6. The People Who Are Too Old For It
Nobody is really too old for laser tag. Some people just think that they are. So they don't show up. I can't really comment more on how their laser tag ability is, because I have never seen them play. I can speculate on what they do when they aren't playing laser tag. They're probably crying. Or maybe home renovations.
5. The Pre-Pubescent
Thanks to the desensitization to violence in many world societies, a lot of kids grow up imaging they are shooting their friends in war games. Some kids even get toy guns that make noise. But these guns don't shoot lasers. Laser tag guns do. So, when these almost-old-enough-to-be-super-awkward kids get their first laser tag action, they think it's a fun bunch of hootenanny. They go crazy! They arrange to have birthday parties at the laser tag arena with all their friends, eat pizza, drink a lot of pop and then get in fights with those same friends at the sleepover portion of the party later that evening.
It all sounds good and fun, but unfortunately it doesn't stay this way. I hate to say it, but some of these kids love laser tag so much that as they grow older they move onto more "hardcore" experiences, like, yes, paintball. And they don't just play paintball recreationally, but become more serious about it than anyone should be. You know those guys that show up at paintball arenas with full-out camouflage, walkie-talkies, grenades, war paint and military-grade paintguns and start barking orders at all the people that are there because their groom-to-be friend is a nerd? Yeah - those guys all started in laser tag. Be careful, cause it could happen to you.
4. The Noob
These folks are first timers. Or maybe they're not. They might just be terrible at laser tag. And that's ok - we're not as hardcore as the paintball guys so we don't judge a person's survival ability by first-world war games.
The Noob usually likes to walk around the arena a lot without much sense of purpose. They may go an entire game before realizing that their gun wasn't working. Or they may never notice at all. It's fine though - just take the opportunity to gets some points from shooting them. Even better, you may be able to convince them that they're on your team, even though their lights are red and yours are green. It's not mean to lie to a Noob - they'll never notice the difference anyways.
3. The Kamikaze
I like to think I fit into this category. The Kamikaze ruins the fun for The Camper (see below), but makes a lot of fun for themselves in the process. They realize that once you are shot in laser tag, you will be alive again within 10 seconds. So, you should use this time to run up to the person who hit you and keep pulling your trigger in hopes of tagging them before they tag you. If you are unsuccessful, just do it again!
Or, you could just run around screaming and doing dodge rolls. They look cool. Or pin an opponent to the ground and sit on them. You'll probably get shot a lot and lose points in the mean time, but boy, you'll be rolling in the memories!
2. The Camper
This person is deathly afraid of lasers. I don't know why - maybe they had a bad experience with someone shining a laser pointer in their eye one time. Whatever, the reason, they hide in a corner and refuse to move for the entire game. This is usually a fairly effective strategy, unless a Kamikaze comes by and, with their own disregard for laser fire, doesn't mind getting his 100 times in order to hit the Camper 10 times. Campers usually get really mad that the Kamikaze is not taking the game seriously. The Kamikaze will usually respond by making a wise-crack and dodge-rolling away.
1. The Hardcore
The Hardcore is like the Pre-Pubescents who migrated to paintball, only the migration never occurred. They love laser tag, mainly because they're good at it. Yet they fail to see that the reason they're so much better than everyone else is because everyone else has decided to be good as useful skills.
The Hardcore usually picks an alias indicative of their intensity. While normal people just go with a funny name (or try to, at least), a Hardcore will have their alias as SlayerElite or ShadowDeath or Feerce (the word is intentionally misspelled because they're too hardcore to spell it normally). They obsess over stats, using terms like "K/D Ratio", "Hit Percentage" and "I'm ranked 9th on the Alpha Tier, Northwest Division".
I recommend trying to brag around Hardcores, because they will always try to one-up you. Even if they don't want to. They're genetically obligated to try, though, so it can get fairly annoying for them if you try to brag around them. I recommend trying to exhaust one out. If you brag enough around a Hardcore, they will eventually get so tired from one-upping you that they will spontaneously fall asleep.
