They hide in the shadows, in the corners. They're waiting with a high power weapon out, waiting for you. The plan is to gun you down before you have a chance to react. I'm talking about the most hated player in a game, next to a cheater: the camper.

Campers play multiplayer games, typically shooters, by staying in one spot and waiting for enemies to come to them. Ideally, campers want to find a place where nobody can come up behind them, or in locations that are well-fortified. These things make killing opponents easier.

Today I watched the video above by YouTube user 402THUNDER402, showcasing the handiwork of a vicious Call of Duty: Black Ops II camper. I've never seen anything like it.

Personally, I find it difficult to watch this guy's elaborate set up and not be downright amazed that he can pull it off. He sets up all sorts of turrets, claymores and a shield up in a small room that nobody can go through. He dies once in the entire match, despite other player's constant attempts to try to gun him down.

If I was playing, I'd see it differently I'm sure. I'd rationally be able to tell that he has a good set up that stops me from being able to kill him, but the admiration wouldn't come until after the rage subsided.

Even so, I wouldn't be mad at the player. I don't blame anyone for using what is in their power to win, within reason (i.e., something like cheating wouldn't be okay—though admittedly, there is a glitch at work in the video above.)

We play games to win, right? Winning is the entire point. I may not use the same tactics as a camper, but I aim for the same thing. As long as that's true, and as long as the player follows the rules of the game, then I don't feel I'm justified in getting angry at how they're playing.

And it's not that player's fault that a developer created levels that lend themselves to camping, or that players refuse to stop going through the area after they know that a camper is there, or that the game is not balanced to stop heavy camping from happening. Sometimes, camping happens even because players just aren't good enough to stop it.

The issue, arguably, is sportsmanship. Is it in the spirit of the game to stay in one place waiting for other players? Some would say no. Personally, I think that's hogwash and camping is an acceptable thing to do—I just wouldn't find it interesting myself. I'm more of a run and gun type player. That type of playstyle keeps things interesting for me, but it's a self-imposed rule.

Thankfully games have gotten better over the years about map layout and, overall, I've experienced fewer campers than I have before. It's not completely unavoidable though. Name a game, we can probably find a spot on the map where people like to camp.

Halo 4's Abandon map, for instance, has a cylindrical structure in the center that people like to hang out in. There are multiple ways to get into the building, but with a good team-setup, it's sometimes difficult to penetrate.

Every game will have places like that—high traffic areas that are easy to defend. These tend to be small, claustrophobic spaces, lifts and elevators, power weapon locations, or objectives. If it's a capture-the-point/flag type deal, camping is a necessary tactic to win.

Camping is unavoidable, basically, though the degree to which it happens varies depending on map layout and game balance. So not only have I gotten used to it, I'm of that whole 'don't hate the player, hate the game' mentality. It keeps things in perspective.

The emblems in Call of Duty get such a bad rap. People would have you think it's a wasteland of genitalia, particularly penis swastikas. Sure, sure. Those types of emblems happen sometimes. Most of what I've come across aren't penis swastikas though. Actually, folks are using the 32 layer capacity of the emblem editor in Black Ops II to make some great things. Take a look in the gallery above.

Some even come with tutorials, as is the case with the superb Batman above, by YouTube user TheTizzlenut.

And, naturally, if you have an emblem to show off, share in the comments. Non-penis ones, I mean. (But who am I kidding, really?)

Triforce emblem by Giant Bomb user Golguin.

Finn and Jake from Adventure Time, by COD 24/7 user joal0503.

Eric Cartman by YouTube user dpjsc08.

Nyancat Pikachu by YouTube user Sherbertmelon.

Fennekin from the upcoming Pokemon game, by YouTube user DreadlockGamer.

Wreck-It Ralph, by Tumblr user dstens.

Amaterasu from Okami, from Tumblr user bribriblitz.

Leonidas by YouTube user babifoot.

Spongebob Squarepants emblem by YouTube user TheMadReview.

