Esports - the dream profession of many a nerd

     I have written before about how much video games have changed from their inception. But there is another whole new kind of beast that is really just starting to make a splash in mainstream America, and that is Esports. 

    Video games have evolved with our culture. They've gone from vector graphic quarter-eaters that could only be found at arcades and pizza joints to something easily accessible in nearly every American household. Located in the pocket of every smart-phone owning citizen.   

    With this evolution came something that used to bore the pants off of me. Watching other people play video games.

One of Several Major Fighting Game Tournaments - Capcom Cup - draws a huge crowd, and only the top 32 players worldwide win a chance to play.

    Used to be a sort of personal hell, standing in line at the arcade, or waiting for my older brother to finish his turn so I could get my chance to get Luigi through those side-scrolling obstacle courses. (I was the younger brother, by default I was always P2) Video games were always boring to watch. But now, it's like watching a sport on TV that you used to play in your prime. And just like watching sports on TV, the more you understand about the game, the more you can appreciate the skills of the really talented players.

    I've played a lot (a lot a lot) of video games. But there were only two games that I have ever played that I would consider myself competitive in. The first was a game called Quake (released by Id software in 1996) but as I was maybe 14 when I peaked at that game, I don't have much to tell. I was a painfully awkward,  light-shunning gamer that stayed in my basement racking up frags and cursing LPBs that haunted my favorite servers. Less revealed about this time in history, the better.

    The other game I played competitively (though truthfully not very well) was Street Fighter 4. The street fighter series has a long popular history dating all the way back to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. I remember playing a lot of Street Fighter with neighborhood kids back in Kindergarten. That's over 30 years ago.

    I had stopped playing Street Fighter in grade school. But I was reintroduced to the game by a friend I met in college. This friend, Ken Masters (as always names have been changed to protect those who claim to be innocent), played street fighter at a level I truly didn't know existed, the Esports level.

    

Ken looking good after college

    It's a game where you try to punch the other guy more than he punches you. How competitive could it be right? As it turns out, very very competitive. There is a mountain of information to sift through once you decide to look very close at these games. To really play Street Fighter the way it's intended, you cant even use a standard controller, you need a fight stick. (kind of like the setup you see on arcade cabinets sized down to fit on your lap) And then you need to study frame info, spacing, throw tech strategies, negative inputs, counter hits, and a bunch of other stuff I cant even remember anymore. 

    The professional players in this game have memorized mountains of data and probably do more math than half of NASA.

    I learned what I could and reached a level that I was able to keep up with most of the other players in my play group. And one fateful winter, Ken and I decided it was time to go play in a tournament. We decided to take a road trip to Calgary to participate in Canada's largest fighting game tournament, the Canada Cup.

    The good news is that we got to explore another country and had a blast doing it. The bad news is we played Street Fighter. We were destroyed. I mean still-to-this-day-embarrassingly blown out of the water. There is even a YouTube clip on the internet (which I will not link or give any hints as to how to find) of our team getting pwnt by a semi-pro Canadian player while the commentators talked about how god-awful we are at this game.

    Going back to the High School sports analogy, it was like going from playing on the junior varsity team straight the Olympic Trials. We got owned that hard.

    I stopped playing Street Fighter shortly after my daughter was born. That was a pretty good reason to spend less than 7 hours a day practicing face punch, but mostly it was an excuse to get out. I was never all that good, and I was waaaaaay overly competitive. I rage quit a ton and I had a tendency to throw things and scream at people when I lost. Sad to say, I burned a lot of bridges and ruined a lot of friendships over this game.

    To everyone I've ever played with, know that I mean this sincerely:

    Sorry for what I said while playing Street Fighter.

The Worst Ever Way to Wake Up

     Previously in this blog, I have mentioned my two dogs. One is named Penny, (who gets her name from The Big Bang Theory) and the other is Dude. (See my previous entry on my eternal fascination with The Big Lebowski) I do not change the names of my pets in these blogs because dogs seem to be much less likely to complain about being mentioned online, and infinitely less litigious.

    Penny is a Border Collie - Griffon cross. She weighs maybe 45 pounds and is a decent sized pup. Dude is a Chiwienie. (chihuahua-wiener dog cross however you spell that word) He weighs maybe 5 pounds, and he is Princess Consuela Bananahammock's favorite thing in the world. (Names of humans have been altered to protect those who claim to be innocent)

    I never thought I would like having a small dog. They always seemed like bossy, yippy little things. (Don't get me wrong, Dude is both bossy and yippy) But what I didn't expect, is that, in the end, they are still dogs. They love you with all their heart, they are loyal, and they act as if nothing could ever make their day more than to greet you at the door, tail wagging like mad.

My favorite picture of Dude. As you can see, he's calm, cool, and collected.

    Since Dude is so perfectly travel-sized, we do just that. We travel with him. I am actually writing this from an Air B&B in sunny California. Dude has traveled with us several times without issue, but this particular trip - issue.

    We arrived in LA after a long day spent doing nothing but travelling. We hadn't packed any food for the Dude, intending to just buy some of his usual fare when we arrived at our destination. However, we arrived late in the evening, and as it turned out, the nearest place that was open did not have his usual brand of dog food.

    As you may have experienced, dogs do not adjust well to new diets. The digestive system of a dog baffles me. A dog can tear into a garbage bag that has been sitting in the sun for a week and be perfectly fine. But switch a dog from Iams to Purina and it become more like a perfect storm.

We've all known a dog like this.

    So my little dog Dude got a small bowl of a brand new dog food. He ate it up, and we all went to sleep, perfect storm a-brewing.

    When we are traveling, Dude usually sleeps in bed with us. At home, he's got a extra puffy rug on Princess Consuela's side of the bed that he sleeps on, but we don't bring it with on trips, so he just sleeps on the bed.

    This morning, early (and I mean early) I awoke quite suddenly to the sound of violent diarrhea. It was dog diarrhea, and it was happening ON MY PILLOW INCHES FROM MY FACE! 

    I do believe that is the fastest I have ever gone from dead asleep to wide awake in my life. I let loose a guttural yell-scream that is a completely involuntary sound. It's just the sound you make when you wake up because your wife's purse-dog is taking a dump on the pillow you are using.

    Luckily, I got the full sympathy of Princess Consuela, who immediately woke to the wild howling I was doing. She had the outstanding self-control to contain her laughter until after the dog had been punished and the mess cleaned.

    But then the laughing and the jokes started. And she kept it up for easily an hour. It's the hardest she has laughed since I walked in with my dyed facial hair. (see previous posts for that wonderful story) But after maybe an hour and a half of laughing at me (now probably 5 am) she was able to settle into a hearty chuckle, and we fell back asleep - on all fresh linens mind you.