In the societal dark ages known as the 2010s, there was a meme that was commonly thrown around in video game circles. It posed a simple question; the main character from the last video game you played is hunting you for some unknown reason, how fucked are you? What typically followed was a waterfall of gamers openly stating how they’re basically dead men walking. In a weird way, this was done to one-up other commenters; as if playing Metal Gear Solid gave one more Reddit karma street cred than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
I was never a fan of this meme, and it’s not simply because I’m the author of The Case Against Memes. My main issue with this meme is that the common answers revealed an epidemic of low agency men. It honestly made me glad that I mostly walked away from the hobby. However, I had a recent relapse for a few hours and my curiosity started firing even as my interest in the digital abomination died.
As discussed before, YAH BOI loves Sword Art Online (SAO). In fact, I’ve played most of the console-based games based off of the anime, even if most of them are subpar in quality (though some titles are head-and-shoulders above others, in my opinion). Thus, I started playing one of their more recent games that I missed: SAO: Fractured Daydream. It pulled me in with an interesting premise and the ability to play as a wide variety of SAO characters.
With that said: the plot was a boring jumbled mess, the default difficulty was a joke, and the mechanics were mind-numbingly easy. Seriously: do not burn your money on this game. However, it offered me an interesting paradigm to the meme. Whenever possible, I would always play as Death Gun because he’s a SAO villain I’ve always been fascinated with. Seriously, I even bought a Norinco Type 54 Black Star Tokarev in honor of how fucking cool he is. By sheer play-time and leveling, a case can be made that Death Gun was the main character.
Tale of the Tape
I was driving home the other day letting my mind wander during the boring commute, and my mind harkened back to that tired old meme. But unlike the average Cheeto-dust-encrusted Redditor, I started to give the question some serious thought. My mind went to loadouts, terrain, engagement distances, and the like.
I mused during my drive home that Death Gun would win exchanges between 2.5 km and 700m. This is because his rifle has a much further effective firing range than a standard AR. With that said, once the distances closed to within 700m, I held (in my own mind anyways) a sizable advantage. Anything from 700m to sword-wielding distance would be my domain. Closing inside from sword-wielding distance is where I’d once again gain the upper hand. When I got home, I entered the matchup into Microsoft CoPilot and Google Gemini (collectively referred to as the “AIs” from now on).
To make things abundantly clear, I’m talking strictly of the in-game avatar of Death Gun and not his three-man team. I instructed the AIs to give him the same loadout, skills, and tendencies that he had in the second season of SAO and all of the console-based video games. I did this to give the most accurate representation of Death Gun. Thus, assume that he had his sniper rifle, his sword, and his iconic Type 54 Black Star Tokarev (as an aside, Mr. Kawahara missed a major opportunity by not calling him Black Star).
But enough about him, time to focus on me. As documented several times, YAH BOI is no stranger to firearms training. I’ve completed the preliminary rifle courses at my local range, and have taken the first few pistol courses. For extra training reps, I also regularly participate in the Beginner’s Pistol League at my local range. I’m also quite fond of the Mossberg 500 family of pump-action shotguns. In fact, I routinely run the shoot 2, load 1 drill under timer duress and a tease-reveal target at the range; I can shoot 2 rounds in under 2 seconds, and load a shell from the side-saddle in less than 3 seconds. Thus, my loadout was a standard 16” AR-15 with mid-level scope/light/sling, an 18.5” Mossberg 500 with a sling/flashlight, and my own Type 54 Tokarev (c’mon; I basically had to). While I’ve had some training, I’m not a pro. I don’t have decades of trigger time, any military service, an IPSC regional title, an undercover badge, or any of that nonsense. I’m literally just a lawfully armed citizen who sought more training.
As discussed before, men should be physically fit, and I hold myself to that same standard. I’m 6’1 and roughly 175 pounds. I can hold a plank for 150 seconds and sprint up to 32 miles-per-hour on a stationary bike. I was an offensive lineman, even getting some Division III offers back in the day. All of this is to say that while I’m in acceptable physical condition, I’m no pro athlete or Navy SEAL; many able-bodied men could get to my level of conditioning if they simply just fucking tried.
