For my intervention, I planned on doing something related to my card games that I play so much. However, at the tournament I was at, I ended up playing nearly the entire tournament. So, I decided to take it to CSGO, and let my opponents choose my weapons. I hopped onto a smurf account of mine (an account deliberately ranked lower than the player’s actual skill level) to test this.
It ended up providing very interesting results, with some matches resulting in a plethora of weapons, some in one or two, and some ended in me getting kicked by my team. The results can be seen here.
I decided to do this because I wanted to see how many people would blatantly abuse the system to gain an advantage. Of course, the easiest way to do this would be to tell me to buy nothing or buy a small taser. In two games I was asked to buy a taser, one where I was kicked by my own team for it. Most games, the opposing team just had me use a pistol or something so as to not abuse the system entirely, which I saw as interesting as it showed that players wanted an advantage, but not an auto-win of sorts.
This project speaks on how the strides players will go to to win and how much they actually care about winning versus how much they value their pride. For example, in the first game, they valued their pride far more, refusing to tell me a gun to use for an entire half until I racked up nearly 25 kills in a single half. Then, in a dire situation, they complied. So in a pinch, the win often matters more. Most players valued their pride to some degree, just having me use a pistol or something, but some didn’t care about it at all, giving me a taser that essentially turned me into a useless asset.
I took inspiration from this from Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece” work. Although not necessarily an intervention, since it was on a planned stage at an event, there are some parallels. Yoko left it up to the “players” whether to abuse the system or not for personal gain, having the option to deliberately reveal private areas of Ono’s body. This would test to see who would abuse the system, and who would just have a little fun with it. Like Ono’s, the players had the opportunity to completely abuse the system for personal gain. In both scenarios, most people didn’t, having at least some sort of pride to hold on to.