Taken from the article at this website: Scrub - Television Tropes & Idioms
This article is pretty old, but seeing as new players are constantly joining the community, it serves as a wake-up call for those who have never understood what they themselves may be doing. For ease, I copied it here for you.
DEFINITION OF A SCRUB:
The videogame is what it is. It defines what you can do and what you can’t do. In competitive games, the rules exist as written into the game world. Sometimes, this leads to an over-powered character. Sometimes, it leads to a Game Breaker.
Some competitive videogame players accept that some characters/races/etc are more powerful than others. When they’re being competitive, they play one of the characters/races that are on the top tier and ignore the rest.
Some people do not hold to this. They develop house rules designed to bring what he/she feels is a game imbalance back into balance, so that there is more variety (after all, if a game has 20 characters, but you would clearly lose using 18 of them, then there are only 2 characters actually worth playing). Essentially, a self-made game patch. This is all well and good.
However, it can go too far. When it does, you have the Scrub.
A Scrub is a player of a competitive videogame who adamantly believes that his or her “house rules” should apply to everyone to promote his or her view of “fair play”. If a scrub sees a move or strategy he doesn’t like (or can’t beat), he bans it (if only in his own mind), and complains that anyone who uses it is cheap.
Yep, that’s right, he’s the exact opposite of the Stop Having Fun Guy…
…but just as annoying.
The mistake the Scrub often makes is making up rules too soon. The Metagame can often turn an apparent imbalance on its head. A lower tier character can become a higher tier one, or vice versa. Or something that seemed initially very unbalanced can be countered with time and effort at learning the tactic. The Scrub circumvents this by simply banning the practice without making a good faith effort in actually getting around it with the in-game rules.
The Scrub will often consider the tactics that he bans “Game Breakers”. However, what constitutes a Game Breaker varies from person to person. Within a particular skill level, a game can be broken in that a simple repetitive tactic can lead to success. A more skilled player could stop it, but if it requires a great deal more skill to stop the tactic than to perform it, then it can easily appear to be a Game Breaker.
What ultimately makes the Scrub undesirable isn’t the rulesetting; it is the attitude. What distinguishes the Scrub from someone who is simply trying to make their game fun without having to invest hugely into skill progression is that the Scrub believes that his way is the only proper way to play the game.
Scrubs may also put down others who use certain characters/teams/etc. for simply using them like everyone else is using in order to win. In other words, they **don’t like it when people use something that everyone else is since it’s not “original” and will even go as far as accusing these people at sucking at the game for not using anyone or anything besides the top tiers. **
Believe it or not, the Wii has also caused a stir between scrubs and Stop Having Fun Guys. Games that allow different controllers to be used, like in Mario Kart Wii or Super Smash Bros Brawl, have caused people to argue over what control scheme is the better way to play. For example, some scrubs will try to put down players for not using the Wii Wheel in Mario Kart Wii simply because the non wheelers are using “easier” controls and that the game was meant to be played with the wheel. In other words, they feel that you have to use the motion controls like the Wii was advertised for in order to be a good player. (On a note for Brawl, best not get a Scrub started on the morality of using items. The ensuing argument will be exhausting.)
Combined with the Noob, a scrub can quickly turn into a God Modder.
The Scrub is the antithesis of the Stop Having Fun Guy, although one could argue that the two are very similar ? Stop Having Fun Guys demand that everyone use the most efficient and powerful choices (with failure to do so considered proof of inferiority), while Scrubs insist that everyone follow their personal house rules (with failure to do so considered cheating). Both make the mistake of taking things very seriously, both are more than willing to start a Flame War rather than let the other exist in peace, and both are eager to assign anyone to the side of their enemies who doesn’t agree with their style of play (if you’re not a Scrub, you must be a Stop Having Fun Guy, and vice versa). Fan Dumb at its finest!
This article and this and this contain some of the most thorough investigations of the “scrub” phenomenon you can find anywhere.
No examples, please. This article just defines a fan-speak term.
No flames please. Just a friendly reminder and heads-up. I know its old to some, but its may be new to others. :razzy:
