Gaming Moments: Jump, shoot... grenade.

THE SCENARIO :

The helicopter has landed, and after a long cut scene detailing the apparently easy process of rappelling down into a war zone you are finally granted control of your character, looking away from your teammates in order to prevent a tragic (Although ultimately funny) accident, you start pressing every button on your controller in order lo learn their function, sure, you could have waited until the tutorial started, but you don't have time for that, you are Sergeant Bobblepatch, you are here to save your country from the nameless army that kinda looks like a real-world faction but that is totally a coincidence even though they clearly have a Russian accent... you are the only man who can do this, especially since you've done it like a thousand times before in other games with the same story (Seriously, why Russians?), you could say you already know how to play.

Pictured: Sgnt. Bobblepatch

So, with all your knowledge and experience in hand (And i assume your controller) you press the sequence of buttons you always press, "X" to jump, "R1" to shoot, "L1" to... grenade?
 
And like a kid throwing a rock at a neighbour's window you suddenly realize the mistake you've made, you've let loose a live grenade in front of you, luckily there are no friendly soldiers there that could get hurt, even though it would be hilarious (Who doesn't love rag doll physics?) but... that doesn't matter, sending the body of Captain Screams-a-lot flying over the battlefield at mach 5 is the least of your concerns, its the sudden realization that you now have ONE LESS GRENADE what sends shivers down your spine and triggers the classic "...f*ck" ("sh*t", "b*lls" and "jump*ng kangar*o on a pogost*ck" are also accepted).

THE GAMING MOMENT :

Wasting your X's (Not to be confused with "getting your Ex-girlfriends royally drunk in the hopes of getting some"), using that limited and valuable resource for nothing, knowing it will be a while until you get more, specially if it is a survival horror game (Excluding Resident Evil 5 where the only horror is the inventory system), and  it doesn't even have to be grenades, it could be anything, like:

-Flashbangs

-Mines

-Throwing knives

-Grenades (the other kind, you know, the ones that explode in a different way and you think they are incredibly useful but you only use them once and only because you ran out of the normal grenades)

-Potions

-Med kits

-Scrolls

-Summon stones

-Poison darts

-Get out of jail card (am i the only one who thinks Monopoly would be way more interesting with poison darts?)

And the list goes on, the point is, we've all lived that moment, we try to figure out the game on our own and in that quest we end up wasting a valuable resource, it kind of goes back to the old saying "curiosity killed the cat". 

Fun fact: 1 out of every 25 accidental grenades in videogames actually kills a cat.

But what really makes this an important Gaming Moment is that even with the sometimes explosive results (Pun totally intended) it keeps happening, it doesn’t matter how many tutorials we’ve had to restart or haw many coop missions we fail, we will make that mistake again and again. Sometimes we’ll “Jump, shoot… Grenade!” because the control layout is different, or maybe there are multiple types of grenades, or maybe you were looking at a different player’s screen (You know who you are Guy that always wants to play goldeneye) but it is going to happen again, and this may sound weird, but that is great.

I know what you are thinking “Naked Katy perry” and you are also probably thinking “How is it great that I ended up wasting grenades? isn’t that a design flaw of the game?” but you’d be wrong to think that. You see, moments like this represent some of the best characteristics games and players have, think about it, why do we always end up experimenting with the controller In a way that would get us killed were we defusing a bomb? We do it because every game is a rediscovery of, well… gaming.

Not Pictured: Naked Katy Perry

See, every game is a universe in itself, and as such it brings with it new worlds, new creatures, new stories, new weapons and, sometimes, even new laws of physics; and discovering this new universe is one of the most enjoyable experiences in gaming. This is why it isn’t a design flaw, it’s the natural course of playing a new game, that’s the intended experience, developers want us to experiment with this universe they have created for us, even if sometimes it ends up backfiring on us, that’s how learning works.

So, yeah, it IS annoying to play through level one with one grenade less, you will spend the rest of the level thinking that you are going to need that grenade later even though your 9mm handgun has been surprisingly effective at taking down helicopters, but as annoying as it is, we all smile when we throw that grenade in the direction of a random tree, even better, that grenade might bounce off that tree and end up killing us, tragically ending Sgt. Bobblepatch's career, and we'll laugh at how we got a game over on the tutorial. Remember, there will always be new things to learn in games for they are full of possibilities, there will always be new grenades, and new buttons to throw them and, more importantly, a gamer to press them all.