Well said, Sony Vice President of _______ Kevin Butler. In the midst of a brutal ass-whoopin’, Killzone 3 gamer Legit_Bitness there demonstrated brutally incompetent mega-fail, but soldiered on with the grit of a gravel-eating shit miner. There may have been rage, but certainly no quit. I think we can all take this lesson to heart. What if the St. Louis Cardinals had rage quit when getting blown out? Or Rocky? Or the American revolution?

So with Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 promising to drastically spike the rates of thrown controllers, gnashed teeth, and incredulous shrieks of “I SHOT HIM IN THE HEAD!!!” in the waning months of 2011, I thought we’d pay some tribute to the various species in the Rage Quitter genus.

Shooter

Unless you can actually hear what they’re shouting into their headsets, it’s sometimes hard to be positively identify a shooter Rage Quitter in deathmatch or team deathmatch situations. But you can see the signs. You’re up 25 to 3 in a game to 50, and then the phrase “I_T_BAG_U87 has quit” pops up. Sometimes one rage quit snowballs into more, and after “murder_kittenz” and “MR.SNUGGLE” jump ship as well, pretty soon it’s just the four of you all against the defiant “Ninjafarts.”

Other times it’s more obvious, like in games where a team has a single spawn point that (usually with great difficulty) can be effectively boxed in. It’s particularly delicious when it comes after a big play in something like capture the flag. The Rage Quitter’s quittin’ finger gets itchy when he carries the flag all the way back only to die in his own flag room, and then watch the guys that scrambled the length of the map to bring him down make off with his flag and take it all the way back. When you get a post-game message to the tune of “u nerd u must hav no life playin halo all day u never seen a girl,” then you know that bro was mad.

Rationalizations: You’re a wussy camper; you use or camp the spawn point of the cheapest weapon in the game; You’re hosting the game, which give you an insurmountable latency advantage; Despite the scoreboard, I’m totally a better player than you.

Strategy

From the standpoint of rage quit schadenfreude, strategy games are nice because they depend heavily on keyboards. Typed messages between players come with the territory. They’re also somewhat unique in that the game rarely runs its full course. Your opponent will usually concede to checkmate if it’s inevitable, instead of making you stick around to wipe every last house, peasant, or zergling off the board. Those cases aren’t necessarily rage quits.

No, it’s only a rage quit if the loser tells you so, and that’s what makes it so delicious. He knows in his heart that your gameplan was cheap or cowardly, and will not concede defeat before qualifying it with a parting shot about your shortcomings. And in case you didn’t get the point, there is typically an observation about the staggering amount of fellatio administered by you and your mother. These lines are furiously banged into a hapless keyboard with enraged fingers impacting keys like jackhammers, and are usually riddled with errors that only heighten the glee. The Rage Quitter won’t bother correcting, lest the delay expose him to a retort of yours before he can successfully exit the game with the last word.

Rationalizations: You were playing the race/civilization most favored by the obvious and heinous game imbalance that everyone certainly knows about; Lag; You pussy with your hit-and-run attacks on resource supply chains; You’re clearly just afraid of fighting me army-to-army; Despite the scoreboard, I’m totally a better player than you

MMO

Most MMO rage quits are on your own team, in both PvE and PvP scenarios. Although MMOs are usually the most complex of games, their social aspect tends to lead to Conventional Wisdom tactics religiously supported by legions of copycat experts. Any deviation from The Plan reveals you as a hopeless noob, and the MMO rage quitter can’t abide a team of noobs. He is completely oblivious to the need to keep one’s eye on curveballs and the occasional need for adaptability and improvisation. It will never occur to him to even try attacking a different node than the usual one, or to account for weak threat generation by easing back on DPS. Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother…the MMO rage quitter is always right.

Such conviction can lead to some downright poetic disparagement hurled your way as you’re losing the fight against the boss, or the other team. Since you’re probably having a rough time in battle, your patience for the Rage Quitter might run thin. But sometimes the incredulous nonsense dripping from his every word can be a silver lining to an otherwise frustrating loss.

Rationalizations: I gain more honor if I just quit now and restart; How could I have possibly been grouped with so many noobs?; Your gear/tactics are bad and to even suggest deviation from The Plan is a waste of time; Despite how the scoreboard indicates my damage/kills/ability to capture the flag or nodes is pathetic, I’m totally a better player than you.

Sports

In my experience, sports game rage quits are the most fun of all. Unlike shooters or strategy games, you can usually see the entirety of the action during every second of play in a sports game. Your awareness of the situation is nearly total, so if someone’s mad about something that just happened, you know exactly what it is. Just took the lead in the 4th quarter from your third 50+ yard interception return of the game? Just saved your no-hitter in a game you were winning 1 – 0 by snaggling a 2-run home run hit with a leaping catch at the fence? Just got Kobe Bryant fouled out on his 3rd charge call of the game?

You know he saw it, you know how unlikely it and the series of events leading up to it was, so you know exactly the source of the butthurt. You know because you’ve been there, you’ve taken your bad breaks like a man, and played through a painfully improbable loss to the end. But the Rage Quitter will not stand for this injustice. There’s a good chance if the game pauses right as your defensive tackle picks up a fumble and starts sprinting like a walrus toward the endzone that your opponent is too angry to stick around to see a fat man’s touchdown dance.

Rationalizations: That would never happen!!; You spent the whole game exploiting an overpowered play that represents a flaw in game design, and not a weakness in my game for which I just haven’t yet learned the counter; Did you see that?! That has never happened in the history of history!!; Despite the scoreboard, I’m totally a THERE IS NO WAY THAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE!