This summer I was asked to play Call of Duty: Warzone with my online friends. I normally play GTA and games with storylines and I avoid first person shooter games, but I was pushed to do this because if I wanted to play with my online friends, I had to play the game they were playing. I started from 0. I did not know how to do anything in the game. Having played GTA helped, but it is definitely not the same game or the same concept. In Warzone, you start by jumping out of a plane and landing somewhere of your choosing with only a pistol. You have to scavenge for weapons and ammo. If someone lands in the same area as you and finds a better weapon before you, they will come and take you out. That is the first thing I had to get used to. The second thing I had to get used to was how fast everyone needed to move and also how sneaky people had to be to survive. The game either moved very fast or very slow. The way that I learned how to play this game is by playing with my friends who were way more experienced than me and they were patient with me. With every mistake I made they told me what I did wrong and what I needed to do to change the outcome of that particular situation. Also, we were in a party chat. We communicated when we heard enemies, we marked them on the map when we saw them, and we said what we needed from each other when we needed them. They type of feedback I received was positive reinforcement. I need positive reinforcement personally because that is just how I am. I like for people to tell me I am doing a good job. When they say “good job, nice kill” etc., I feel validated. For scaffolding, I guess you can call my friends guiding me and telling me where to go, what guns are good, how to pretty much do everything in the game as scaffolding. When I stopped asking questions, they slowly stopped advising me. I started feeling more comfortable with the game as I kept playing it, and when we played we played for hours at a time. They still tell me what to do because that’s how the game works. You tell your teammates what to do so that they have a better chance of winning. Communication is key. I feel like communication is key for everything involving a team. You know you’re doing well if no one is cursing at you or at themselves.
Overall, I learned how to play this game by having consistent scaffolding throughout my whole experience, with them needing to guide me less and less as we played more. My knowledge of the game increased as I was put in more situations. Getting used to the game increased my skill level because I was now able to anticipate enemies, know what guns were good to use, and how to make sure I always had body armor. My abilities are still the same I believe. I don’t have any special abilities besides hiding or “camping” because I’m scared of action, but at the same time I have been trying to go for kills instead of telling my team to go kill the player for me. I am able to listen to footsteps, but I am not skilled in knowing which way someone is coming from like my team. I feel with the scaffolding and communication, I am much better than I was when I started. I started off getting no kills at all in a game and being the one that just healed people when they were shot down. Now I still heal people that are shot down, but I also get kills and I go for kills that are not too risky. Learning from and playing with people with way more experience has helped me become a better player, and that makes me think about other areas where I teach or where I coach. I don’t believe putting a player in with no experience works in all situations. With gaming I think it is a great way, with sports it can go wrong for the players if the experience level is too different, and with teaching I think it would depend because students could feel held back if the experience level of their group is too great. More experienced learners will have a crutch while less experienced learners may have a hard time adjusting to an experience level that is too high for them. In my case it was perfect because I had patient teachers, but not everyone is patient. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.