QL.TV: f27 vs Defiance Postgame Report

QL.TV posted a postgame report of our match with Defiance a few days ago. Check it out at Quake-Live.tv.

Video Replay of f27 vs Defiance

QL.TV broadcasted our match against Defiance tonight and just uploaded a stream-quality video. A high quality VOD should be available next week.

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Update: QL.TV VOD of f27 vs Defiance

carnage vs smf on CA1

We played smf tonight for NGL and Daniel went 21-5.

Download f27-carnage’s POV vs smf

Download the demo above and extract the file to
%appdata%\id Software\quakelive\home\baseq3\demos\

To play the demo open up Quake Live and type /demo demoname from the console

Quake Live’s Missing Features

While we recognize that Quake Live is still in beta as id Software tackles the logistics of a centralized, community-oriented game platform, there are still many useful features from previous Quake 3 modifications (like CPMA, OSP, and RA3) that once provided some incredibly useful features, many of which became necessities for the established competitive community. 

• Statistics: Give us commands like CPMA’s +wstats and RA3’s /stats
   
• Locking Teams: Add the ability to lock/unlock teams. Necessary for public servers if a privatized pickup/scrimmaging system isn’t implemented.
   
• Coaching: Allow teams to invite a player to coach a team. Coaches can only spectate their team, team chat, issue timeouts, throw tantrums, etc.
   
• Spectator Control: Allow teams to lock or invite players from spectating a given team.
   
• Chat Tokens: Allow chat tokens in team-say binds (your location, who you damaged last, who damaged you last, who killed you last).
   
• Better Auto-screenshot/demo: Pull filename format from in-game data: name of player’s POV, team names, map name, and a timestamp.

Brain Kung Fu

Many of the features being demanded by the competitive community have already been streamlined and implemented over years of nourishment within the CPMA and OSP environments, and given arQon’s involvement with Quake Live, I’m sure everyone over at id headquarters is cognizant of this fact. The thing to be aware of is that the demands of a small niche of the game’s player-base (us hardcore Quake’o'philes) probably won’t dictate their actions or instill an immediate sense of urgency; there are grandiose obstacles that I’m sure the developers are tackling while the game is still in test.

Obstacles like:

• Accurate and near real-time tracking of the plethora of statistics and the awards tied to them
• Resolving the conflict of skill gaps between Quake enthusiasts and new adapters
• Browser compatibility, security, and general interface tweaks
• Building a worldwide infrastructure of servers to provide low-latency gaming to every geographic corner of the world

At least two of these roadblocks were manifested as early as 1997 when id Software first envisioned a centralization of player data with the launch of QuakeWorld. From Wikipedia:

For the first four months of its existence from December 1996 until April 1997, QuakeWorld (Version 1.25) sported its own global player ranking system where users were required to log into id Software’s master server with their own unique identifications each time so that game statistics were logged in a central location. This spurred competition between players striving to attain the highest rank, but also controversy over the fairness of the formula used in its calculation. This, and more significantly, the incredible network and manpower load placed on id Software’s servers overwhelmed the company’s rankings system that led them to abandon rankings entirely with the release of QuakeWorld Version 1.5 early in April 1997. The master servers thereafter only provided a list of active QuakeWorld servers.

Given the technological advances of the last 12 years, we feel confident in believing that id Software will be able to tackle the logistical problems that were otherwise unresolvable by the tools of an immature internet. The fact that id Software even gazed down this road so long ago is only indicative of their enlightened vision in the first place; a lot of what we already have in mind has probably already appeared on a white board in one of their meeting rooms.

However, the divide between skill levels in the game presents a wholly new problem that could only have manifested itself now, after more than a decade of fanaticism from players in the genre. The problem deals with motivation, namely the motivation of new gamers to play the game, but specifically the function of expectations with regards to motivation.

Victor von Vroom

Victor Vroom, of Yale University, pioneered a structure for the formulation of motivation as it related to worker’s performance within business. There are many theories that try to outline (rather hamhandedly, I might add) how workers behave in professional environments, but Vroom adapted their models to be outcome-oriented instead of needs-oriented - instead of having a predetermine set of desires that are categorically fulfilled in order of importance, each person negotiates an event or transaction with the same thought process, with the product of three basic functions yielding a factor that indicates overall motivation.

