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I got a phone call this evening, it was my mum. She told me that my Aunt Eileen has been diagnosed with lung cancer, which has already spread to her liver. They’ve told her that she’ll be lucky to see this Christmas. Those that know me well will already know what an epic fail this year has been for my family. Amongst many other things that I won’t go into, I also lost my nana earlier this year. How is this related to gaming? Well, it isn’t, not directly. It’s just amusing to me, in a dark and morbid way, how so much effort and energy is expended on such negativity in this scene. As you get older one of the things you come to realise of life is that it is unfair, but you learn to deal with it (or you don’t and go the way of Kurt Cobain). No one comes out of it alive and nothing is more certain that your own mortality. So when I see two supposed pillars of the community arguing in public like children on a playground about what amounts to no more than a bit of petty name-calling and finger-pointing, it makes me sad. It makes me sad primarily because I want to see e-sports, and in particular the Counter-Strike Source scene, do well – and I wonder how the hell we are supposed to move forward in a positive and progressive way as a community when people prominent in the scene can quickly descend to such insignificant nonsense.
Everyone whines about how the ED forums are such a flame fest, or the Cadred forums, or wherever there happens to be CSS gamers. What I don’t get is, if everyone genuinely dislikes all the bullshit, why does it happen so much? Who are these people that are flaming each other, waving their e-peens around and generally acting like they are some sort of ghetto thugs? Who? I’m not going to tell you, it’ll spoil the surprise, I’ll just tell you where you can find the answer; any mirror – go take a look and find out.
One of the things that is most confusing about this scene is the fact that it is stuffed to the brim full of hypocrites. The sheer amount of people that I talk to that decry trollish behaviour while actively participating, and sometimes even causing it, boggles the mind. I believe that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it, so the only reasonable conclusion I can come to is that either no one in the scene has any modicum of self-control, or that you all actually enjoy flaming the shit out of each other and the “rise above” attitude that many people have is actually a masquerade to cover this simple reality.
Maybe I am wrong, maybe it’s a minority that enjoy abusing each other – or maybe, as I suspect, it’s a minority that think this is holding us back as a community. The worry thing for me is that some of the people who profess to be in the latter group are actually in the former. Some people will say that many in the scene are kids and don’t know any better, that they will mature and chill out. To be fair though, the most obnoxious people, the most persistent trolls and the loudest voices around are more often than not people who are well past school age, and should (in theory) know better.
With all the sponsorship coming in and mainstream coverage increasing and everything else that is coming our way that is helping the scene to evolve and mature, it’s high time that the people that are at the forefront of this digital niche lead by example and evolve and mature with it. “Do as I say, not as I do” has never been an effective strategy. Wise up people, honestly, or we’ll find ourselves reminiscing in the near future, about the ephemeral peak of gaming and what could have been.
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Posted by ViniH on
Sunday, 18 November 2007, 23:25