Super Meat Boy by Giant Bomb user Drace.

Persona 3's protagonist by Giant Bomb user billycmehling.

Iron Man/Angry Bird hybrid by CoDEmblemTutorials.

Arthur, via the emblops Tumblr. I'm amused by their quip: "yeah, fuck that. if i see this, i'm out. hands up. log off. i'm out. you don't fuck with someone who has the friendliest emblem on earth. you just don't."

Am I the only one that's a tad bewildered by the idea? Apparently, Gearbox—the developers behind Borderlands 2—had the opportunity to make a Call of Duty game according to a translated Krawall interview. Nothing official, but they were in a position to consider it. Obviously, they didn't go for it. Here's why, according to IGN.

"I just didn't see what there was left to accomplish. For me, there are two scenarios for which a Gearbox project makes sense," explained Randy Pitchford, President at Gearbox, "First, when the game just wouldn't have existed without us. Or second, when we could offer something new for an existing brand, a unique perspective or a new start."

Perhaps more remarkable is the idea that they didn't do it because Call of Duty wouldn't have been a challenge for Gearbox. Making a Call of Duty game would have meant giving people what they want out of the franchise, which would have also meant following expectations. More of the same, if you will.

I'm curious as to why that 'we shouldn't just follow expectations' philosophy didn't carry over to Borderlands 2, but hey. We're talking about what-could-have-been here.

Gearbox Could Have Developed a Call of Duty Game [Krawall, via IGN]

For years now, there have been rumors and reports of a now-cancelled Half-Life 2 episode called Half-Life 2: Return to Ravenholm. The project, an overview of which can be found at the Combine Overwiki, was to be a collaboration between Valve and Dishonored-makers Arkane, and would, presumably, take players back to the creepy, zombie-infested village of Ravenholm. The existence and cancellation of Return to Ravenholm was confirmed by Valve's Marc Laidlaw in January of last year.

The folks at ValveTime have posted what they claim to be some new unearthed prototype screenshots from the long-cancelled project. They've compiled them into the video above, as well. For clarity's sake: These screens are old, and no one has any reason to think the project has been un-cancelled or anything like that.

Seeing as how the images come from an unconfirmed (by us) source and the game apparently never got very far into development, I'd suggest taking them with a grain of salt. I've reached out to both Arkane and Valve to ask about their authenticity, and will update if I hear back. Still... absorption? Interesting.

It wouldn't be an article about Half-Life unless I closed with some sort of Half-Life 3 joke, so… no, you know what? This one time I'm not gonna do it.

New Images of Half-life 2: Episode 4 / Return to Ravenholm [ValveTime, thanks Glenn]

Mark your calendars: on January 29th, the 'Revolution' map pack for Black Ops II drops. And it packs a ton of content according to this trailer: not only does it have a number of new maps, but it also features a new game mode that lets you play as the zombies in a mode appropriately called 'Turned.' About time, eh? It also includes the first DLC gun in Call of Duty history ('Peacekeeper,' it's called), if that's your sort of thing. But really, guys: you can play as the zombies!

I'm curious if the lack of corners on that skatepark really makes that much of a difference. Wouldn't think so, but I haven't played it, so who knows. Either way, the devs are promising maps that play with verticalility and maps that allow you to play with the environment a bit, so the DLC looks interesting.

Revolution DLC Map Pack Preview - Official Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Video [CALLOFDUTY]

Maybe the retro graphics on this will help with not having your blood pressure rise while watching typical frustrating moments from playing Call of Duty's multiplayer. This amusing YouTube video comes from user rabbodirect65, who knows the pain of a Call of Duty player well, it seems.

I hate it when I can't seem to pick up any of the tags of folks that I killed like in the video, grr. Makes me think, too: I'd totes play a Call of Duty that looks like this.