The three functions:

1. Expectancy - the belief that increased effort will lead to increased performance. If a new player spends weeks getting destroyed by far more experienced players, they will feel this disconnect. No manner of effort can navigate this ground better than time, which new players cannot fabricate.
2. Instrumentality - the belief that if you perform well that a valued outcome will be received. In some regards, this is typically short-circuited by cheating, but in this example, whether or not a person is cheating is moot — if the skill gap is large enough, the better player might as well be cheating in the eyes of the beginner. In our age of instant gratification, it is very easy to become disenchanted.
3. Valence - the importance that the individual places upon the expected outcome. This is influenced by a variety of factors, the most basic of which is the feeling of accomplishment from killing someone and watching the scoreboard uptick (accompanied by a shot of dopamine from the brain’s pleasure center). This broadens into other facets like materialistic rewards or punishments and other intangible things like social acceptance and various internalized aspects, the latter of which can be mitigated by my next topic, which I will get to shortly.

Simply put, people are not going to play if they’re not having any fun. And for the majority of players, being killed without any idea of what’s going on does not equate to fun. It’s really no wonder id Software is dedicating so much time to developing algorithms for skill matching; if everyone is unmotivated to play, there’s not much point in doing anything else. Do you remember when you first started playing first person shooters? If you were anything like us, you were probably in awe of the l33t players but wanted no part in going to head to head with them until you got your feet wet. Thing is, the l33t players of the present are significantly further ahead, thanks to years of obsessive refinement in playing styles, as well as huge leaps in input technology (a 3000 dpi mouse can accomplish significantly more than a ball mouse).

With everything painted in that light, it’s really not elitist to say something more needs to be done to encapsulate the highest tier of players and prevent them from literally wiping servers clean (while simultaneously recognizing that doing so might enlarge the gap a tiny bit). Something like World of Warcraft’s integrated arena system, which is nothing more than an automated and centralized version of the pickup games we organize in IRC, would be incredible. It would allow established teams to queue up to play against other established teams (perhaps for something in a “ranked” kind of regard), possibly taking into account geography, while allowing those less organized (read: newer players, who aren’t familiar with IRC or the community structure) to form teams and play relatively organized matches. In other games, as with Halo, many players don’t know the players they game with, so their bonds are formed by just befriending veritable strangers from inside the game (perhaps they were friendly or demonstrated class/skill). Basically, if people can ensure they play with legit and friendly folk, even those whom they know only tenuously, they will do so, and an integrated scrimmaging system would enable just that.

And by enabling such, you help instill the infancy of new team/clan creation (not to mention the resurgence of team deathmatch and 2on2/3on3s). I know when I first started playing video games online, I ended up on a team by this exact process - after playing together with strangers; I imagine the case was the same for many others.

Digg Dialogue with Trent Reznor

Check out this forty minute interview with Trent Reznor responding to questions about the direction in which he is taking Nine Inch Nails in the post-information age. Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, conducts the interview, which is composed of questions dugg up by community participants. There are many parallels between his struggle with monetizing creative content and our experiences with the eSports world; in particular, he is actively pursuing means other than advertisement revenue to enact a fair exchange between himself and his fan base. The man is nothing short of a visionary in his realm of expertise.

The opening dialogue is especially interesting!

Gamers: A Community Divided

Here’s the thing about reality - we perceive only what we can know. Our brains have to have a contextual framework before we can understand phenomenon that our sensory inputs report. When Spanish conquistadors approached landfall in the Americas five-hundred years ago, Native Americans’ brains were incapable of comprehending the visages of their vessels on the horizon; they saw nothing, as the travelers eclipsed any resemblance of familiarity. Large wooden contraptions that cross seemingly insurmountable distances, powered by the breath of the gods? It’s a wonder the natives didn’t think these people were messiahs.

Ah, technology. Even the simplest of devices inspire awe and command attention.

We see this same problem manifested today. “Professional” has a certain societal connotation, as does “competitive.” For the most part, all we really know is what we’ve already experienced. In my previous entries, when I spoke at length about failing business models and inapplicability or sustainability, this concept is what I was pointing towards. Current trends aren’t working because we’re applying the same old defunct idea. It’s all horribly cliche; another way to describe it as is “thinking outside of the box.” Of course, much like the Matrix, one can not be told what the box is - you have to see it for yourself.

