Bathroom Monologue: 6000 Players at Level 0

“There was a complex equation for people’s levels in the game. It tabulated how many people you killed, how many times you killed each of them, modifying scores based on headshots and eviscerations, while also tabulating how often you healed a partner or sacrificed yourself, modifying scores based on speed and ludicrous valor. It followed your weapon usage, route varieties, team coordination, and even assigned a specific score for how many keywords you used in voice chat. To give players additional incentive, the sole programmer summed up the entire score, then multiplied it by your level number. It was poorly thought through, but he got his girlfriend at the time and was distracted. So distracted that he didn’t get any of the player e-mails that everyone started at Level 0, and thereby couldn’t level up. Whatever you scored wound up multiplied by 0. At the end of the year and the relationship, he logged in to find six thousand players still at Level 0. One player was at Level 999. That one player was Captain James Tiberius Kirk.”