Because no-one entirely likes their job, I should be upfront about my issues with newly launched Early Access darling Wardogs, the mass-scale multiplayer shooter in which I’ve just found employment. Its “Play like to you used to” tagline and Halo 3-aping trailer smell a bit of reactionary, stuck-in-the-past thinking. It’s a mass-scale multiplayer shooter, so individual heroics rarely influence match outcomes. And, like pretty much everyone else who sucked down both those problems and tried playing on launch night regardless, I spent far too long attempting to communicate with server architecture that clearly had the resilience of overmilked cornflakes.
And yet, the fifty minutes I did spend in a functioning match felt like some of the most pleasant and productive time I’ve had in a competitive FPS for ages. The secret: ignore all first person shooting entirely, and begin a lucrative career as an Uber driver for commuting mercs.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Team17
In a stark break from reality, Wardogs’ gig economy can be very profitable indeed. Almost every positive action earns you cash, from the obvious hardpoint captures and squadmate revives to the humble delivery of people and bandages to the frontlines. And, since team spawns are literal miles from the central battlezones, logistical roles are not merely cash-incentivised, but essential.
In an accurate reflection of reality, you begin with little, must buy all vehicles and equipment yourself, and are on the hook if they’re lost while on duty. But the creation of genuine rear-detachment roles means Wardogs solves problems I have with both big shooters, and the extraction subgenre it also borrows from: by constantly ferrying teammates, I can have an individual yet materially important impact on the match, and by never intentionally joining a gunfight, I need never worry about loot loss anxiety. It was the perfect career move.
Buoyed by first-day enthusiasm, once I finally loaded into a game I bought a car, directed it dutifully towards the crowd of pedestrian soldiers, and immediately caused a helicopter crash. My pull-up-to-the-kerb manoeuvre had unwittingly put me in the landing path of a descending attack chopper – a major fault in the standard United Kingdom driving test – forcing the delicate warbird to flip over my roof and explode. Its occupants, miraculously unhurt but quite cross, shot me a damning glance as they strode off to buy another one.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Team17
The rest of my inaugural fare, a full house of one real-life friend and two silent randomers, went mercifully smoother. Despite the slippery handling of my entry-level SUV, it was a comfortable, peaceful drive towards the hot zone, which itself offered ample parking space for my passengers to hop out. The prizes came instantly: $1,000 for a “tactical deployment”, plus $500 for each of my unharmed passengers, plus a $15 tip from a particularly satisfied rider. $2,515 for a few kilometres of relaxed cruising? The hell am I doing as a deputy ed?
The private hire lifestyle took hold. For multiple runs, I’d steer back to base, wait next to other transit vehicles (sometimes sharing an “A’ight, mate” with the heli pilot next to me), load up on balaclava men, and deliver them vaguely near the sound of gunfire, my balance swelling with each trip. Half an hour in, I’d accumulated slightly higher earnings than my IRL friend, who’d been running around murdering people and getting shot himself. Sounds painful. Sounds like participating directly in the horrors of war, mankind’s most terrible creation, and a blight on the Earth that continues to destroy families and erase cultures every day. Sounds like he’s not even getting paid that much to do it anyway, the rube.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Team17
Meanwhile, my hands were clean, not counting all the filthy lucre that was crossing it. Granted, my usefulness was starting and ending with the thunk of automobile doors – sometimes I’d watch my disembarked comrades perish just moments after paying their fare, a tragically premature “Passenger survived, +$500” lingering onscreen as their heaped form shrunk in my rearview. In these moments I was less Iqbal, the friendly Prius owner who got me home from the pub last week, and more Charon, damned soul ferryman of the River Styx.
As the match went on, I also began having trouble with that key component of hypercapitalism: competition. It turned out those heli pilots were not my mates at all, but were conspiring to steal my business, adopting the unfair and likely illegal practice of having faster vehicles than me. Eventually, my stream of human tip jars reduced to a trickle of stragglers, the larger crowds routinely making a beeline for the nimbler, more spectacular choppers.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Team17
In search of alternative revenue streams, I diversified into supply logistics. At this point I hadn’t made quite enough profit to afford a proper truck, so instead bought one empty crate, chucked a few cheap medical supplies into it, and bunged it my car’s back seat. Seemingly in ignorance of the massive boot, but whatever. I knew delivering it somewhere useful would require driving deeper into the fray than my people-carrying had thus far, but shareholder value (mine) demanded it.
The journey was, again, uneventful, and I chanced upon a makeshift base swarming with more action-inclined teammates. Surely, the kind of folk who’d appreciate a box of plasters. Not entirely familiar with the controls, I hit the G key to unload, at which point the create seemed to disappear. A “Supplies delivered, +$500” popped up – which, as my accountant tells me, if half what I could have made by filling those seats with bums instead – but I remained concerned about the supplies themselves. Beginning my search, I reversed, directly onto and over the bandage box that has been laying just out of view. Now, I was stuck, the car’s back end suspended barely high enough for the rear-wheel-drive wheels to regain purchase on the tarmac.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Team17
This was not ideal. As I got back at the wheel and tried wriggling free with Game Physics sorcery, I noticed the allies I’d come to resupply were no longer dashing around on the roof. Within seconds, a lone, green-dressed man with no ‘Don’t shoot this one’ arrow above his head rounded the building’s corner, rifle raised. Still stuck, I killed the engine and did the best impression of an empty, slightly slanted car that I’ll ever have to do. The man’s scope swivelled in my direction, then kept going, the ruse successful long enough for an arrowed teammate to pop out from behind a van and shoot him down.
Hands sweating in gratitude, I eventually managed to slide my bumper free and roar off back to HQ, alive and enriched. My shift was only brought to an end by a return of those blasted server errors, but I clocked off a happy man: I’d nearly tripled my net worth and had been, more so than in any Battlefield game I’ve ever bumbled through, helpful. Honestly, what a silly slogan – why play like you used to when you can start an exciting new career in personal transportation?