Anymore, there is no box. There never was a box. You are the box, and you can expand infinitely, but there are mechanisms in place that contract you. These mechanisms are cultural tendencies ingrained in our psyche as we grow up looking to others to frame our own existence. Monkey see, monkey do. We’re lead to think money is the only driving factor to anything in this world, as if there’s no incentive to do anything unless there’s a payday. If there’s no profit to something - no means to an end - then the effort is fruitless to begin with because it’s not “economically viable.”

If we’ve learned nothing else, it’s that you can build an economy around anything.

Technology is proof that, literally, anything is possible. Take for example this website - we don’t bring in a ludicrous amount of traffic or anything, but we’ve still managed to reach people further away than I ever thought imaginable. Video games transcend language, cultural, and societal barriers, and seeing random gamers from across the globe visit us is a constant reminder that the only major problem we have with the PC gaming community is overcoming geographic dissimilarity. The individual people behind the monitors are what matters, not who’s the best or who makes the most money. I think it’s fracking cool that some dude in the Czech Republic digs playing the same video game that I do, and these mediums of interconnectivity (the game, the web site, IRC) provide the means to bridge the gap to that proverbial gamer.

Speaking of which, you may have noticed recent additions to the site, like our Twitter feed on the side, a link to an RSS feed, and the incorporation of a share tool for our articles (it’s purty, integrated with our Wordpress back-end, and provides access to virtually any social networking site), and we hope at least some people out there make use of it. These are not trendy, dumb fads of the internet age; they are just another way of connecting all of us in an open style hierarchy without having it housed under a large conglomerate whose only driving motivation is to amass user content into one centralized area to engineer advertisement revenue from click-throughs (revenue that is only partially invested back into the community, if at all). There is no shortage of gamers out there, and all we’re trying to do is reach them.

eNGiNe and focus27’s Twitter accounts

On that same note though, there seems to be a general hesitance amongst players to expand much outside of IRC. While I love the familial experience of the vast GameSurge and QuakeNet relay chat communities, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to look at other avenues to reach people out at the periphery. Don’t get me wrong - I love IRC and have used it obsessively for a decade now (you should check it out if you haven’t); it is my primary means of communicating with my friends and fellow gaming comrades, and I wouldn’t trade what it provides - both the good and the bad - for anything else … but I also envision a vast network of teams and players not only having a welcoming IRC presence but also an easily accessible “web 2.0 portal” for those who find the concept of multiplayer notepad foreign and/or weird. Think about the relationship in this way: IRC channel topic -> Twitter status update. For a gaming team, there’s not much else you need besides a one-liner feed (that, coincidentally, can be read like an RSS feed and imported anywhere, like to a website, to a centralized Quake Live scrimmage interface [wink wink, nudge nudge, id software], or even to a large RSS feed that pools every single eSports resource on our planet free of charge and control).

The problems of today are rooted in the past.

So where are the answers, Mr. focus27? Why you gotta be all in the respective grills of the douchebags siphoning from our community? (Behold, the sentence is scathing AND rhetorical!)

Many moons ago, during a CPL forum chat with Angel Munoz and various gamers, it occurred to me that everything in the eSports world is handicapped by two things: 1,) latency (at least in America) and 2,) trust. The USA, thanks to our ass-backwards “manifest destiny” of the 1800s (the belief that we can annex whatever we please because it was somehow preordained), sprawls across the North American continent and is not going to have the kind of networking infrastructure necessary to emulate LAN gaming for some time (unlike Japan, South Korea, or Europe). But even if we did have it, it wouldn’t matter since anti-cheat efforts are painstakingly slow and never ironclad.

My suggestion at the time was to somehow compartmentalize gamers from each area of the country and, utilizing as low-latency a connection as possible, compete against gamers from other areas in an environment where they can be refereed voluntarily (for example, a nationwide chain of gaming consortiums/internet cafe venues that can sustain themselves independently from professional gaming endeavors). I mean, hell - paying for a bus ticket to go a few hours down the road is more feasible than attending a huge, self-glorying event that require tremendous capital investment on both the organizer and the participant’s part. Of course, my idea was scoffed at arrogantly, as everyone proceeded to instead suckle at the teat of established industry “trendsetters.” I still don’t know where the idea that large, expensive spectacles that never break-even somehow became the cornerstone of every eSports model (I should point out that QuakeCon, CES, and E3 are entirely different beasts). To be honest, now that I’ve put that in writing, the concept seems laughable; for people whose principal motivation was making money, they sure were bad at it.

