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.
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.
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.
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