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Teabagging is as old as the Halo franchise itself, with the act of crouching and uncrouching upon your defeated enemy being seen as a gesture of victory and bragging in the world of multiplayer first-person shooters. While 343i has attempted to create AI enemies which follow human patterns in Halo: Infinite’s multiplayer practice modes, the team purposefully stopped just short of allowing the AI to teabag enemies.
During the recent Halo: Infinite multiplayer flight test, some players noticed that the AI enemy players seemed to teabag opponents upon a successful kill. This stirred up some opinions within the Halo community.
In response, and as reported by Eurogamer, a 343i representative discussed their approach to the AI bots, explaining their ethos and why they would not allow the AI opponents to teabag enemies, despite how prevalent the act is within the community.
Speaking to Eurogamer, the rep said “Bots are primarily a part of Halo Infinite to help players learn and experiment with the multiplayer experience. We want players to feel comfortable making mistakes against bots, because making mistakes means you're improving and working on skills you haven't mastered yet. We never want to punish learning, especially not by having bots engage in behaviours that a player could feel is exclusionary.”
Did the bot just…? pic.twitter.com/PYkaANHD3l
— whisper (formerly snipe.) (@reqsihw) July 31, 2021
Explaining the teabagging-like motion witnessed by some players during the preview, the rep stated this to be a bug, saying “An example of what could look like teabagging is a bug with bot traversal that was in the technical preview build…In reality, the bot was just struggling to go up the stairs.”
The rep concluded by saying “The bots are meant to be welcoming and fun for players of all skill levels, and a feature designed to taunt a player would oppose that goal.”
While teabagging is seen as a mostly harmless gesture, it could be seen by some to be offensive and insensitive. As such, it makes sense that 343i would want to stay away from this, no matter how realistic it would make the AI feel.
KitGuru says: What is your opinion on teabagging? Is it representative of the wider issues surrounding toxicity in the industry? Or is it a harmless gesture? Let us know down below.