Anyways, I’m not saying my idea is good, or even doable, but it does allow me to segue into another topic (:D). Herbert Hoover, a man who went down in history as a precipitant for the Great Depression here in the USA, coined the concept of volunteerism after the fallout of the unregulated financial sector in the 30s. Succinctly put, “volunteering is the practice of people working on behalf of others without being motivated by financial or material gain.” Hoover’s idea would’ve worked if people weren’t already well compensated for precisely the opposite behavior. Unfortunately for Hoover, the country ignored his plea to decrease rampant self-interest and greed, and he went down as a failure, while one Franklin Delano Roosevelt became an icon of history simply by taking the exact same ideas and forcing it upon everyone through legislative means.

So, who knows? Maybe if we had some huge, transparent entity where all resources from a union of gamers could be amassed, we could really start to mobilize. The fund could be managed voluntarily and anonymously (participants vote, much like shareholders, for director personnel, but the ideas/communications coming out from that dedicated board is handled collectively and in a manner that could retain anonymity), with directors having no monetary incentive tied to the entity itself. Participants could voluntarily donate money to the pool (anonymously, of course, to prohibit large donors assuming control), and we could have an open-style back-end through a major bank so that each person can see what’s happening with the money at any given time. If we built a centralized site around this supposed entity, we could directly tie any and all advertisement revenue to it (generated BY us and, thusly, FOR us), where we could then collectively decide what to do with it. There are too many hands in the cookie jar considering there were only crumbs to begin with; by segregating all of our teams and coverage sites and pitting everyone against one another, nobody comes out ahead. It’s like the W.O.P.R. from the movie War Games - when Matthew Broderick gets the computer to play itself to an infinite number of stalemates, the artificial intelligence named Joshua quickly learns the futility of everyone competing to win solely out of self-interest.

So, I ask, how about a nice game of chess?

Fuel for the Fire

“We have driven everybody else out of the business. The history of league sports begins with one league.”

Here’s some trivia: which “gaming visionary” sputtered the above quote?

If I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t hesitate — Angel Munoz. Nope. It was pulled from a New York Times article dated yesterday (“Virtual Leagues Fold, Forcing Gamers to Find Actual Jobs” by Ryan Goldberg) and belongs to Matthew Bromberg, president of Major League Gaming.

Funny. I would think league sports began with organizations of the 90s that predated most of the MLG’s associates pubescence (founders included). When I think of gaming’s infancy, the only things I recall are the patently awesome community driven stuff that consumed my adolescence for years on end. Leagues like the Online Gaming League (OGL) or Case’s Ladder … communities like Kali, Khan, HEAT, or MPlayer … Rocketarena.org, the most fluid ladder I have ever participated in, despite its dedication to a sub-group of a sub-group of a group (a mod within a game within a genre). The list doesn’t end there.

What I don’t think of is close-crop haircuts, unbuttoned dress shirts, and the prototypical sports jacket, all wrapped around a blabbering mouth yelling as loud as it can about its own market dominance. You can’t build a model around pushing an image that houses an empty shell; this economic recession has demonstrated that very point as the temporary, overinflated value of virtually everything in America has all but disintegrated.

“Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.”
- Chuck Palahniuk

Until there is some resemblance of transparency in the eSports world, I will never believe any of the figures published in pressers. When Bromberg boasts about raising nearly $43 million in capital from private investors since 2006, the only thing that crosses my mind is, “where the fuck is that money going and how the crap did he convince supposed ‘venture capitalists’ that they would get the kind of ROI that ‘venture capitalists’ usually seek?” You know that the MLG didn’t provide any historical trends to their investors; the only data they could point to would only help to illustrate the impracticality and inapplicability of their very own model.

Maybe they pointed to something like this “study” (as linked from the NY Times article). Structured just like a typical presser, the article begins with, “This new data underscores the fundamental principle that computer and video games are a mainstream entertainment form, which captures the imagination of every segment of our society.”

Personally, I seriously question the validity of something that has to blatantly and immediately illustrate its modus operandi before the reader has even had a chance to blink - that this medium penetrates all demographics and is absolutely profitable. And the fact that its constituency is comprised of some of the largest current game developers begs consideration for whether or not there exists a conflict of interest. But, honestly, debating the accuracy of this study is neither here nor there, and digressing any further would just lead to more tenuous claims that I can’t all together prove. It’s simply impossible to know the truth.

