f13.net

I guess it was just a matter of time, links:

http://www.check6gaming.com/news.php?id=67
http://www.teampandemic.net/article/101

Figures the one Canadian is a Warlock.  Bastards all of them!

Spectator eSport? Right. I'm sure that millions of people look forward to a Sunday afternoon in front of the TV set watching people play WoW.

Yeah, this was tried way back in the time of Quake 1.  It's really caught on...

"WoW has like a billion subscribers.  If I can get even a fraction of them to use my product or service, I'll be rich!  Rich, I tell you!  Hey, where did all my money go?"

You wasted all of it buying Ale and Whores in UO, you filthy rollplaya

My cable tv channels don't seem to have this. Is it on PPV or something?

 :roll:

Uh, hang on, so two teams on this battlegroup are actually being sponsored to play?  And, like, no one else is?  I'm not entirely up to date on the way the arena system works, but wouldn't these big, professionally sponsored teams be going up against the other, high ranked but still unsponsored teams?  So the end result is that we've got something like a hockey game featuring the Detroit Red Wings versus Jim and Pete and some of their buddies from the stockroom at Kinkos?  Sounds... thrilling?  I guess?

Also, who the hell came up with these names?  They sound like my mailbox looks.
"Noktyn",  "Sck",  "Reznap", "Iamvhell", "Ecilam", "Nitrana", "Kintt" ... man, was the random name generator broken that day, or what?  How the fuck am I even supposed to pretend to care about someone named "xqtr"?

Backwards names woo!  "Panzer", "Malice".  Not sure which would be better though.  If I REALLY wanted to be Malice, but it's taken.  Do you go backwards, or do you go Hawaiian?  In the great name judging, prophesied in Revelations, which ranks lower?

No, because the Detroit Red Wings were selected by people who know a lot about the professional game and who pay huge sums to ensure that they get some of the very best players. This is a "professional" team of pals who fancy themselves as shit hot, who have proven to be capable of playing at the top of a league table for at least a short time, but who don't have a manager and coach that will drop them for a better performing player whenever financially practical. So they ain't got shit on Jim and Pete except maybe some beer money.

"Iamvhell" is supposed to be a clever play on words (I am well + hell), or something.

Anyway, what Righ said. What strikes me as odd is that everyone's hyping up these arena teams (the epeen factor in the Bloodlust battlegroup forums is off the charts), but it's not like Bloodlust is the only battlegroup. There have been no inter-battlegroup matches yet, so there's no way to know if the Powertrip team can beat the Outplayed team (#1 in my battlegroup, Cyclone), for example.


-- Z.

Ok so this is going to make me look really bad but I just can't help myself. "Iamvhell" was originally just "Vhell" and was in Nurfed as an undead priest. He and Noktyn, who was an undead warrior of the same name, rerolled for BC due to personal differences with some other Nurfed members. I guess Vhell was taken on Tich so he took Iamvhell, probably equal parts because he likes the name and because he is semi-e-famous for being the original armor priest and taking a number of 5v5 PVP videos. I know this (and surmised the rest) because I used to read up when he posted to see if he had any new insights into healing priest PVP to share because he knew his stuff.

Apart from the Avatar, how does that make you look bad ?

It doesn't? Good, I was afraid I'd come off as a fanboi. :P

Step 1:  Sponsor World of Warcraft catasses to dominate!
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!

We predicted something like this years ago, then laughed about the stupidity of it.  It's still a stupid idea.

So anyway, Check 6 gaming is sponsoring not just the team, but the whole guild?  Their release says they're going to give the guild a new site and vent server, etc.   What does check 6 get out of it?  Do enough people visit the Insurrection website that plasting their logo and selling ad-space on the guild site (as is bound to happen) is going to generate them revenue, or is this just geeks sponsoring geeks?

Are these 'professionals' now going to pull down a salary?  If so, will it be enough to live on, or will it be 'hey I'm a pizza delivery guy now, because I need a flexible schedule and the ability to quit if I have to show up on a "pro-gaming" event."  Sucks to be the guy who gets fired after a year or two then has to explain that big gap in his resume.   

Fuck, I can't even imagine being FORCED to play the game long after I was sick of it, simply because it's now my job.   Can you imagine still being forced to play UO or EQ or hell even AC right now, becuase you were part of a 'professional' guild?

