Can you spot the Otaku in the above screenshot?
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I’ve been getting more into TF2 recently, and in my numerous daily battles for intelligence briefcases and control points, I’ve been encountering more and more portraits of anime characters. In fact, what inspired me to get off my lazy ass and upload an avatar for my scoreboard portrait was because I kept getting killed by this guy called Ziddy with a smiling Ryugu Rena portrait.

Seems that Konataism works in promoting FPS gaming skills.
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Talk about de-bunking Otaku stereotypes as a Konataist. I’ve believed for the longest time ever that Otakus prefer Role Playing Games (RPGs) as compared to games from the First Person Shooter (FPS) or Real Time Strategy (RTS) genres from my numerous interactions with our kind in online forums and even real life. This probably stems from the fact that because almost all our time is spent working to fuel our hobby or watching anime and doing other Otaku oriented hobbies, there isn’t much time left to drill the skills required to play FPS or RTS, which isn’t required as much in adventure RPG games.

Pay close attention to the upper right hand corner of this screenshot.
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I however, do consider myself an exceptional case. This is because I actually got into Akiba-Kei culture relatively late in my life (around 19 or 20 years old) and before that, I was nothing short of a hardcore gamer pushing the limits of conventional western gaming genres. I am still in a Day of Defeat: Source clan as of today and my best genre happens to be FPS as twitch reflex is my specialty over information retention and application. It appears that there is only another hardcore Otaku in my clan, and yes, the scout is my favourite class in Team Fortress 2 as I find most other classes kind of boring.

Heck, I’ll just enlarge it for convenience.
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However, does this mean that there are many Otaku that overlap as skilled RTS and FPS players? There isn’t any solid evidence that this is true in general. The reason my hypothesis exists is due to Valve’s inclusion of portraits in Team Fortress 2 that opens up the possibility of expressing individual gamer personalities. Most other FPS do not have this option available, and thus there isn’t much hard evidence to show that my hypothesis is right.

Most importantly though, Team Fortress 2 is an exceptional game in terms of their marketing and as a result, character design. In the various promotional trailers for TF2, Valve has blessed the individual character classes in TF2 with distinct personalities, and Otaku do tend to appreciate good character design. After all these years spent on Renai and slice-of-life oriented anime, you could say that an Otaku’s speciality is in picking out the little flaws and nuances found in any fictionally designed character, even if they do not happen to be moe-bishoujos or lolis but humerously designed character classes of a conventional video game. These personalities are probably what draw Otaku subconsciously to playing TF2, in addition to the argubly excellent gameplay mechanics of the game.

Mff mff mff…
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To quote a pertinent example, just take a look at the Pyro. There has been an ongoing debate in the Steam Community forum over the Pyro’s gender, species and nationality. The Pyro’s mysterious character design does leave his vital statistics open to debate, even though I have conclusive evidence that the Pyro is a male bisexual (look at this purse in the Pyro’s equipment locker), I’m am starting to feel a mounting suspicion that he is indeed an ugly old lady with a scarred pyro-maniacal face. As my game play hours increase, I am starting to realise the various taunts and chants of the Pyro in fact, do sound like an old lady under a gas mask. I’m still not sure as of late, but the discussions generated over the Pyro is not unlike many discussions that Otakus have over the underwear colour of their favourite Bishoujos, or the romantic possibilities of this Bishoujo with another Bishoujo (in Yuri anime) or another guy (in harems).

In other words, yes. There is a possibility that the Pyro is a trap. And a pretty ugly trap at that. I’m not sure how many Japanese have actually taken note of Team Fortress 2, as 70% of the computer games sold on the Japanese market are visual novels, eroge, otome games and the like. It is a fact that Japanese ignorance and xenophobia is prevalent, and that Japanese do not have much experience in making FPS games. However, more open minded Japanese game makers will have much to learn from a seemingly westernised game such as Team Fortress 2, as the underlying design of TF2 is certainly more than meets the eye.