Big Buck Hunter: Meet the world’s best fake marksmen

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 16:00:00 +0000

If you’ve visited a bar in the last decade, you’ve seen men, and the women who humor them, shooting pixelated deer with plastic shotguns. They’re playing "Big Buck Hunter," a video game franchise that has thrived because millions of Americans who have no interest in hanging out in the woods at 4 a.m. or filleting smelly carcasses will happily spend Friday nights getting blitzed and killing Blitzen.

One summer night at Good Co., a bar in the hipster-nexus of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, punk standards ruled the stereo and the bartender’s mustache curled up at the ends, as if it was 1870. On the patio, grown men played beanbag toss, and inside Alex DerHohannesian, 32, and Andy Lin, 34, trained for the "Big Buck Hunter" world championships.

They took turns shouldering a weapon and firing into the newest version of the game, "Big Buck HD," which renders vast wilderness landscapes like mountain ranges and prairies in almost disorienting depth, as if the flat-screen monitor was a hatch in a low-flying helicopter. After each volley they pumped the guns rapidly with a loud, springy clack. Between screens, when a player has a moment to reach for his beer, “Big Buck Girls,” in skimpy hunting gear, materialize on-screen and wiggle for the players' amusement.

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Big Buck Hunter: Meet the world’s best fake marksmen