Retro Ops II: Black Ops II Rage Montage [rabbodirect65]

I hate feeling like a cog in the machine—like my actions don't matter, like I'm wading through tedium before I can get to the 'meaningful' part. Tedium exasperates me, makes me start thinking about depressing things like not reaching my true potential. This is true in both real life as well as in games. So it should come as no surprise that I hate grinding in games, even though just about every title—from popular games like Call of Duty to the smallest, esoteric RPGs, force me to do it. There must be a reason for the constant inclusion of the grind—either people can enjoy it, or it provides something worthwhile for game designers.

A couple of months ago I was asked to write a pitch for a show on a broadcasting network about video games. Without delving into the specifics of that, I ended up consulting a friend about Pokemon: Black and White 2 and the new badge and achievement system. I bemoaned that much of the game followed the common paradigm of leveling up, putting enough time in, and grinding enough to attain success and then on top of that gamified it all to try to make it more desirable and 'fun.' Gross.

I remarked that it reminded me of how people put up with awful jobs in real life instead of following their dreams. And then he suggested something that makes complete sense, but that I still found surprising: one can find fulfillment in 'menial' jobs, as well as humble jobs that don't aspire to be a grand thing. That, perhaps, one can learn to live with where they are in life, regardless of whether or not it matches expectations. And naturally: that there's nothing wrong with not being hyper ambitious. It all comes down to choice and perception.

I'd seen a similar response to my piece earlier in the year about Skyrim and the sickeningly neat lives games have us uphold, but only recently did I start to actively think about the merits of the grind. It gets such a bad rap, right? I mean, the word itself has a negative connotation. But if people can enjoy or appreciate a lifetime of grind, then naturally it should follow we can enjoy grinding in games.

First off, thinking about what they abstract, it's all about payoff. You're working hard for something, and then when you get it—the level, the item, the win—you feel like you've earned it. My resentment stems from feeling as if it's always required that you put in an arbitrary amount of time into something before you're allowed to have something in real life. But that doesn't mean I don't feel accomplished after spending hours in Borderlands 2 and getting a new, exciting skill.

I just wish I didn't have to do it all the time, for everything, for no other reason than to stretch out how much time I'm spending with a game. Most online shooters, which force me to unlock everything from cosmetics to necessary equipment, are guilty of this and I abhor it.

Grinding can also be a calming thing. You can just tune out and play, right? That can be useful after a long day at work, or wanting to get your mind off stuff. While I've definitely picked up games to shut everything out, I know that I have a preference for games that don't let my mind go blank.

Grinding can also help with pacing. I'm a fan of games that cut out all the downtime and focus on the meat, like in The Walking Dead. With longer games, you have more stuff to juggle, more stuff to digest. The sheer amount of content in Persona 4 is staggering, and I'd probably feel like I was drowning if it let me talk to everyone, all the time, without inserting some quality dungeon crawling in there to help mull over my (digital) life.

It really depends on framing. Let's consider battle music, which has an intimate tie with grinding. Battle music is crucial to a successful grindy game, often helping us get into a state of flow, into the zone. That's a good feeling. Or: battle music can remind me of muzak—the music we hear while in spaces that want us to forget that we are there, waiting, languishing or sometimes consuming. Malls. Waiting on the phone. In the elevator. Working at the cash register. Ugh, no.

When I asked Jason Schreier what he thought about grinding, the framing thing became obvious.

It's easy to hate the idea of grinding. It's easy to step back and say "Jesus christ, why did I just spend four hours walking around in a circle and mashing the attack button to take down random monsters? What am I doing with my life?"

It's also easy to love the idea of grinding. It's easy to love a world where improvement is guaranteed, where life follows a set of rules that allow you to level up and get better at your job not because of talent or luck, but because you worked at it. Effort guarantees results.

I don't think level-grinding is good, nor do I think it's bad. It's a rhythm. A flow. Sometimes it feels right, when you're pumping up levels and feeling the euphoria of achievement. And sometimes it's just boring.

