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After watching or reading my latest Dead Game Review on The Legendary Quake 3 Arena you might have guessed that there could be a little more fuel in the tank… You were right!
Quake 3 Arena and Modalities of Life #
I got back into the series as a whole thanks to playing Quake 3 again after quite a while. I never was that amazing at these games, However; They never ceased to inspire me! The core concept of these games calls back to some pretty important ideas or mindsets you should foster, mainly that everyone can and should improve in what they love doing and that shortcuts sadly do not exist in life…
…Except if you are a hedgefund kid, or let your henchmen saw someones face off if you are one of those cartel types…
…But these rather specific cases aside, the core or the “philosophy” of Quake is one most of everyone could aspire towards. I know Quake is just a game, however it really drives that point home of improvement not only being a good thing, but it rather being a preferred modality of how you live your life.
In the game, improvement is a long and gruelling journey. Getting to a point where you achieve more frags than getting fragged yourself is exceedingly hard and it requires many of your mental resources. You have to understand where you are at on a map, where all the pickups are situated and you even have to feel out the respawn timing of those items in order to maintain or regain your supremacy in the match. The game is as rewarding as it is punishing really, as appreciating all the small victories in your road to improvement, can quickly sour and spin into despising all your inadequacies. It sucks, but for many it is part of the journey, a mere fact of life.
Every time I play this game I really feel a need, or rather a want to improve in it. I want to be able to hit as many rails as possible, circlestrafe through the maps with ease and nail all the respawn timers and item management that the game demands of me, which is where jealousy or those dreaded feelings of inadequacy can rear their ugly heads.
The Road to Improvement and Comparison to Others #
Throughout the years I have dabbled in many different domains. The realm of art, the world of video creation and lately the confusing and multifasceted territory of web hosting and administrating a page! Unlike what some people may suggest, I actually believe that comparing oneself to others is in part a necessary step in realising that you are absolutely ass at a videogame, or that whatever you are doing professionally may actually not be good enough.
While the process of comparison never really is that comfortable, it can be spun into an enrichment for your own personal goals but it may in turn pervert into a cycle of comparison, manifesting feelings of inadequacy and then doomposting on Twitter or random Discord servers about how UNEQUIVOCALLY OVER it is for you. If you do this regularly and happen to read this article, take the following as an empathetic and well meaning plea: Stop doing this! It is silly and self destructive!
What would rather be beneficial to you is slowly changing the mindset away from “This is unattainable” and towards “I want to steal this!”.
Quake 3, Real Life aspirations and the artistic concept of “Stealing” #
Now before you go screenshotting ugly monkey PNGs from cryptobros, hear me out for one second: What I mean by “Stealing” in this specific context is not the same as what you may associate the term with normally. In an artistic sense, “Stealing” is the process of learning and incorporating concepts and techniques into your own workflow. From a drawing perspective, this could mean studying and analyzing art you like and trying to at first replicate and then subsequently integrate that technique into your own process, or for a video guy like me, it could mean intently watching a video and trying to strip down effects and layers piece by piece.
Really, all of this is equivalent to learning a game such as Quake 3 Arena.
I know you think I am reaching, but please hear me out! What is the process of improving in Quake? It really boils down to
- organically playing the game
- learning the fundamentals of movement and combat
- comparing your abilities to the abilities of others
- and learning concepts which the game doesn’t teach you that well - if at all - organically
This is not at all dissimilar to learning a new skill, no matter if it is speaking a language, picking up drawing, video editing, 3D modelling or hosting your own website with limited prior knowledge in my case.
A Convenient Example; Running this Website #
A little less than a week ago, I mentioned to a friend on Discord that I was considering building a new website to which I got a reply; Specifically a suggestion for a framework I could use to achieve my goals.
My friend sent me a link to the gohugo website, a static website generator based on Go. Getting the website up and running involved all of the above mentioned steps to improving in doing anything.
- After following some tutorials and setting up my website directoy, I started dabbling in the files and exploring its contents. Familiarizing myself with Hugo Organically.
- In order to write markdown files and edit html partials or CSS styling, I had to look up documentations and do repeated googling and perusing the blowfish theme documentation in order to find out what I needed to do. I was learning some Fundamentals.
- In order to achieve a certain standard of quality for my page, I looked around for other sample websites, recognizing what I wanted to do and what I didn’t like to implement on my own page. I started comparing my own site to others.
- And finally, I asked for help when documentations or my prior knowledge couldn’t help me; Avoiding exposing my details at domain purchase, getting to know Cloudflare and Vultr and figuring out how to setup nginx and more. I was being taught what I myself couldn’t really have figured out on my own.
So here we are, the website is evidently operational and you are exploring this very article on it. At the end of the day I didn’t become some kind of master at the craft webadmin, I am still very much a novice; Point being that I learned many new things thanks to this experience when I decided just a little while ago that I would be making a new website!
An Analogue to Creative Work and Problem Solving #
Does this equation mean that Quake 3 Arena is some inherently special property in the realm of multiplayer gaming? A game that holds some special rules for success, a magical spell that will improve your life, or even a title that answers the meaning of life?
Not at all, it’s just a videogame.
A rather good videogame. One that just happens to demand more from the players that other games may or may not do. Essentially everything I have written down here could be applied to other high skill ceiling games, such as Dota 2 or Counter Strike. I think I am using this game as an example primarily due to it inspiring me the most to make an effort to learn it, mostly because nothing is just quite as fun as a (virtual) fight to the death!
From being a multi-discipline creative myself I quickly learned over time that cross influence in almost anything you do is a real thing. So why not learn something from certain videogames? Why not ask oneself what lessons a game could teach someone?
Room for growth: Quake 3 as a Platform for Creativity #
Another aspect that is especially cool about Quake 3 specifically, is just how great of a learning tool it really is. Quake 3 is the birthplace of many modifications, tech demonstrations and entertaining highly edited frag-movies!
With the game being open source, you could turn Quake 3 into anything. Some of my favourite examples to point to have to do with audio in some fashion.
Exhibit 1: Raytraced Audio #
You have no idea how jawdropping this demonstration is to me right up to this day! Simulating sounds pretty much as they happen in real life based on raytracing in Quake 3 Arena! This sadly isn’t a mod that you can download and try out for yourself, (at least to my knowledge it isn’t) but it showcases how Quake 3 Arena can be quite the tool for testing out and implementing new technologies. This also rings true to Quake 3’s predecessors… Ummm RTX in Quake 2 anyone? Actually, you can read an ancient article of mine on just that topic right here!
Exhibit 2: Quake 3 as a Musical Experience #
Another AMAZIN’ example of just how beautiful Quake 3 is as a platform! Making use of the games networking capabilities, this modification doesn’t make you shoot anything that walks, but rather encourages you to hold the hand of your fellow man and sing Kumba-Yah… while firing orbs out of guns… I guess you just have to have guns in a Quake mod somehow…
This modification originates from Standord University, and what is even cooler, is that you can download and set it up yourself!
Conclusion #
While Quake 3 Arena is indeed just a game and you shouldn’t take it that seriously; I think it implicitly shares a positive message. Why settle for less when one could be better? Why not accept a challenge from time to time and really see just how much more you could learn and enhance your abilites? Competitive games are all about competency, knowledge and… well… Killing things dead. So unless you wanna become a mercenary only two of these three principles really apply.
With all that being said, wether you have the same take away from Quake 3 as me or not, go and play that game! It is quite fun and maybe you end up accepting a challenge you didn’t know was awaiting you!