  How about not being able to quit the guild of asshats you find yourself with, because you've no other prospects.  That's kharmic justice right there.

If it's none of the above, then "professional" hardly applies.  It's more like, "we conned someone into picking-up our server tab."

RTS sports are on the rise in Europe apparently. And then there's Fatal1ty and whatever Samual Jackson is hosting this month.

Some could say it's stupid because of what was tried a billion years ago in a game even hardcore gamers couldn't argue looked good on TV. Or, we could look at what other stupid things have become ad-supported TV shows. People watch Poker for chrissakes. WoW Arena matches would be hella more interesting, particularly once the media pros got done iconifying the players, setting up controversies, and got Alienware on board.

This is mass market awareness today, even though way far less than mass market people can play as intended. So you've got millions of people who want to be conversant about it or trying to profit but don't have the gamer mentality to do it. These are the folks hiring the services in Second Life rather than learning the stupid UI themselves. These are the folks who also buy premade characters in dikus, to play for an hour and then present to some Board. These games by nature require much more from non-gamers than most non-gamers are every going to restructure their lives around, and yet they can make some sort of profit from being seen as being aware of it.

For them, for families, and for the has-been ex-players, this is for them.

Most players will not make zillions. It'll be like professional gamblers. For every 1 who makes it big, you've got hundreds who pull slots every day to pull down $40k a year or whatever.

People do watch poker, but I think it's for the same reason that people watch primetime gameshows. There's a ton of money at stake, and it gives you the illusion that you could do it as well. Plus, there's no age limit on poker like there is on gaming. I simply think "pro" gamers would be looked at as tools by other gamers. I know I would think so, and I game all the time. Hell, look at how we think the arena guys are tools. Even gamers don't want to celebrate other gamers being good at a game.

I don't think looking on them as tools is really the way to go, being good at a game doesn't warrant derision. Pissing on the idea of pro-gaming is fine if you like to, but most of the professional gamers are just gamers who happened to get good enough and someone said hey would you like some money to go with your gaming? There's nothing wrong with saying "hell yes" to that question. Those sponsored arena teams for instance are just like anybody else except they're getting money on the side.

No they aren't like anyone else at all. They are people who spend time beyond the normal amounts of "fun" playing a video game. They are the people who grind days in a row on end trying to get to the highest pvp ranking. We shit on those kind of people as catasses here daily. They are just paid catasses. And my point was that there isn't an audience for this. The reason that poker does so well is that regardless of who is watching, there is always money on the line because the people playing are fronting it. Video games don't work that way. If nobody gives a shit, there is no cash, and there is no point.

Forgive me for SirBruce'ing this but I'm going to do it to separate the 2 arguments.


Hence me saying "Pissing on the idea of pro-gaming is fine". There's a lot of problems with Progaming as current, the big one being that there's nothing on the line. Why does anyone care if <random team1> beats <random team2>? That's why sporting teams are based out of states/countires/regions/cities/whatever, it puts the pride of the <etc> on the line. That reflects on the people doing the paying though, not the people taking the money offered to do what they were doing anyway.


Competition IS fun for some people. I really really really do not get the point of everyone pulling out the "fun" card whenever powergamers or competitive people are talked about. It's just a different kind of fun that appeals to a certain type of person. Is the amateur sports person who trains every other day to be competitive against other amateurs but will never go pro a sad sad individual? Or are they not because they're playing a sport and not a game?

Also, these are the people who would pvp ALL THE TIME when there were no points to be made. Vhell was the person who organised the roaming 5v5 PVP nights on Archimonde and later on the server they migrated to. There was nothing to be gained there, and it wasn't set up as a competition with winners and losers, they just had a bunch of teams who wandered around a specified zone and fought whatever groups they came across until the night ended. So all they got out of it was fun, which is what they're getting out of it now. Only they're getting paid for it too.

EDIT: You know what, point two is irrelevant. Fun is relative. Some people enjoy shitting on someone else's face in a game, but I'm not going to celebrate them for it. The main point is that the market sucks for this, and that I'll personally never respect or watch someone playing a videogame for a living.

I didn't say they deserved your respect or that they are worth watching, I just don't think someone should be shat on for being competitive and getting paid for it.

