Two arena teams receive sponsorships

[Paelos]

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

[Venkman]

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 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 :)

[Merusk]

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.

[Kageru]

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.

[Calantus]

Sports don't improve your life over and above gaming in any way.

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

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.

[Rasix]

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.

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

[Venkman]

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.

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.

[Megrim]

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?

Is actually. They are still going hard out.

[Xerapis]

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

[Jayce]

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).

[bhodi]

intro video of the tv show
An actual match, look 44 seconds in for the "screaming fans shot"
Another, better captured
An arena pic

[Hoax]

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.

[Paelos]

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.

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

[MrHat]

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.

[Xanthippe]

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."

[Jayce]

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.

[Raging Turtle]

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.

[Threash]

Competitive gaming FTW

[Paelos]

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

[Venkman]

Fatal1ty does not agree :)

[WayAbvPar]

Fatal1ty does not agree :)

DT: What is behind the name Fatal1ty?

JW: Fatal1ty came from the word "fatality".

Thanks for clearing that up.

<insert ORLY owl here>

[Venkman]

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.