'd be difficult to take down the enemy without a working weapon, after all. But many gamers have turned the act of reloading into a nervous habit, one where they're constantly maxing out their weapon's ammo, no matter how unnecessary it may be. You might have just loaded up, you have hundreds of rounds left in their gun, there are no enemies around...time to reload! Just in case the next enemy requires 1000 bullets and you only have 999, apparently.
Called "Constant Reload Syndrome" by Escapist Magazine forum members, the act of reloading your gun after virtually every kill (or possibly after every shot) seems to be an incredibly common phenomenon. With some players, like these ones from Tom Clancy's The Division and Garry's Mod, they don't even wait to shoot anything. They just stand there, reloading their gun, almost like a nervous tic. Maybe it helps the player stay focused, like a fidget spinner that can blow away anyone you don't like.
If you do that with weapons you have to load, chances are you also do it with ones you charge. Whether it's Mega Man's Mega Buster, Samus's Beam attack, or Link's Master Sword, if it can be charged, it will be no matter whether the players needs it charged or not. That's because gamers are essentially Boy Scouts: they must always be prepared.