The Parameters
I took a lot of inspiration from The Deadliest Warrior. For those not in the know, it was a show on SpikeTV back in the 2000s where warriors/tribes from across history would be pitted against each other in a simulation to see who would win a fight to the death. I opted to have the AIs run each matchup 1000 times, so the matchup would not be swayed by luck/plot armor. I kept the match inside of GGO, but divided it between 500 matches in the desert where Death Gun fought Kirito, and then 500 matchups inside of the battle-worn city (and no, I don’t mean Sarajevo).
Much like The Deadliest Warrior, I also instructed the AIs to include how often each combatant won in a given terrain and their most common methods of victory. This provided some great insights, but more on that later. For the sake of consistency, when given a range of percentages (e.g. 10-15%), I would take the top end of the range for the victor.
Losing Round 1
Well, to say that I didn’t do well would be an understatement. Overall, Death Gun took out YAH BOI in 92% of the matchups. Starting with the desert, Death Gun won 92% of the time. I wasn’t totally surprised. After all, I’m not well-versed in long-distance shooting, nor is the standard 55 grain 5.56 NATO cartridge packing an effective punch at sniping distances. The city environment early on saw Death Gun taking my ass out 87% of the time. My boost to win percentages came from Death Gun needing to move and engage in short distances, which would level the playing field a bit.
With that said, there was something that kept occurring in Death Gun’s win percentages that explained his lopsided stats. Both environments, the AIs kept saying that Death Gun’s most common win condition relied heavily on his use of optical stealth camo. Many would’ve celebrated an 8-13% win rate against such a fearsome opponent. But all I could think about was how much that literal cheat-code was thumbing the scale. Call YAH BOI a sore loser, but he just had to scratch the itch. What would happen with equal non-firearm loadouts?
Round 2
Running it back this time without Death Gun’s precious Couldn’t Save Meryl cheat code and his map disappearance reward from Call of Duty 2, my odds of victory utterly skyrocketed. The desert terrain took a 92% win rate for the masked murderer down to a 50-50 coin-flip. Essentially, Death Gun would need to move much more than he previously did, and him missing one perfect shot essentially signed his own death certificate within AR-15 effective firing range. Ambush attempts, a tactic he ordinarily loves, were punished with extreme prejudice by the Mossberg.
The city was where YAH BOI absolutely folded the former Laughing Coffin member 78% of the time. My real-life shotgun skills mentioned earlier meant that within tight quarters I absolutely annihilated him. Death Gun also lost rifle-based matchups where he didn’t drop me with the first shot. Basically, his aggression was completely nullified. This made sense in a way; Death Gun didn’t hold a monopoly on either athleticism or aggression over YAH BOI like he did against Kirito.
Closing Thoughts
Overall, YAH BOI won just about two-thirds of the time when cheat codes were removed, versus only 8% of the time when Death Gun was literally invisible. With invisibility on, Death Gun executed me with a Tokarev an absurdly high number of times. Interestingly enough, when invisibility was removed, the Tokarevs didn’t matter at all for either user. Death Gun’s sword was rarely used across the board, and was a complete non-factor in Round 2. A combination of counter-agility and 12-gauge prowess from YAH BOI meant that Death Gun never got close enough to try to stab me with it sans his precious GameShark mods. Thus, my original hypothesis was wrong about close distances: sword-fighting and clinch ranges were completely irrelevant.
Read it and weep, Redditors!
The klopping of strained Gucci heels draws ever closer. “So what was the point of this article, Dan? To stroke your own ego?” Karen barks as she glares at me while drinking her 700-calorie Starbucks milkshake coffee. No actually. The reason for this article is to drive home a central point. With a high-agency mindset and some daily actions taken that build into constructive habits, the typical man can significantly boost his odds of survival. In fact, not only could he survive, he’d be in a much better position to either counter or even take the fight to the bad-guy in the hunted by a video game protag situation.
For fuck’s sake, stop selling yourselves short!
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