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I play Rainbow Six Siege every day. I’m absolutely hooked on this game. At first I was just playing it because I wanted to play with my boys and it was something we could all do together, but now I play alone while they’re at school. There’s so much to learn between almost a hundred different operators and tons of unique maps with destructible walls which make them ridiculously mutable. I’d say that map awareness is the most important skill you can have in Rainbow Six Siege and that takes a lot of time to get a handle on. I’ve been playing for months now and I feel like I understand the various bomb sites in each map but I’m just starting to understand the connective tissue between sites and how everything connects. The game having so much to learn is part of the reason I think I’m still hooked. Every game I play I’m still learning and that’s rewarding.
Most nights I play with both my boys, Kara and Jerry. As brothers the boys tend to spend a lot of time at each other’s throats but occasionally the stars align and they work together. They are both excellent players far beyond my skill level (although I occasionally have a good round) and when they team up it’s frightening to watch. You can tell when it’s happening because their voices change in tone and their dialog switches from brotherly joshing to all fucking business. They bark callouts to each other listing where enemies are like “red stairs” or “servers” and together they hunt the enemy team like a pair of fucking wolves. From my position at the bomb site I can see their player outlines moving around the map working from different angles to coral and executing enemies so efficiently it feels almost wrong. They have a connection as brothers and often know exactly what to expect from the other. I love seeing Gabe bully someone with his shield operative and then drop to a crouch as Noah immediately snipes the guy right over Gabe’s head. It’s like watching choreography when they are both working together. The rest of the time though they just call each other names and complain about the others play. Brothers will be brothers I suppose.
Whenever Noah dies his presumption is that the other player was cheating. I don’t have that sort of confidence in my play. When I die I just assume I messed up or the enemy is simply better than me. Noah has the certainty only available to fourteen year olds though and so for him it’s always that the other guy is a hacker. Most of the time my older son Gabe chastises him for this belief and offers other viable explanations but sometimes, sometimes he agrees and that’s when you know it’s probably true. The other night Noah called out a cheater and I thought it was just Noah being Noah but then Gabe said “yeah I’m suspicious too” and now I was curious. After the round I watched as both boys investigated the replay like it was the fucking Zapruder film. They watch a channel called Varsity Gaming which is a guy who often inspects replays of suspected R6 hackers and gives his opinion. They are aware of all sorts of subtle tells that often give away the cheater and watching them analyze this video was eye opening.
We determined this guy was indeed cheating after seeing some suspicious behavior. Watching him move through a map without checking corners, lining up head shots while his target was still obscured behind walls, a high number of kills but little in-game skill or map awareness. It was wild to see and it was hard for me to process why someone would have fun winning this way. These are not real victories by any stretch of the imagination but then I realized winning is not the cheater’s goal. Ruining my game and pissing me off is the real goal of the hacker and I have to admit they also succeeded in this regard as I was still fuming about it a day later. Now that I understand the real goal I’m trying to be better about dismissing these cheaters and moving on to the next game.
Speaking of my kids, my eldest is now on Blue Sky social and told me lots of good stuff about it. He had so many positive things to say about it that I’ve decided to dip my toe in. I deleted my Twitter account a long time ago and have no desire to ever use that service again but I have made a Blue Sky account and I will try posting occasionally over there to test it out. Feel free to follow me if you want to see pictures of the little men I paint or peaks at the art I’m working on.
-Gabe Out