Playing HvZ today was pretty awesome. Camaraderie by armband, instant team formation, collaboration and working together on little more than acknowledging that if you have a bandana and a nerf gun, you’re on my side (and a headband, you’re not on my side). Patrolling around campus, running escort, working with a bunch of different teams. All of it was an amazing spirit of community in action. The sort of thing that the university sector used to pride itself on creating as just part of the day to day life of a student.
Hell, university recruiters keep trying to sell the Uni on its extra cirricular activity. We run something like HvZ for free, and the ANU Media should be all over it saying how damn awesome it is to see the game bringing students together from all walks of campus.
Unfortunately, tonight, someone on campus called the media (not the police or campus security) to file a false report against the game. Thankfully ANU Security and ANU Media explained about Humans versus Zombies, backed us up, and supported our side of the story. The consequence of that person’s actions has been pretty serious in terms of changing our gameplay – we already had a bunch of rules prohibiting dangerous looking guns, cammo gear was out, and we’ve gone out of our way not to be idiots. Now we’re under tighter rules, and a more stringent set of conditions, and there’s a threat of a post-game review by Chancellery which is probably going to go badly. I want to think that the University will be awesome, and I want to believe that the game will be running in Semester 1 2011, but I just don’t have a good feeling about it.
One big problem is that there’s a whole bunch of people on the campus pissed off that we seem to be having fun, and enjoying being on the university, and being so goddamn young and YOU KIDS GET OFF THE UNIVERSITY LAWN type attitudes to the game. I just have this wretched feeling that these would be the very same people who decry the lack of university spirit, and how students these days are just here to attend class and leave.
The flipside to this has been the incredibly reasoned calm from the moderators, most of the community, and the ANU Security. This is probably what bugs me most – the HvZ team has gone out of their way to work with the University to make the game safe, playable and low impact, and we’ve had this happen.
It’s so frustrating because it’s killed a whole lot of joy out of the game for me tonight after feeling pretty damn awesome about it previously.
I don’t much feel like playing knowing that the whole fate of the game is on a knife edge. Particularly since I only have a black wardrobe, and I’d hate to see the students get their game banned because someone freaked out at the lecturer’s dress sense.
For a brief period, this was a crowning moment of awesome. We were having fun.
Guess that’s just not allowed so much anymore.
