Humiliation in airsoft

This post was pub­lished over 700 days ago and there­fore may not rep­res­ent cur­rent Out­side Con­text think­ing or opin­ion. Please, do not let that detract from your enjoy­ment of it!

From this (“Air­soft knife kills?, yes or no?”) discussion,

The word humi­li­ate makes me wonder…

One the sub­ject of humi­li­ation, it is an unfor­tu­nate side effect of air­soft that someone is going to get hit and someone isn’t. There are two types of humi­li­ation and two dif­fer­ent reactions:

1. Caught unawares. E.G. Shot in the back of the head, from a hid­ing place etc.
2. Dom­in­ated. Dom­in­a­tion in air­soft is when one team is so eat­ing the smack down on another that the second team is unable to mount a defense anymore.

As a mar­shal I spend a large amount of my time keep­ing the game bal­anced to avoid people being humi­li­ated by dom­in­a­tion. Often by giv­ing advice, mak­ing cer­tain people swap sides, per­haps shoot­ing a few people myself, or even call­ing a halt and reset­ting the floor/game.

It is the oppos­ite of when as a player I try to “break” the oppon­ents men­tally all the time. I want them so afraid that they won’t come out of their res­pawn. I want them frozen in fear in their defens­ive pos­i­tions. I want to flank them and crush them utterly. I want my lack of fear of the pain of being laced to be my advant­age. I want to work harder than they and res­pawn quicker to flood a room with more men fir­ing faster…

… etc. This is the Darkan­gel way and our “aggres­sion” has won us many battles.

The prob­lem is the reac­tions once the fight has gone to total domination,

1. They get upset and humi­li­ated. Take time out. Sit down, shake, cry, etc. They are in effect shell shocked. This is not good for them. Not good for the flow of the site or the game.
2. They get angry. Start shout­ing that people aren’t play­ing fair. That they are not tak­ing their hits. They start to cheat, often blatantly. Even­tu­ally these people leave the game in a huff. It is not fair that they have been humi­li­ated, etc as they are special.

In situ­ations where people are get­ting this “stressed” then rub­ber knives have no place and should be with­drawn for the night.

In games and on nights where the play is equal (ish) then rub­ber knives can be a safe fun addi­tion to the mix.

It is for mar­shals to know how to make the game bal­anced enough for every­one to have a good time and not to go back to the safezone in tears.

Basho

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