The act of shooting in the direction of teammates to kill enemies.
Typically in cooperative videogames, backscratching occurs when enemies are surrounding a friendly
player or NPC, and the
player shoots or attacks almost directly at the friendly
player or NPC to clear the enemies off their back. This is more common in games with melee enemies and very little or no friendly fire damage, such as the popular and beloved Left 4 Dead series.
The term was originally comes from armored
tank warfare, where if enemy infantry are crawling all over a friendly tank trying to plant a sticky bomb or open the hatch or shoot inside or something, a tank
will shoot their machine
gun directly at the friendly tank, causing ricochet to kill the enemy infantry, leaving the heavily armored friendly tank relatively unscathed.
Have you played Left 4 Dead 2 yet? Go play it and experience the magic of backscratching!
Term Officially Coined by the professional
player Kazoooooooooooooooooooooo
