Thursday AFK: Look for the High Ground

Video games continue to teach me so many valuable lessons, and while learning such memes as, “Do not pick a fight with a guy who has a flame thrower,” have doubtlessly ensured my continued existence on earth, sometimes things I learn in the real world help me in game. This is why I’m introducing Thursday AFK, a.k.a., Things I Learned in Real Life That Helped In-Game.

So here we go. And let me know how you feel about this series.

When I was a kid, I lived in the L.A. suburbs during the 1992 riots. It was scary. No food in the grocery stores, riot drills at school during which we dropped to the ground if we heard a car backfiring, and the looming possibility that our parents might not come home from work made a lot of the kids I went to school with–and me–grow up fast. One day we were playing Chinese jump rope, oblivious to the cauldron of racial tension that we lived in, the next we were eyeing every low rider with suspiscion.

We started playing farther and farther away from the peripheries of the playground. First we gave up kickball because the fields we used were right by the school fence. Then we gave up on basketball, which was just a little further in. Everyday that it became more scary, we gave up more–handball, four square, dodgeball–until we were clustered into tight groups in the shadow of our auditorium or by the swings near the insular kindergarten enclosure.

I think it would have become much worse if one guy I knew hadn’t figured out that from the top of the jungle gym, in the middle of the school’s grounds, far from the fences and the gates, he could watch the streets without being seen.

Could a ten-year-old have known that such a tactic would work so well in video games? I doubt it. We were all rocking Mortal Kombat at the time. Regardless, though, I knew from a young age to look for a height advantage because there would either be someone there relaying information to the opposing group or it would be a place for your group to gather information.

It might seem silly, but I’m rarely blindsided by a flanking attack in PvP these days.