videogamesdebate-blog

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Video Games & Me

For my freestyle post, I wanted to get in depth about my experiences with video games, and how they have helped me become who I am throughout my lifetime.

I was first introduced to video games at a very young age, when my dad, who had a PS2, would play constantly and I was always interested, so he would let me play once in awhile. After these encounters, I started to grow older and soon enough, I entered middle school. My one friend always played this thing called an Xbox, and always refused to play football outside with me, so one day, he invited me over, and I had the goal in my mind to figure out what this Xbox thing was. Sure enough, we went straight over to his big 60 inch television and played Call of Duty: Black Ops. This was something I would never forget. The graphics, the vivid sounds, the dialogue, the game play, the interaction between random people online; it was all too overwhelmingly cool for young me. After playing that game with my friend for 12 hours straight, I went home and begged my mother for an Xbox, but she said I had to wait until Christmas, so I did. When that Christmas came, I was as happy as I could ever be. As soon as I got my Xbox, my life flipped to always wanting and urging to play video games, until the 9th grade, when I got my gaming PC. That is when it increased by 10x, and all I ever did was go to track practice, work, and play video games, while putting school on the back-burner because I was naturally good at junior high and did not need to study much.

When I got to the 11th grade, I had some things affect my personally, and the only way I would feel happy again during that time was playing video games. They have always been something positive and fun in my life, and without them, I do not know where I would be today. They have helped me through thick and thin, and have continued to entertain me for a whole 7 years now, and I am hoping that it never ends.

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Academic Article Post

Recently while doing some research, I stumbled across an article titled, “The Impact of Video Games on the Formation of eSports”, written in 2017 and published in 2018 by Radoslav Baltezarević and Borivoje Baltezarević. What this article talks about is the close comparison between what is usually defined as a sport, and what people define eSports as. The authors talk about eSports being defined as the sport where a human being interacts with a computer interface to compete against man for a victory. A key issue that the authors hope to underline and figure out is, “...to whether there can be an electronic sport, and whether computer mediated sports have similarities with the traditional understanding of sport” (Abstract). This article is part of a series titled, “Physical Education and Sport”, and the specific article I will be analyzing for my research question is in volume 16.

I hope to use this article as a way to help me get a broader perspective on eSports around the world, since this article was published in Serbia, I get a more narrow perspective on the aspects of video games and eSports in different countries that I do not know much about. With this information, i hope to combine my knowledge of eSports information I do know about with the new information from this academic article, and develop a more broad understanding for my research question. At its core, the article talks about defining a sport compared to defining an eSport, and determining if they are, in fact, the same in theory, or if they are two completely different forms of entertainment. In my opinion, they are the same thing in theory, and the main reason why is because of the way people define sports being relevant to what people do in competitive video games. The English Oxford Dictionaries define a sport as, “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment” (Oxford Dictionaries). Comparing this definition to what happens in eSports, it is extremely identical besides one crucial word: in eSports, a player uses “mental” exertion other than “physical” exertion. So, if we are trying to answer if they are the same in theory, than this proves that in both activities, you are doing the same thing, which is competing against others for entertainment purposes, yet you do so in different ways, so in this case, they are the same in theory.

One of the academic sources cited in the first journal is titled, “ What Is eSports and Why Do People Watch It?”, written by Juho Hamari and Max Sjöblom. The  Baltezarević’s journal uses this article by implementing the main key idea of defining what en eSport is, by quoting in the first article, “eSports is a form of sport where the primary aspects of the sport are facilitated by electronic systems; the input of players and teams as well as the output of the eSports system is mediated by human-computer interfaces (Hamari & Sjöblom, 2016, 5). What Hamari and Sjöblom are talking about is that the definition of an eSport consists of the human-to-computer interaction that occurs with the player and the machine, and how well they can communicate with each other. In more simple terms, how well a player can play a game. The main article uses this source well by providing a key detail to what an eSport is and means.

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eSports Interview

As I’ve mentioned before, I have been engulfed in video game culture since I was a young child, however, I have yet to go to a big eSports tournament, strictly because of time and nothing adding up correctly. I hope to go to one soon, to personally see the hype around a bunch of gamers gathering together to watch their favorite players and teams compete for millions of dollars, rather than watching them online. In order to gain an accurate first person perspective about eSports tournaments, I interviewed my friend Christian McDonald, who I  went to high school with, and who has competed in more local sized tournaments for the game League of Legends, and a few bigger sized championship style tournaments where he has traveled to different states for. McDonald has also been to one pro League of Legends tournament, IEM Katowice 2017. Using McDonald is considered a primary source for my research topic at hand, because McDonald has in-person perspectives of the tournaments, while also having some insight on local level / smaller tournaments. Since McDonald is big in gaming culture, I wanted to ask him about his opinions on video games, and if he thinks that they are overall good for our society in an entertainment perspective, and explain how they are growing.