I don't respect people throwing javelins at all. Now snooker, on the other hand...

No different from weekend baseball with friends versus professional leaguers who do it for money. You can't tell me you believe every professional athlete is only doing it for the fun of it. And practicing for professional sports is pretty grindy too.

That is happens to require smarter team coordination, much more physical exertion, is already established as a profit-sharing venture, and is much more culturally acceptable (all of these by orders of magnitude), does not diminish the fact that they all too started as hobbyiest activities that eventually garnered an audience companies could monetize in many ways.

WoW Arena battles (as RTS and FPS games) are perfect for advertising, promotions, idols, stats, ladders, sponsorships, and so on.

And no, the people who get promo'd/sponsored will in no way resemble the regular WoW player any more than the people who make money in SL/Entropia represent the averages there. But this doesn't matter. There's money to be made from secondary/corollary businesses, and those businesses have a responsibility to greed capitalism to try.

So, this guy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Kramnik) doesn't deserve any respect as a professional gamer?  Or him? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curt_Schilling)  How about him? (http://www.rogerfederer.com/en/index.cfm)  Him? (http://www.nicklaus.com)

They're all 'gamers', just different mediums.

*No, in no way do I think these WoW pro's are any where near on the same level as the above legends.  But the point remains, they all play a game, and get paid to do so.

OK, seriously. Stop comparing physical sports to this. It's not the same at all. We're talking about sweaty ego-nerds playing video games versus athletes improving their bodies and lives. Athletic prowess has been celebrated since the dawn of civilization.

As far as the "do they deserve to be shat upon" I would say no, but they do deserve a kick in the ass. When you are getting paid to play a video game that's sort of a wakeup call they your life goals are pretty out of whack. If it's your ambition to become the best person ever at WOW arenas and you're willing to put in the ungodly hours that it entails alone with your computer and "online buddies", then yes I think that's a waste of humanity, and I don't think it deserves money or attention. I think it probably deserves some therapy.

EDIT: And in answer to the chess thing, yes I often think they are batshit insane for wanting to be that good at chess, even though it is a game of intelligence. Look at the social issues many of the grandmasters have had just dealing with other human beings.

Is this because they became chess nuts, or did they become chess nuts because their mental makeup made it easier for them to become chess nuts, and they have trouble dealing without other human beings for similar reasons (i.e. the aforementioned mental makeup).

As far as whether an "athlete" deserves respect or not I think it depends on the game.  If the game is deep enough that the distance between pro and amateur is great, then they deserve respect.  I know I can't be a pro football/baseball/basketball/futbol player, a NASCAR driver, a golf player or a chess grandmaster - so for these definitely yeah, they deserve respect.  All those involve varying degrees of physical ability.  They also require varying degrees of mental ability.

WoW, imo, isn't deep enough to allow for large differences in ability between "pro" and "amateur".  That said, anyone with a job deserves a certain amount of respect.

See this? This is you proving my point. You have something against these gamers but not sports people because it's the done thing to bash gamers and exault athletes. Sports don't improve your life over and above gaming in any way. Oh sure they'll do that if you're not getting fit some other way, but that is not the exclusive domain of sports. What does the second hour of training in a day do for you in everyday life anyway?

As opposed to the social issues many famous athletes have had just dealing with other human beings?

Careful, your biases are showing.

I respect chess players for what they do, I would just never want to put myself through that kind of training over such an insular game. Yes, I'm biased to outdoor activities because I've seen how great a benefit they have on children and adults, and I know that they help your social skills with teamwork and a sense of community. Chess is a great ancient game of intelligence, and the people that are very good at it are by nature top notch in that department, in the same way that popular athletes are tops in physical prowess. Maybe there are more similarities in the distain for the common man than I give it credit for, but it's a side-issue. It's not the main point here.

The point is video-gaming. Not football, baseball, chess, cricket, or fucking tiddlywinks. Are you honestly all telling me that you look at people who are playing videogames (especially WoW as an example) for a living and don't say to yourselves, "Geez, why not do something more with your life?"

The comparisons to other things aren't apt at all, and no matter how much you try to make video-gaming into the Super Bowl, it never will be.

At this point, you're done. You have lost your damn mind.

I wonder where Hank Aaron would be if he had put the effort and drive into hitting 755 homers into something else?

