Save the Wabbit

Posted by: LD^Mike

Every year there’s a crisis that’s going to kill 90% of the people on Earth. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. Sometimes it’s an itty-bitty microscopic killer like SARS or Avian Flu. Sometimes it’s a ginormous catastrophe like tsunamis, hurricanes, or asteroids (Bruce Willis, where are you?). The mass-murderers vary in size, impact, and medium, but they have one very important thing in common: they’re never as bad as the hype.

On a more moderate scale, say hello to bunny-hopping.

The issue is back because the Los Angeles Complexity published an article on their site called “Kill the Wabbit". The article itself is dwarfed by the comment section, and I have to say I’m a little jealous. I don’t think I’ve spawned six pages of comments in my entire writing career. To be honest, I’m surprised the community can still tolerate the issue. We’re supposed to have attention spans of a fruit fly with ADD, but this “debate” has been hopping along for years. Though I hesitate to call it a debate, considering we're just hashing, rehashing, and re-rehashing the same tired points.

(On a side note, I try not to criticize my fellow writers, but after reading the title I was really hoping for some Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny references. There was only one, and quite frankly, I’m still reeling. I don’t ask for much, really, just some cartoon references that make me reminisce about the good old days when times were simple and games were 32-bit. Maybe next time, for my sake? Anyway …)

Hopefully this trip down the rabbit hole will be a little different.

As a starting point, let’s break down what the article and comments have to offer. From what I can see, all our favorite criticisms were exhumed, dusted off, and shocked back to life. Sort of like Joan Rivers before a big event. Thankfully, in our case the final product (the argument against bunnyhopping) is much less mortifying. Here’s the basic rundown of the ban-bunnyhopping argument:

1) It is an exploit.
2) It compromises gameplay (through altering map balance and timing).

This is an intentional oversimplification. I want to avoid traps like hyperbole, because people will regurgitate these ideas in all kinds of ways. They’ll spice up the language, add some extra emphasis on the consequences, and generally repackage the same content over and over. For instance, in my opinion it’s easier to ignore trumped-up words like “abomination” and just replace them with “exploit”. We’re not changing the foundation of the message, only removing the excess baggage that distracts us from seeing the truth behind all the emotion. There’s only one exception I can think of, and we’ll cover that in a bit – for now, let’s assume these are the basic points and move on.

Tackling them from the start, we should all recognize that bunnyhopping is an exploit. I don’t think anybody would argue otherwise.

However, there's an important distinction to make. The pro-ban argument uses that categorization as a negative, and the word itself certainly carries that connotation. There’s only one problem: we’re not game designers and we’re not debuggers. From a competitive gaming standpoint, exploits are not inherently bad. If somebody found a way to return three and four-man boosts to Source and it was obvious that fans loved the added strategy and players were reinvigorated by new ideas, would anybody care that it was technically an exploit of the physics engine? I doubt it.

On some level, everybody knows this – there are other glitches and exploits that nobody cares about because they don’t seriously hamper gameplay.

In 1.6, for instance, you could do the quickswitch silence on a Colt. That’s an exploit, isn’t it? The silencer was designed to use “x” amount of seconds to add and remove. Getting around that time is clearly an exploit (or glitch, if you prefer that term). Source has a similar move where you can silence a weapon, quickly drop it, and then pick it back up with the silencer ready to go. Same deal, there, but where are all the complaints?

The point of these examples is illustrating that everybody draws the line somewhere. At some point we all say, “well, this is technically an exploit, but it (has no impact/is enjoyable). so it’s fine by me.” Basically, consciously or unconsciously, we qualify whether an exploit is good or bad by its impact on the game. The only difference is where we draw the line.

This both deals with the first point and leads us straight into the second (bunnyhopping compromises the gameplay) because the obvious question is “where should we draw the line?”

I understand the purists’ point of view. Give bunnyhopping the axe. It ruins the gameplay. It’s unnatural. It’s not “the way CS is meant to be played.”

These things are the exception I mentioned earlier because they’re not really hyperbole, but I don’t consider them a legitimate argument against bunnyhopping, either.

There’s a very simple reason for that. The phrases all sound very nice; the problem is that I don’t know what any of those things actually means. Can somebody please tell me how CS is meant to be played? Or, for that matter, can somebody explain how baseball is meant to be played? Should it have a designated hitter? Close fences? High mounds? Spitballs? Rebuilt shoulders and transplanted ligaments?