Which takes me back to my previous point about transparency — we need it. When I say transparency, I mean private organizations voluntarily disclosing how they operate to us (the goddamn shareholders). *waits for the screams of blasphemy for questioning the tenants of capitalism and ‘respecting’ the privacy of others* The only reason nobody wants to disclose any of those figures is out of fear of competitor entrance into their niche, which (to borrow the language of the ESA) only underscores the fragility of the fearful party’s endeavors and the insecurity associated.

A few summers ago at OU, I had the privilege of participating in a course about modern negotiation theory that was being taught by a visiting professor from France. It was an eye-opening experience for me as I had the opportunity to view the perspectives of the competitive business environment from several different cultures (the man that taught this class was the most amicable and self-aware intermediary I have ever encountered; he could resolve the whole Jewish/Muslim thing, I swear). In hindsight, much of what he taught now seems obvious and matter-of-fact, but at the time, it seemed weird and French. Very non-American. But that’s the kicker - we are the anomaly, born out of decades of unfettered capitalism. The rest of the world looks at us and gnashes their teeth, and it has nothing to do with jealousy of our societal “advances,” our hot women with fake boobs, or our liberty and freedom, yada yada yada …

We bug the ever-living shit out of everyone else because we typically approach every situation like cowboys, dicks in hand, spewing testosterone at a frightening rate, all over everything we can find. We’re like that old washed up jock that shows up at your high school reunion with huge, rippling muscles driving a Corvette that he rented from Enterprise; just so long as he creates an image of success, it doesn’t matter that the last six years, post-collegiate, have been spent womanizing, drinking, and treating others like shit (good thing those three things are high up on the list of most Americans to-do list, lest he might really be in trouble).

In any event, the French professor’s expertise taught me that, in general, the American approach to competitive situations is far too aggressive (as the G20 summit just recently confessed by a general, global dissolution of pure capitalism). If the CPL could have extended its hands to the likes of WCG and ESWC (<3 ESWC) when they were all three in their prime, we’d probably have a solid foundation for something to build further upon.

Instead, we’ve got CPL 2.0.

A Clarification of Thought

It’s easy to criticize other people’s work. I’m an arm chair expert, so to speak.

Since the MLG took the brunt of my ire in my last post, I felt compelled to come back and give them their due credit. To date, they are one of the only organizations to successfully translate the American competitive sports model to video gaming. They brought in legitimate coverage from the largest provider, ESPN, when none of their predecessors were able to do so. The significance of that accomplishment cannot be overstated; fundamentally, as Angel Munoz once harped, competitive video gaming’s mainstream acceptance in society has always been hamstrung by the manner in which journalists have presented it to casual audiences. To everyone else, we’re a goddamn freak show, and we’re typically painted in that light without exception.

Typical media consumption example: “In other news, local nerdboy spends countless hours playing dangerous, mind-controlling video game, wins several thousand dollars” … At home, Tom and Myrtle Televisionviewer get a kick out of the news piece, laugh at at our absurdity, and toddle along with their lives … and the following week, we get a fucking expose on how video gaming is tearing at the underbelly of our culture (since ours doesn’t totally comply with the mainstream).

It’s just ludicrous. We bow at the feet of physical titans and look down our noses at mental giants. Video games are a direct translation of the popular board and strategy games of yesteryear; Quake itself incorporates all aspects of real time strategy formulation and hand-eye coordination, neatly tied into a pretty graphical interface that provides visual stimulation for the layman. It’s like watching chess without the nap breaks. At the highest levels of the game, aim becomes a formality, and the competition becomes much more about positioning than raw aim. Granted, being able to hit any shot from anywhere has its advantages, but if considerable thought is not adamantly given to the circumstance of the moment, even an aimbot will lose.

Quake praising aside, the situation is frustrating. Yes, MLG is currently experiencing success with their model, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the right model to be using. The end (gamers being able to game) does not justify the means (chaining ourselves by consolidating power into one large archaic business plan that conflicts with all of the lessons the information age has taught us). I just don’t feel that the MLG can successfully navigate these murky waters: nor Mark Walden, nor Angel Munoz, as mentioned in my previous entries. Jarod “Streetrunner” Reisin (someone who is working his butt off for all of us) has pioneered some great ideas with his work on the AGP Tour (realistically, a PGA style model is the most applicable to our needs), and with him, as always, fatal1ty continues to singlehandedly promote our medium (and himself — I have no problem with it, but it’s fair to recognize the truth) more than any one individual.