As an athlete, I agree with you a very large degree:  Athletics and sports > video games, *especially in regards to ones physical (and mental) well being*.


You were doing ok until you said that nonsense. 

Thank God, I was starting to feel like the only person who understood that point in the thread. And my guess is that Hank Aaron would be selling cars, since he does that now. Still, I wouldn't be the one telling a young prospective Hammering Hank to stop swinging, but I would kick his ass off the computer and tell him to go outside. It's my "bias" as Xanthippe pointed out. I don't really have any shame about admitting that.

You're not the only one.  You are, however, the only one willing to argue -- among a bunch of computer geeks -- that sitting in front of a monitor for hours at a stretch is wasting what could otherwise be productive time.

Know your audience, know a losing battle.

Now that's no fun  :-D

The only difference is that some activities have a clearly defined future.

• Baseball players are easy. Good enough = career. Nowhere near all of them make the big bucks. But if you see kids playing baseball, as a parent you can imagine them on a pitching mound someday.
• On the other side you get somebody like that Kung Fu world champion who was on NPR the other night. He's out of that probably forever because he hurt himself while working at his real job (where "real" is defined by the one that pays the bill).
  
  

Video games just have a social stigma right now because so many people who don't understand them think it's easy to become good at them. And I say this as someone who sucks at games because I don't want to bother dedicating time to them for the uncertain future they'd give me. At 37 I'm not going to win FPS sponsorships.

But the fascination I have with this topic is how we could be on the cusp of video games becoming mainstream sport. In a lifetime when I started with Pong :)

If it were just "boo-hoo poor misunderstood video games" then you wouldn't find gamers arguing to the contrary, yes?  It's not like Paelos, snake or even myself don't understand these electronic games.

It provides fewer tangible benefits, for more tangible drawbacks even when you discount the social stigma. Not to mention the ever-evolving nature of video games makes the whole affair kinda silly... or are there still people out there trying to 'be the best' at Super Mario 3?   These aren't rule-changes, or simple inter-league differences that happen every 2 or 3 months.

Specatator sports as a whole bores me silly. Whether it's some freak payed huge money to become a master of inflated bladder manipulation, or some other freak investing thousands of hours in slaughtering video game characters is all the same to me. It's cool if they want to do that with their lives, but why anyone would want to waste time watching them is a mystery to me.

Ok, let me use myself as an example. I jog for about half an hour every morning depending on what routes I take, then light weights in the afternoon. Some weekends I'll also do some boxing training because it's fun for me (too many rocky movies as a kid I reckon) and a friend's an amateur boxer so we can hang out. That leaves me fit and feeling way better than I did before I was exercising every day (now I just need a regular sleeping pattern... one of these days). What would sports do for me over and above that? I'm already more than fit and healthy enough for daily life, sports training would only pay off for the sport I was playing.

That's what I'm saying here. There are huge benefits to playing sports if you aren't already getting fit some other way. Take a basement dweller who's biggest exercise is to walk to the fridge and make him play a sport and it will improve his life no question. Or he could go jogging every day and get basically the same benefit.

Now gaming improves my hand to eye coordination, my reaction time, my ability to process information quickly, and the ability to make decisions on the fly with imperfect information. Those are all helpful in improving myself, so I don't see gaming as being a waste of time compared to sports. I also think improving yourself is a rediculous measure for worthiness. People aren't robots, if they find something fun and legal they should fucking do it.

Note that I still think professional gaming is pretty silly at present, mostly because there's eleventy-billion games out there, the flavour of the month changes every... month, and there's a whole lot less people interested in watching pro gaming than pro sports. I just don't think playing a game competitively and getting paid for it makes you a sweaty ego-nerd. Also note that those guys have jobs in the real world, they're not making a living out of WoW, just money on the side for what they were doing anyway.

I expect this whole "entertainment" fad to blow over anytime now.

A valid point, but that's why you don't see CRPG tournaments. Look at FPS games. What, fundamentally, has changed about that entire genre since Doom TCP/IP? Except for the offshoot stuff like tactical shooters, and that whole internet thing, it's still about team coordination and mouse dexterity in a static environment with a clear goal. Weapons, vehicles, shields, ammo or not, flying or not, it's just icing. Why are people still playing Counterstrike? A bit further afield, how was friggin' Starcraft the number 1 competitive game in Korea for so long after we got bored with it here?

