As I mentioned in my last post, “Halo (part 1),” I celebrated “Guys Night” with a group of my friends back in San Jose last week. The newest version of Halo had come out, and my friends wanted to celebrate. I pretty awful at videogames these days, but I like that group of guys, so I figured it’d be okay to spend most of the evening watching my character reboot after being killed.
In order to “warm up” for the real games (i.e. capture the flag, king of the hill, slayer, etc), we played a few rounds of Zombie or “infection.” 1-2 players start off being infected–they move a little bit quicker, they take longer to kill, and they have the special sword weapon that helps them easily kill. Once they kill one of the other players, that person becomes a zombie, hunting down other players until everyone is infected.
The rounds are short and rather hilarious. Several times we ended up with seven guys pursuing one guy into the corner with him yelling at the fellow players in the room. It was crazy how quickly others became infected. The first 1-2 might take a minute or so, but after that, it was almost instantaneous. The more people playing as Zombies, the quicker everyone became one.
Again, the videogame version of this is fun, the real-life version isn’t.
No, I’m not talking about real-life Zombies (although I am a fan of those “in the event of a Zombie attack, follow me!” t-shirts). I’m referring to how quickly negativity and apathy spread around our schools and organizations.
I was recently at a leadership conference where I heard student leaders say, “No one on our campus would do this. No one ever participates.”
I do not doubt that participation is a struggle for most organizations. There is a reason that businesses spend huge sums of money marketing their products, hoping to get consumers involved with them.
I’m not a fan of the negativity though. When we give up and just wave that white flag, of course the negative forces around us will dominate. It’s so easy to be infected with apathy. The challenge is for us to infect those around us with something more positive.
During some of the rounds of Halo, my friends–knowing I’m awful at the game–would give me a tips about the best weapon to get, where to find a shield, or perhaps how I could help them with a quick attack campaign. Sure, my character still died more than most players, but during these tip rounds, I could stay afloat a little bit longer.
Again, I’m not the best at the game, but I like people with whom I can play the game.
Our challenge as leaders is to take “the game” (school, projects, work, etc), and find ways to make it more appealing. Some of our peers are just trying to stay alive. Some are trying to develop a skill. We need to make it fun.
There are far too many forces making things negative and the more people infected by it, the tougher it’s going to be.
We need to launch that campaign of positivity.