But, sometimes, it’s not enough. There is enough collective ability within our community to create something open and sustainable for years to come. The architects, early internet adopting enthusiasts of the 90s, were able to build the framework by themselves with only intrinsic motivation and passion for the hobby. If they were able to do it then, why should things be any different now? Technologically, all the gears of the machine have improved exponentially. Are we just that much lazier?

Open infrastructures are being pioneered around the globe … companies, namely Google, are spearheading the movement towards aggregating ideas. This same kind of open-ended design can be applied to virtually anything, monetary economics included; it’s just a matter of figuring it out and pooling ideas/thoughts/information. Perhaps a gamer union is in order? Or would that just polarize further?

Look — I know nothing I write here changes a damn thing, but being a gamer and part of this community myself, I’m very cognizant of our infinite potential, but I’m also weary of our miserable lethargy. I guess I just want to light some eCoals under our virtual asses, since we’re back at square one anyways.

Please don’t be afraid to comment with your thoughts. The only real reason I did this was to create dialogue where there is none. I know there are people out there who care about this as much as I do; there’s several hundred thousand of them registered on Quakelive.com. I was only 13 years old when I started gaming online in 1996, and the older, twenty-something hardcore guys (those architects I mentioned earlier) were like gods to me as I looked up at what they had built. Now that many of them have moved on, the roles have reversed. They started it, and it’s up to us to ensure it’s realization; the industry’s infancy demonstrated that it’s wholly feasible with only curiosity and intrinsic motivation.

Money: It’s a crime

Share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie.
Money, so they say, is the root of all evil today.

Roger Waters said it best when he wrote those lyrics for the track Money on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. It was as accurate then as it is now.

And here’s why I write this:

• http://sports.espn.go.com/videogames/news/story?id=4017446
• http://www.mlgpro.com/

Sigh. Just look at it. Monkey see, monkey do. I don’t like taking shots at people I don’t know, especially when they’re out there devoting their lives to something I am very passionate about, but I have an issue with the MLG. Nevermind the poor game selection, it’s the company’s image that bugs me — it is quintessentially American. Everything on the site makes my skin crawl, from the cookie-cutter company emblem to the hype-building, hackneyed fluff content occupying its pages. It is the application of sports models that were pioneered in the first half of the last century and have been ingrained in our cultural psyche by the American Broadcasting Company (specifically, ESPN) … and people call it progress.

To alleviate your concerns, no, this is not going to blossom into a conspiracy theory tirade about the mechanisms of control in operation that shackle our minds — I’m not friggin’ Morpheus — but rather an observation of facts.

Sustainability (in a capitalist sense) = profiting long-term, or at the very least, breaking even. What drives the profits? Revenue from sponsorships and advertisements. (I’m disregarding website sales of things like gaming lessons, user accounts, or registration fees, as they are typically low frequency and immaterial for our discussion.) Sponsorships and advertisement revenue are directly proportional to the size of the user population, so the greater the population of a game’s player base, the greater the potential for revenue for all parties involved. These correlations are obvious, though, and everyone is already aware of them.

So, where’s the beef? Why rant about it? Because we’re taking the same steps down the same path as before. Why is profit a precursor to everything? If we can’t do things just for the sake of doing them (we can and do; the curiosity and exploration of everything is the sole pursuit of humanity), why the hell does advertising, otherwise known as paying for the possibility of a sale, have to be the only reliable cash inflow?

Money - it’s a hit. Don’t give me that do goody-good bullshit.

I’m an avid college sports fan. I graduated from the University of Oklahoma a couple years ago, and despite all of my reservations and observations about the futility and pointlessness of macho athletics, I’m still nuts for OU sports. Initially, it was all about associating myself with a winning program and wrapping up in it like a blanket, but as I have watched it over the years, its inherent cyclicality has started to stand out. It’s the same thing every year, with the same hands in the cookie jar, and the same mindless talking-heads spouting intelligible garbage intermixed with (you guessed it) advertisements. So, what do I take out of it nowadays? The raw talent of the people that participate … the devotion and dedication they have poured into it, usually at the expense of (arguably) more important endeavors … the pure skill and spectacle of it all. Being able to stand up and respectfully compete with someone who loves something as much you do, then shake their hand knowing you are not adversaries but brothers, recognizing the symbiotic relationship. It’s exciting to see someone new come through and express themselves athletically or e-athletically. In the mid-90s, I was certain I would never enjoy watching basketball after Michael Jordan retired, but once I made a concerted effort to change my perspective, I found myself in awe of the new breed of players.

