Who's Playing

Banned of Brothers

With all this community involvement, one might say the devotion to teamplay extends beyond the actual game map. Maybe it is not about a type of gameplay at all, but rather a type of person. Hearing about Monday Mod Night events and planning committees popping up "just to help out," I can't help but think that perhaps the founders of DontCamp are on to something.

Participating in groups that work well together is not new territory to the founders of DontCamp. The five friends met at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro's School of Music, where they participated in several ensembles together. This other passion, music, laid the foundations for all cooperative efforts in the future. "I have a theory about musicians and gamers. There's a lot of unspoken communication when you're a musician," Grosser explains. Myers chimes in, finishing Grosser's sentence, "Making five people sound like one is not easy."

While they hone their own abilities to work in concert, the friends help others learn the joys of working together. And the others are loving it. In fact, the community surprised the guys with $1,000 in donations to keep the servers running on DontCamp's first anniversary. "We had no idea. We were completely surprised," says Woodbury. Apparently the strict enforcement of rules is going over well.

That is DontCamp in a nutshell: Self-policing, self-supporting, and generally, a very pleasant community. By the standards of Battle.Net or Gamespy Arcade, it's tiny. But the servers' positive vibe and low-pressure atmosphere makes it worth talking about. In an era when games have replaced rap music as the media's favorite punching bag, and first-person shooters are charged with being breeding grounds for killers, it's worth pointing out when gamers and their culture embody something positive.