Phrases like “the way CS is meant to be played” imply there’s some kind of universally accepted ideal we should be working towards. That’s simply not the case. Games, electronic or otherwise, are constantly evolving. Strategies, players, and concepts all come and go. Sometimes they even come, go, and come back again. The whole thing is a process, but don’t mistake that to mean there’s a static goal, because there isn’t. It’s a moving target called “entertainment”, and it changes all the time.

Essentially, Counter-Strike isn’t “meant” to be played without bunnyhopping any more than baseball is meant to be played without a DH. Put another way, as fans, we’re in charge of the rules. We decide how the games are supposed to be played. It’s completely subjective, and the majority rules. The DH stays because people love watching somebody who can actually hit instead of a pitcher that grounds out to second and doesn’t even jog to first because he might tweak a hammy. (Although, as a Cubs fan, I must say I’m freaked out by how hard Carlos Zambrano swings the bat. He’s either going to need a spine transplant, or one day we’ll need a Carlos Zambrano-sized plunger to pump him out of the hole he screwed himself into.)

Looking at it from that perspective simplifies the argument. Let’s face it, if you ask ten people how CS is meant to be played, you’re going to get about twenty different answers: ten originals, and ten revisions. (And let’s not even think about how 1.6 fans would answer that question compared to Source players.) Instead of doing that, we only have to answer whether bunnyhopping makes the game more entertaining for fans.

This is going to get me in hot water with a lot of people, but I think it does.

Obviously this is a matter of opinion, but I think it’s telling that other sports have all moved to increase the speed of their games both on the field and during the times when nothing is happening (baseball has placed a huge emphasis on batters not taking ten seconds between each pitch, etc). We might not agree whether it’s a legitimate tactic, but I think everybody can agree that bunnyhopping does make things go faster. Our round formats have gravitated that way, already, and it’s completely in line with the thoughts behind changes in other sports.

But more than that, bunnyhopping facilitates conflict, which is the most basic component of compelling entertainment, whether that be in sports or on the Real World. Conflict is always interesting. Being able to vary map dynamics and timing adds to that conflict. People can push the action and it adds another level to strategy and counter-stratting player tendencies.

Here’s the big kicker for me, though. It’s all well and good to talk about bunnyhopping in some theoretical, cold discussion. We can break these things down all day, but we don’t live in a theoretical world, and there are two practical thoughts I want to end with:

1) We’re never going to decide which is better for gaming by convincing each other one at a time. We need a larger sample size than one person, one article, or one thread of comments can possibly provide.

2) If bunnyhopping is such a big advantage and such a threat to Counter-Strike, why is it so uncommon and why aren’t people leaving?

The first point is self-explanatory.

The second one brings us back to the introduction. Every time this issue comes up, some team threatens to start bunnyhopping everywhere, which is then presented as a slippery-slope argument where the end product is a bunch of crazed, jumping CS players that are bouncing around without a care in the world.

Much like a SARS epidemic, I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Bunnyhopping was legal in the first season of the CGS. Didn’t hear one complaint about the action, the legitimacy of the competition, or see teams full of rabbit impersonators. Bunnyhopping was legal at CPL. Same result. Not only that, but I’ve never heard somebody boycott an event, leave a league, or stop following CS because of bunnyhopping.

Not only that, but it’s supposedly a huge advantage that allows Terrorists to enter bombsites before the defense, right? It only takes a week to master. Yet I’ve never, ever seen a two-man bunnyhop/boost like the ones in the LA video used during a live competition. And I’ve never seen anybody bunnyhop from CT spawn on Nuke all the way to radio room, either. So please, if it's such a big deal, can somebody tell me why more people aren’t using it?

For something that deserves to be banned, there's a surprising lack of repercussions from keeping it legal.

These aren't just random observations; I think they're indicative of the true value of bunnyhopping. Like everything in CS, bunnyhopping, despite being an obvious speed advantage, is not some unbeatable strat. It's a gimmick. A play. As such, it has huge risks. I'm not a brilliant CS strategist, but launching yourself on a one-way trip towards your five closest enemies doesn't seem like a sure-fire win, no matter how offguard they might be. Even if you get there before the other team, chances are you’ll get there before your teammates, as well (oops). Teams can also counter-strat anything, and despite being easy to master, bunnyhopping isn't infallible. People make mistakes and can put themselves in even worse situations. And let's not forget the AK isn't exactly accurate while you're in mid-air.

So yes, it's an exploit. Yes, it changes the gameplay. But where's the epidemic? Where's the huge impact on the games, the gamers, and Counter-Strike's popularity as a medium?

Does the wabbit really deserve to die?

(And I just realized I wrote this whole thing without a single Elmer Fudd joke. Shame on me.)