Meet the Competition, Pakman3000

Update: Pakman writes to tell me that the new leader of the Elite clan is CantSt0pMeh. I'll see if I can track him down for his perspective, but Pakman's is also very unique. Worth a read, I think.

Next up on the interview block is Pakman3000, founder of US Military Gamers! This was transcribed from an xBox Live audio chat, and so isn't a word for word verbatim reproduction of our interview, but I did my damndest to come close. I'm a reasonably fast typist, but not a court stenographer, unfortunately. Transcript after the jump!

[Pony] Please tell us about yourself.

[USMG] I'm an ex-Air Force vet, from Belize, central america. I came here, finished high school, and joined the air force. After that, I got out, finished up college, and then I hopped back in as part of the reserves after taking a year off. I joined back up in my senior year, then graduated, got a job, and kept up with the reserves thing until about two years ago. But, who knows, I might get back in. Currently I work for the county as a sheriff's dispatcher, a 9-1-1 operator.

[Pony] Neat! Do you have any crazy 9-1-1 stories you can share?

[USMG] Ha, I have some great video. My situation is kind of unique, my station, we handle all the security for LA's metro transit: MetroLink, Metro buses. Any crimes that occur on mass transit are our jurisdiction, and the cool thing about where I'm at is that there are cameras everywhere. I can control these cameras, and we get some pretty awful stuff, pretty gruesome stuff, and some pretty weird stuff, all the time.

[Pony] Wow, sounds interesting.

[USMG] Yeah, I've seen people getting shot, killing themselves...

[Pony] Oh, that's pretty heavy. Not really the kind of stuff you can really put on YouTube.

[USMG] Yeah, the cops try to get there but they usually figure stuff out after the fact. We see things in real time, or can rewind; I have the guys at our station on speed dial, so I call them, they round guys up while I review video and we can solve shit right on the spot.

[Pony] That's pretty awesome.

[USMG] Yeah, it can be very rewarding when we help someone out from a console miles away.

[Pony] So is MW3 your first CoD?

[USMG] No, my first true FPS that I really got into was Medal of Honor on the first Playstation, then every iteration afterward while Stephen Spielberg was still involved. You know, the Private Ryan/Band of Brothers kind of theme, before they screwed it all up. The studio behind it, 2015, they splintered off and created CoD on the PC, then I got on consoles playing Call of Duty 2, and then the rest of the CoDs, on and on.

[Pony] So you've got kind of a long history with Call of Duty!

[USMG] What, you don't?

[Pony] Nope, I started with Black Ops.

[USMG] Yeah, those guys, West and Zapanelli, they left EA to get more control: Medal of Honor was pretty sweet, but then they left EA and joined Activision. Now they've left for EA again for more creative control with Respawn Studios!

[Pony] Yeah, plus that whole lawsuit thing. So how about your hardware setup?

[USMG] Right now? Standard xBox controller and Turtle Beach PX5s. 46" TV. Not 3D, though. It's a great setup. I've had the whole surround sound receiver setup, and these headsets are better. My wife doesn't complain as much.

[Pony] Yeah, calibrating a surround system is not easy. How about your playstyle?

[USMG] Well, I have setups for everything from camping to run and gun. What I've been trying to do was accomplish all these prestige challenges. I've pretty much done all that; I'm working on the C-130 and I'll be done. I'm going for all golden guns next. For camping it's mostly MK14 and Type 95, I run and gun with the Mp7, and my all-purpose gun is the ACR.

[Pony] So how about USMG? How did the clan start?

[USMG] Well, it was started off by me and we have one other member who was around when it started up. It more or less began with MAG, if you remember that game...

[Pony] I remember hearing the name.

[USMG] It was an ambitious game, supposed to let you have 64 or 128 or some massive number of players online.

[Pony] So you started out just trying to pick up members for that?

[USMG] Yeah, but I was looking for something unique. It was like Call of Duty; there were a lot of kids talking trash, and I was looking for people I had something in common with. It just started growing from that. We were actually featured in the official xBox magazine at one point. I'll send you the article.

[Pony] So it sounds like most of the people weren't people you knew in RL.

