Eff Seven

This was published in Felix today, as I edited this week’s issue due to editorial absences. It’s good to be back in the Games section, and I liked this enough to put it up here. In lieu of any real writing of late, I may post up more Felix highlights from past issues over the coming weeks.

Grass grows, sun shines, birds fly, and brother? I hurt people. But not in a childish way, or a loud and brash way. I don’t run around with a stick of aluminium cleaving people’s faces in, and nor do I pump people full of lead. It’s more subtle. In fact, even as the flickknife buries itself in your back, it’s not the one-hit kill that hurts you. That’s not how I work. I humiliate people.

When you go on to play Team Fortress 2 - Valve’s epic first-person shooter that recently enjoyed a free weekend and a bunch of free content - you’re not gambling much. There’s no money on the table, and there’s no fate-of-the-world scenario. Players gamble one of two things when they go online to game, and the most often lost of these is reputation.

Out of all of the playable classes, the Spy stands out as different. There are few gaming characters in multiplayer history who compare to him - hugely underpowered, incapable of dealing damage in most cases, and carrying items that are at best difficult to use, and at worst dependent on luck.

But when the Spy plays well, he stands out among every other player on the server. Spies are the passive-aggressives, they’re the real bullies of TF2 moreso than the Heavy or the Demoman. When you’re disguised as a member of the opposite team, you have a special power over them. And it hurts on both sides of the monitor.

At the start of part of the Dustbowl map, the two teams tend to collect on either side of a corner. On the Red side, several gun emplacements are whirring, and Medics are preparing to heal the big damage-dealers. Heavies are big and stupid, but they dish out the hurt like nothing else if they’ve got a Medic behind them.
I’m on the Blue side, wearing a pinstripe suit and smoking a delicate cigarette. It’s decision time for the Spies, because disguises mean making a commitment. If someone sees you disguised at the start of a round, then people know you’re there, and everyone gets edgy. Edginess means death.

Most people choose the average classes, the ones that blend in. Demoman is a popular disguise, sometimes a Medic to lure people towards you. But good spies take the occasional risk too, and so today I’m slinging on a fat suit and disguising myself as one of the most obvious classes in the game - a Heavy. I tap the cloaking button and dash around the corner just as the last of my team die and go back to await respawning.
I dash up some steps, taking care to avoid others whilst I’m invisible, and leap into an alcove to wait for the right moment. The Reds are pushing around the corner, according to the stream of death messages flashing up, but it seems they’re being pushed back. As the cloaking fades off, a Red Medic comes running back from the fighting. I’m sure he’s seen me materialise out of nowhere. There’s a horrible moment where I see him switch weapon and consider running.

Only it turns out that he’s switching to his healing gun. He turns it on. Interesting things start to happen.
A friend of mine says that he won’t ever play the Spy on moral grounds. I don’t know to what extent he’s joking, and I suspect it’s more to do with the fact that the Spy can be a little boring at times. When you’re playing a Soldier - a more simple, damaging class that Halo fans might be familiar with - the game bobs along at a reasonable rate. You don’t get any of the dizzying highs, really, but on the other hand you’re always scoring, there’s no dull period where you die repeatedly and have your plans dashed.

Because, other than reputation, the other thing we sacrifice by playing online is time. Team Fortress 2 helpfully reminds you of just how much time you’ve poured into it, and my top two classes alone score over a day’s worth of play. That’s not much, however, in comparison to others who have spent something approaching a week with a single character type.

So time is important. Time’s important for Spies, because disguise and subtlety takes planning and patience. It’s also important for Medics. By healing, a Medic can build up a special power that allows him to make a player invulnerable for a short time period. The standard tactic is to walk the player into the midst of the action, tearing apart player after player, before retreating to safety. That’s why, as the medic begins healing me and I see that he’s fully charged, I know that this is going to be a very awful sixty seconds for him.
I shout ‘Medic!’ once, for good measure, and then charge towards the front lines. To him, I look like a lumbering lump of muscle and gun - a brick shithouse that fires other, smaller brick shithouses. But really, I’m a European chain-smoker with a knife fetish.

As we near the corner, I shout at him again and there’s a reassuring ‘whoosh’ as he activates the charge and I glow a fierce red. I walk around the corner, and there is the rest of my team, all ready and respawned. To them, I appear as I really am. Small, weak, and tricksy. A chorus of laughs goes out over the voice communication as they realise what I’ve done.

I walk further into them, and the Medic follows me to make sure he keeps the charge running. It’s probably half full now, and I haven’t fired a shot, something that will be making him suspicious. But, trooper that he is, he stays with it. A quarter left. A tenth. And the ubercharge is done.

Immediately, three heavies open up on the Medic, and he goes sprawling through the air into a bloody pile. He doesn’t know what happened to me. He doesn’t even know I was a Spy. In fact, as far as he’s aware, his team is full of appalling players who get him killed and waste his time.

I run back to base and readjust my tie, my team still chuckling over the ingame chat. ‘Do it again!’ one of them cries.

But what they don’t know is that, behind the cardboard cut-out mask, the balaclava is wet with tears. That Medic just wanted to help people. He just wanted to play the game, and have a good time.

What have I done?

* You Will Respawn As Medic