I played wet bandits last year and only survived for three days before I was mercilessly gunned down in front of the Commons building. So, I knew that competition this year would be as tough, if not tougher than last year. After all, more people knew me now than at the beginning of the game last year.
But, I was ready. I made plenty of mistakes last year, but this year would be different. I would live! I would not be gunned down! If anything, I would be the one eliminating people from the game! I would defeat everyone!
Then wet bandits started and the paranoia set in.
If you have played wet bandits, then you know the paranoia I am talking about. And, if you have ever watched a horror movie at a friends house and then had to drive back by yourself, you also know what I am talking about. It is the feeling of tenseness. It’s the possible fact that there could be someone behind you right now that is trying to shoot you. You start to not trust people. You start to glance suspiciously at the people serving you lunch. If your friends invite you to go disc golfing, you hesitate. It is probably not this bad for everyone, but it was for me.
It was through this paranoia that I quickly decided I would rather stay alive than shoot everybody. I quickly figured out the minimal amount of time I needed to be outside the safe zones and stuck to it. I decided I would never be under the sky without my water pistol. I also decided to only eliminate my targets if it was at no risk to me.
So, I became a hermit. I knew that it is difficult to kill someone you never see. But I began to wonder, what had happened to my ferocity? What had happened to my grand schemes of eliminating twenty targets by myself on the first day? I then figured it out. I wanted life over glory. Sure, if I could get it easily enough, glory would be great. But, it turns out I wanted to live as long as I could rather than take the chance of gaining glory and then dying.
All that being said, I lived. I made it to the end of the two weeks of wet bandits without being shot and having only eliminated two targets. Sure, it was great that I lived, but it wasn’t nearly as fun or exciting as how I imagined it. And now I wonder, what would the game have been like if I had acted boldly and lived it to the fullest?
[author image=”http://echo.snu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Byron.jpg” ]Byron Crouch, Staff Contributor <br> Byron is a computer science major. He likes puzzles, reading and writing fiction. His favorite movie is Princess Bride or Tron. [/author]