The Economies of Halo 3

I ran across a good article today that describes the economies of Halo 3, the shoot 'em up/tactical game on a couple game console platforms. The reason I found this article pretty compelling was that is very similar to my experiences in Quake 2 in college. Basically what this article does is explain the rationale for suicide bombing in video games, especially first-person-shooters. While I in NO means support suicide bombing in real life, I'm a big fan of it in video games, and I'll explain why:

Basically their are 2 separate social economies in online gaming. One group consists of teenagers and those that support themselves out of their homes, i.e. entrepreneurs if you will. The other group consists of people like me, 9-5 job, with kids, without kids, let's just say, worker bees. I would venture to say that the first group are the ones with more time to play online games and hone their skills, but not always. The second group are the people that might have an hour or so every day to get out there and venture around. This guy's article suggests that in many cases he resorts to suicide bombing to even the talent pool when he plays.

Believe me, I used to do it in college playing Quake 2. I wanted to even the pool. This is kind of like the reference in the poker movie Rounders where they're at the table and they describe their play like the Nature Channel. Their not working together but they aren't working against each other either. That's the best explanation/analogy I can come up with, if that makes sense at all.

Another way to look at it is that the second group's (the group I fall into) opportunity cost is higher, meaning, it is more valuable for them to be doing something else during this time but they like the gameplay, yet don't have the time to be Billy badass. If you're in a tight match with a superior opponent, throwing in a suicide bomb here and there might be decent strategy.

Surely there are others out there, right? Maybe I just stink at gaming.