Despite the negative connotation of the word, as Jason says, grinding is not inherently negative or positive. Perhaps I have been unfair to grinding, after all. What I do know is that I have an easier time appreciating a game when it gives me a reason—a strong, compelling reason—to wade through repetitive or boring game segments. If, say, I'm trying to get strong enough to rescue my best friend beloved cousin from a shadow-monster, like in Persona 4? I'm in.

Make me care, and I'll grind through just about anything.

Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of infuriating yet hilarious trolling in Call of Duty by YouTube user NormalDifficulty. I've definitely come across this type of player before—and really, the only thing you can do is to ignore em, right? They want you to blow up or react,that's the point of adopting these affectations.

But playing along can also be fun. If you're devious you can try to counter-troll. Alternatively you can just take it with a sense of humor. People are so serious! Unfortunately, a lot of these folks got annoyed super quickly, which is part of what makes this so amusing to watch. Of course, it's always amusing when it's not you.

The guy trolling has a number of acts—from annoying voices to loud mouth breathing to, my favorite, the Mickey Mouse voice. It's my favorite because it honestly sounds like he's having a blast when he yells WOHOO after every kill... the little kid, meanwhile, is fuuuurious.

Ah, online gaming. I love your circus so.

You press play. A homemade logo or two pop up—maybe a clan, or a made-up studio. You notice the name of the player—tons of X's, maybe a 420 reference, and the rest seems incomprehensible. That's when the top 40 song begins. Then, it happens: a man dies. Cause of death? Headshot, intentionally timed to connect when the bass dropped (if the song happens to be dubstep.) We're watching an earnest kill montage video of a popular shooter, likely from an MLG hopeful.

You might wonder what the 'deal' with these videos are. I feel as if people outside competitive first person shooter culture watch these videos with a sense of amusement, thinking it's cute that earnest boys want to glorify their silly in-game exploits. This would explain the rise of parody videos making fun of the sincere montages: most famously, we have a series of simulator montages—Train Simulator, Woodcutter Simulator—that are ‘enhanced' with frenetic editing, obnoxious music, and crazy (if not unnecessary) effects.

On the surface, they're meant to be parodies that mock the real videos. The parody videos reveal a deeper truth though: a sense of elitism that looks down on the culture that would create the unironic montage video. A culture that I fear is highly misunderstood.

Let's talk about that competitive culture a bit. Who do you picture when you try to imagine someone who'd make a real dubstep kill montage? Three possibilities, I think:

1. A collar-popping-bro with a creed as sophisticated as YOLO.
2. A thuggish young man, likely a minority, who loves hip hop so much they not only dress like their favorite rap stars, they feel a need to subject everyone in the multiplayer lobby to their favorite diss or conquest song.
3. A young, annoying prepubescent boy that's way too young to be playing a game like Call of Duty/Halo/etc in the first place. Not that that stops them from trying to prove they can play and talk like the big boys.

EDIT: For the record, I am identifying perceptions and stereotypes. I KNOW they're effed up and unfair, especially since I am often the one that people pass judgement on because I like shooters, happen to be a minority, and like hip hop and rap. And people like to think that these things are always related, even though they're not.

What the bro and the hip hop aficionado have in common is that they represent the ‘plebeian' player, the lowest common denominator. They are likely playing on a console. Their entertainment isn't complex (some might accuse it of being stupid), they listen to all the popular songs on the radio—you know, the ones with inexplicable horn sounds inserted at random—they have a constantly-evolving slang arising from the streets or trending hashtags, and despite their socioeconomic status (as if elitism can exist without considering class!) they are the brute force behind the rise and proliferation of the shooter genre.

And yet these things aren't enough to ward off all the resentment some of us might feel when we consider how much power these folks command. They are, after all, the secret behind the crazy success of titles like Call of Duty, and through that, they end up dictating a lot of the industry and who it panders to. If the ‘real gamer' has a stereotype though, it doesn't look at all like the horde of players we imagine is playing popular shooters—and we sense that. The popular kids are invading the secret fort.