When we test ourselves and we succeed, we are infinite, if only for a fleeting moment; it’s the overwhelming sensation that we are, literally, capable of anything. And we are - don’t ever believe otherwise. Watching that realization in someone’s eyes is uplifting, to say the least.

Money, get back. I’m all right, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack.

I want very much to try and blanket claim that the new generation of console gamers are noobs, inferior to the elite from the mouse and keyboard world, but that’s blatant elitism (and jealousy of their market share). They play the games that are the newest and the most popular, and that’s the nature of the business. Since video games are representations of alternate realities, and the developer’s ability to manifest said realities grows exponentially alongside technology, the venue is free-form and changing. We’re not talking about an iron hoop and a leather ball on a 94-foot court. Additionally, the modern gamer did not start on a 486 or a Pentium 1 in the mid-90s; they started with a Playstation 2 or an XBOX, after the explosion of the information age. Those console systems got their act together, modernized their operating systems and net-worthiness, and swept the legs out from under the PC gaming world. You don’t need a desktop computer to connect with others — your console can do it now (and your phone, and your microwave, and your toaster, and your girlfriend’s electronic friend that she doesn’t tell you about … P.S., don’t forget to follow your grandpa’s pacemaker on Twitter).

How do you overcome the roadblock of an amorphous competitive venue? Seriously. Send me a telegram if you know. “Living as a pro gamer in America is a pipe dream STOP”

Who drives this machine, anyways? Is it the industry moguls or the gamers? Us or them? A major gaming release (like, for example, Gears of War 2, or Halo 3, or Call of Duty 4, or Rainbow 6) is going to have a lot of money behind it and recouping (and multiplying) that investment is the only thing that matters. Is it no coincidence that the ones perpetuating the illusion of wealth and fame through the allure of professional leagues are also telling us what games to play? They dangle the proverbial carrot, and we go wherever they want, regardless of its quality.

A few summers ago, while bootcamping (really hate that colloquialism) for CPL Summer 2005 in Kansas City, I had a chance to pick the brains of several of the driving minds behind the current eSports movement, specifically the man behind the fatal1ty brain trust, Mark Walden. He likened the relationship between console gamers and PC gamers with that of NASCAR and Formula-1 … and I can already see the capillaries in console gamers’ faces swelling with blood. The thing that struck me the most about the dialogue I witnessed (I’d say “participated in” if not for the fact that, for the most part, everyone just wanted to hear themselves talk and use inapplicable buzzwords) was the underlying tone of arrogance, reminiscent of Angel Munoz’s self-glorifying press releases and the CPL’s unwillingness to acknowledge competitors.

These people just don’t get it. They look at everything we’ve built and only see the dollar signs. They hear “video games,” “young people,” and “lots of parental, discretionary income” and commence autofellation. Personally, I think it’s hilarious to watch self-proclaimed entrepreneurs try to modify sports marketing models to fit a demographic that is NOTORIOUSLY unwilling to spend money. Talk about not understanding your target audience! Half the reason gamers become gamers is because they’re searching for social acceptance (and, no, we’re not nerds, goddamnit - we’re just those atypical anomalies that our defunct societal system spits out when indoctrination doesn’t take), and that segregates us from the rest of American’s consumerism and, as such, the framework for how we contextualize the leagues.

Here’s what this crap breeds — legions of gamers across America being instilled with the hope that they, too, can make a living as a professional gamer, while a select few gain monetarily in the short-term. When it doesn’t happen, what are the gamers left with? An obsessive addiction to a game that doesn’t provide any bread. The only difference between this situation and what has happened to the countless millions of people who have dreamt of playing in the NBA, NFL, MLB, or NHL is that the addiction can be maintained and nurtured in the privacy of one’s residence. You can’t play basketball or football, by yourself, without break, for hours on end … but you can with video games.

It is an illusion.

At least it is in America … for this stage in our evolution. Until the USA becomes fully interconnected with an efficient WAN, coupled with other elements to effectively illicit a cultural shift away from physical idolization and materialism, there will never be enough money to go around to transform eSports into another highly lucrative, three-lettered sports league acronym.

So, it’s up to us to build it ourselves.