Teen Isn’t “TKed” in Online Game for 8 Minutes

In a startling victory for online gamers around the world, 16 year-old Daryl Anderson was able to experience the unimaginable in his favorite multiplayer first-person shooter modification for Electronic Arts' popular Battlefield 1942, Desert Combat.

During an intense 64-player match on a horribly lagged clan-rented server, Daryl was not team-killed for a record 8 minutes, something experts say is an amazingly rare feat. Team-killing is also known as "TKing," which is the act of killing a member of your own team, group, or unit. While there are instances where team-killing is done on accident, it has become a regular intentional battle tactic on Desert Combat servers.

Analysts say the chances of being killed in a plane crash are 1 in 25,302,203. Chances of being killed by falling out of bed are 1 in 2,000,192. Chances of killed in a tornado are 1 in 1,938,203.

"Daryl definitely beat the odds, which nearly defy the laws of physics and the very fabric of the universe," states Mark Brenner, a statistics analyst for the Concord Research Group. "The chances of not getting killed by a teammate in a game of Desert Combat are one in six billion, whereas the chances of getting killed by a teammate are one in, well, one."

In fact, according to the Concord Research Group, there's a better chance of being hit by space debris than not being team-killed.

Desert Combat is an online multiplayer game where individuals among two teams, the United States and Iraq, go head-to-head in various warfare scenarios, combating each other for high score supremacy.

Many tactics involved in the game for such domination include "camping" in a hidden location at the enemy's primary base and knocking off new soldiers who enter the game, blowing up friendly aircraft and vehicles so other comrades don't have the chance to use them, and using exploits such as removing the game's fog effect to increase view distance and taking advantage of clipping errors to hide in solid objects.

"After the first five minutes of nothing but legitimate deaths, I almost wanted to lay a few mines on the ground and hop in a Bradley so I could drive over them. I almost felt like I was in another dimension. It just didn't feel right. I wasn't playing Desert Combat the way I remember it," Daryl says.

Daryl managed to be killed only by enemy forces for 8 minutes and 12 seconds before he was killed by a teammate who ran him over with a Hummer.