My Noteworthy Interaction

Over the course of the project, I had many noteworthy social interactions. That was probably the best feature of the online community. Having random social interactions with players around the world, especially when my headset was on. The most prominent interaction was early on in the project when I played someone from Germany. I knew he was from Germany because that was the team he played with and he also used his own virtual pro. My opponent’s virtual pro resembles a stereotypical German person, so I assumed he was indeed from Germany. Both of us had our microphones on and it resulted in back and fourth trash talk between us. It reached a level where I thought I was playing a friend of mine right next to me. Generally, playing in person against friends is much more competitive in nature then playing against random users online. However, this instance was different. I felt like my opponent and I were rivals and the intensity was in the air.

At the end of the first half, I was down 2-0. Not a good sign when going into halftime and I thought the game was over. Nonetheless, my opponent would not stop insulting me and my country, the United States of America. In turn, this fired me up and I would not allow myself to lose against this opponent. I came through in the second half and scored an early goal. I was back in the game. The game reached finally reached the 90^th minute and I thought my opponent had it in the bag. Somehow in the final seconds of the game, I kept my composure and scored a last second goal to take the game to overtime. We decided to utlize the golden goal option in overtime and luckily I scored a early minute goal to win the game. I was ecstatic and could not stop cheering. When I finally calmed down, I trash talked and came up with any stereotypical German phrase I could think of; it was not a pretty site. Although I had a great time rubbing in the victory, communication is not vital to the online community and thus not a strong aspect of the game.