[USMG] Nope, not at all. I started a free website and then we just grew from there until we got a member who runs websites and designs his own websites and has unlimited bandwidth who said he could help out, and now we've had our own little website for a while. We play on every platform, xBox, PS3, PC, even the Wii. We have guys who have never played with each other who hang out and chat, like PC and PS3 members I've never played with. But we interact a lot online. On the PC side we have a lot of guys playing Battlefield and EVE Online.

[Pony] So with the EVE Online, were you involved with the Goonsquad thing?

[USMG] Nope, this is the first I've heard of that.

[Pony] So with the vets only thing, I guess your clan is all people over 18?

[USMG] Well, we occasionally accept civilians who are interested in joining the military, but we limit it quite a bit because we don't want to dilute our brand. We have an age limit for civilians, only 21 and older, but if you served, you can be as young as 17. We won't turn you away. As far as branchwise, we've had a huge infulx of air force people, but mostly grunts, army and marines. I was part of the air force, but for a long time, we were primarily army and marines, and mainly PS3. There were a few of us out on an island with xBoxes, but since Elite came along, we've recruited a lot of people.

[Pony] Any hilarious clan games? I think I've told you about six gallon jugs before.

[USMG] Well, not really. I like the competitive nature of CoD; a lot of people hate on CoD, but it's the best as far as being able to hop in and hop out and compete. I think it's certainly the best game going that way.

[Pony] What's the toughest thing about running USMG?

[USMG] Well, the Elite portion is kind of like a subset of the clan. The thing that keeps people on the Elite side or not isn't performance; we don't care about K/D or whatever, but participation. We want people to play with their clan mates, be on the forums, and participate in clan ops. There are clans whose goal is to get bragging rights, but we want to be the premier military clan and getting to level 50. CoDz x SqaD, we don't care about those guys and we're not directly competing with you ponies; we want to beat the Marines, and the Air Force, etc. So the only thing I really have to manage is whether people participate, and if they don't, well, there are a lot of guys who want to be part of level 42 clan. Now, there are some guys who feel if they get kicked from the Elite clan, they're not part of the community, but nobody gets kicked from our community. If you send me a message saying that you screwed up and you want back in, if we have the space, we'll take you back. We know real life happens, we're all adults, and some of our guys are deployed. We have guys in basic training; things do come up. We have guys who will be gone in Afghanistan until 2013. If people let us know they'll be gone, their spot is secure. Some guys just don't give us the heads up, though.

[Pony] The most rewarding thing?

[USMG] Well, just uniting all these guys from the different branches. We all have different stories to share and different advice, so it's  agreat community. Have you seen our website?

[Pony] Yeah, I have seen this page! I was confused because everything was Battlefield-related.

[USMG] Yeah, that was the last interview we did. We have guys doing those kinds of interviews, and some guys who are going to start writing game reviews. We have a few secret projects too, that we want to get off the ground by the end of the year. Hopefully it'll be big enough that you read about it in GameSpot and Kotaku and stuff. We have a bunch of guys doing package drops for guys who are deployed. Oh, another thing I need to tell you is how we admit people. Other military clans, they'll admit anybody, people in high school. We have a different process; people go to our website and apply, then we have a voice interview. You have to have a mic, and it weeds out people who are lying about being in the military or their service.

[Pony] I can't imagine they're very popular.

[USMG] Being a military clan, we have a lot of alpha type personalities, guys who have seen a lot of shit, led guys into battle, so organizing can be tough. A lot of chiefs and not too many indians. You know how some people like to lord over their clans, tell people what to do? I didn't want to do that; I wanted more mutual respect. That meant decentralizing leadership and letting a lot of people run their own little bits of the clan. A lot of people ask me, as founder, about stuff, but I try not to be the go-to-guy or be-all end-all. We went through a lot of growing pains, and you might too. I've seen a lot of clans fall when one guy is running the show. We have a lot of different roles, and staff with sub-roles. I'm the founder, but my role is just on the recruiting side. We have a group that does press and publishing. We have a group that does intramural tournaments. A group that's our design bureau.

A [USMG] recruiting poster

[Pony] Who's your favorite pony?

[USMG] Uh, I've never watched the show... [cheat sheet]... It's gotta be Nightmare Moon, that dude looks badass.

[Pony] Finally, any possible interviewees in your clan?

[USMG] CantStopMeh. He has like a zero and shit in there somewhere. I'll copy and paste his name...

 [Pony] Thanks so much for your time! Hopefully we can do this again in the future!