What of the little boy? Well, he wants to become just like either of the two stereotypes I initially presented. That would be the ‘cool' thing to do.

They're also all guys. This is important. The culture that creates videos like this is a boys club where the means of empowerment come through proving oneself in 1 vs 1 battles watched by onlookers who spectate either in-game or later in YouTube videos. Almost all situations culminate in this important showdown—the lobby smack talk, a leaderboard fiend who has to defend his rank or K/D ratio, or testing if the results of a previous match are a fluke. Walk the walk, boy.

A 1 vs 1 in Call of Duty is the modern equivalent of jousting, only with none of the public recognition. When we make fun of the montage video, it's an emasculating thing—because to the creator, it's like a testament to prowess and virility, as manifested in a digital age.

It's a very public thing, too. I'm not just talking about the eventual videos of victories or documenting the 1 vs 1. If noted figures fall, it's not uncommon for the victor to hurry to send a message to all friends on Xbox Live announcing the triumph. They tend to read/sound a bit like this (yes, all caps):

MESSAGE TO ALL FRIENDS. I, [INSERT NAME HERE/CLAN] HAVE DEFEATED THE [INSERT NAME HERE/CLAN.] THEY'RE GARBAGE. TRY HARD BAD KIDS. THEY AIN'T SHIT. DON'T GET INTIMIDATED BY THEIR STATS.

Alternatively, the defeat message will probably say something about using modded controllers, hacks, or anything that might discredit a clean win.

Underneath all this is the ‘true' competitive scene, the lucky few that have the skills to be a part of Major League Gaming (the leading community for competitive gaming)—along with, hopefully, fame and riches. This is the ultimate aspiration within the scene that takes montage videos seriously. They'll get a GameBattles account, a place where skirmishes against others can be centralized thanks to tournaments ("the closest thing to Pro-Circuit competition") and internal ladders (which, if you note, has not a single woman on it in the upper echelons.)

Even if you never take things seriously enough to ‘go all the way' with GameBattles, it's not uncommon to have informal structure mimicking that scene. I can't count the number of pseudo ‘clans' my friends and I participated in, with ranks, titles, leaders, training sessions, recruitment efforts, and so on. If you were ‘for real' you'd be expected to change your gamertag to something clan-related: the group I rolled with were The Saints, so it would be something like "Saint Santana" or "Saint Blaze," etc.

There is a leader, along with those who would command in his place were he absent. There is an internal list of who would participate in a team battle. If playing outside serious matches, groups will be formed depending on skill—think J.V team versus varsity team. The better players were expected to teach the worse players how to ‘handle' better during practices. And if we saw someone good in a match? Start the evangelization, especially if they don't have a clan tag or a clan-related gamertag.

Not quite ‘for fun,' not quite inconsequential. Either way, the influence of the MLG scene can't be understated, both in shaping how the multiplayer is developed, and how many players socialize on shooters.

What's fascinating to me about this is the ‘real' GameBattles has essentially gamified masculinity by awarding points on matches. "It is based on a mathematical formula that calculates the difference between the individuals in the match," the website boasts. There is a better man here, and we've got the math to prove it.

To make this truly modern, the ranks are updated in real-time. Immediate proof of your capabilities. And then these achievements are further embellished when a player cuts to all the juicy bits in a montage video. Or, alternatively, to cover up how bad a player might be—you don't see all the deaths or the time it actually took to put together even a short montage video.

The culture is more complex than most people realize—most of this is coming from someone who never fully participated, despite being constantly surrounded by it all. When I see a montage video, I see much more than the dubstep and the silly drug references.... not that that makes it any less funny at times, I admit.

Here's the second episode of fan series Mario Warfare, which turns the Mushroom Kingdom into something a little more Call of Duty.

Like the first episode, it can get a little hammy, but like the first one it's also looks shockingly pretty.

MARIO WARFARE - Part 2 [beatdownboogie]