Drawbacks? How about guys who can't get over the testerone/adrenaline-fueled idolization and go off to commit all sorts of various crimes? That's not the norm in organized sports any more than the lifeless schmuck that lives in their basement until they off themselves for a bad AH bet is the norm in video games. It's just as a society we've grown to expect the anti-establishment crap from some forms of spectator entertainment. Again, this is not the norm for sports, but it doesn't surprise anyone when it happens either.

I'm not saying video games are a good sport, and I do agree there's a lot of tangible drawbacks. All I am saying is that video games can't automatically be discounted as a potential advertiser/promotion-supported spectator sport because of what we veterans think of them. There's a whole lot of people who are going to try and make money on this over the next few years, because they think differently. Maybe they'll be right. Maybe not.

Is actually. They are still going hard out.

They have an entire TV channel devoted to nothing but Starcraft matches, professional and amateur.

Anyone got a Youtube or Google video link?  This I gotta see (even if it's in Korean).

intro video of the tv show (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsY2Cg6iSwM)
An actual match, look 44 seconds in for the "screaming fans shot" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Ro2Z94nd4)
Another, better captured (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIBVo1aIOUA&mode=related&search=)
An arena pic (http://www.brokentoys.org/images/korea/starcraft-room.jpg)

Awwww I missed Paelos being a judgmental asshat, I love trolling him when he's all worked up about how little respect some other group of people deserve.

Seriously anyone who didn't see the writing on the wall the second BG's were introduced is an idiot.  Is the world ready for eSports?  Fuck if I know or care.  It will happen eventually and I have nothing against it.  I've watched matches of:

Various fps games (Halo, Quake, CS)
Various rts games (SC, WC3)
I've also seen some crazy Korean GW coverage.

For the most part they just dont have good coverage yet, the action isn't tracked well and you spend too much time watching the actual player(s) instead of what is going on in-game.  The announcers suck and the whole thing comes off as pretty silly and boring.  Honestly I got more of a kick out of Tribes1 shoutcast coverage when I was a kid then I have of any of the tv offerings I've seen so far.  But come on people, has anyone here never watched a pvp video?  Or just watched a friend play video games in RL, there are tons of games and in-game activities that are really quite fun to watch.  I would rather watch some fighting game championship then golf or baseball for example.  Video games are a viable source of spectator entertainment, if you refuse to call them "sports" that's fine by me.  I refuse to call anything where the winner is decided by judges with scorecards a sport, to each their own.

But all this ego-nerd, sweaty loser talk?  Smells like fucking jealousy to me, otherwise why do you care?  It doesn't bother me that there are pro golfers, even if I dont respect the stupid game.

Ragging on eSports and people who are good enough to get a sponsorship for a game they were playing anyways is roughly ten times more lame then being one of those people who get a sponsorship.  This is especially true when your method of dissing them is an online forum.

There will be other times. I get angrier as it gets hotter.

I loved WC3 replays.  So much fun.  However, I got to control what I could watch, and fast forward through the stuff I didn't want to watch, i.e. boring stuff.

There's little difference between watching a bunch of football players play footballl or watching a F1 race or watching some geeky nerds play some video game.  Watching is still watching.

This thread seems like another case of "my hobby's awesome, yours is a waste of time."

Only Paelos seems to be saying that his hobby is a waste of time.

I agree strongly with Paelos.

Most of the people I know who do sports for fun are more well-adjusted and happier than most percent of the people that I know who do video games for fun.  And there's not really enough skill involved in WoW, or most video games, for someone to actually brag about what they can do.

/random anecdote - When I lived in South Korea, I found that watching Starcraft on tv with the sound off was a great way to amuse myself during that stupified half-drunk/half-hungover stage on Sunday morning.

Competitive gaming FTW (http://www.funtechtalk.com/diaper-wearing-gears-of-war-players-shut-down-tournament)

I'm saying it's a hobby, not a job.

Fatal1ty does not agree (http://news.digitaltrends.com/featured_article75.html) :)

Thanks for clearing that up.

<insert ORLY owl here>

Heh, I hadn't even read the whole thing. That's definitely an example of the dark side of popular media. Questions so softball they obviously came from a template.