Caption: The opening of IEM Katowice 2017, located in Katowice, Poland.

Due to him and I both being in college and having busy schedules, it was tough to find a way to interview properly, so we settled with using iMessage to relay the questions and answers back and forth since it was the easiest and most efficient way. Futhermore, McDonald has given me permission to use his answers in my blog post, which I thank him for because it will allow me to accurately talk about his answers and compare them to my own opinions. I    started with asking him questions about his experiences with gaming and his experience at IEM Katowice 2017, and he went on to say how he’s been gaming since he was four years old, and that his parents introduced video games to him at a very young age. The experience at IEM Katowice 2017 in his perspective was overall very positive, with McDonald stating, “The tournament was a blast. It’s such an awesome thing that tens of thousands of people can come together and relate to a certain thing” (McDonald).

After learning about his experiences at a big eSports tournament, I went on to ask him about his opinions with social media perception on video games, and his response was not shocking in the least. McDonald went on to say how he always sees “...articles about how video games are affecting our youth negatively, but never about how they are helping children...honestly they should really be showing the world that video games aren't the problem here” (McDonald). From his quote, it is obvious that McDonald feels passionate about how video games are not a problem in society, but the complete opposite. He goes on to explain how his previous high school teachers would give him “advice” on his video game future by talking down on it. He states, “When I first started going to tournaments and more and more people knew about it, I'd have talks with my teachers in high school about how video games are not a good future for me, and how I could be “so much more” which honestly was insulting” (McDonald). When McDonald presented this answer, I felt bad for him. The fact that his teachers and possibly some of his peers did not support him must have been hard on him to continue trying for this career, because it is possible to do.

Overall, McDonald and I seem to be on the same page overall, that video games are not the problem with society, and that our youth are not being affected negatively with the rising culture of video games and technology. I wish McDonald luck in his growing career of professional gaming, and hope he gets somewhere bigger later in his life.

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“Good Luck Have Fun”

While continuing research on my topic on the positives of modern day video games, I stumbled across a book titled Good Luck Have Fun: The Rise of eSports, written by Roland Li and published by Skyhorse publishing, Inc. This book caught my eye immediately, and I wanted to get my hands on it, so I checked it out of the library through interlibrary loans.

When I started reading, I noticed that this anthology of nonfiction work was extremely well written, with many different real stories of professional gamers and game companies starting from the bottom and working their way up to fame and fortune. The different chapters in the book are separated by different stories of gamers and developers of the games that blew up in the competitive scene. One example of a chapter focuses on Alex Garfield, who built a multi-million dollar eSports empire called Evil Geniuses, starting it in his dorm room. This story really caught my eye because it shows how literally anyone in the world can be involved in this new and fast growing culture of professional gaming.

Overall, this is an extremely well written anthology, with many different essays and stories of the different people around the world who made professional gaming what it is today. I especially enjoyed that the author knew what he was talking about, using gaming slang and focusing on getting the reader immersed in this culture, whether the reader be a veteran or new to the scene. Usually, when it comes to media outlets and readings about video games, I  can personally tell that the authors do not know much about the topic, and are doing it for a paycheck, yet Li really proves that he's been embraced in this culture since he was a teenager. Another addition that I liked about Li’s work is that he included pictures of previous eSports tournaments and players, to really paint a picture on what he is talking about. With these pictures, he included specific player aliases (Ex: Clement “Puppey” Ivanov), to again, make the readers immersed in the culture. This book really applies context for my research question in determining if video games are good for the general society and public. Li does a good job in explaining how people benefit from video games, by mentioning how many top brands, such as Amazon and Coca-Cola, are spending billions of dollars and how eSports tournaments are now being streamed live on national television. All these points highlight how the professional gaming scene is growing, and that the eSports tournaments people are viewing are for pure fun and entertainment, which helps fuel the happiness in our culture and society.

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Controversy Behind ‘Twitch’

I recently stumbled upon two opinionated articles that completely go against each other’s opinions and bias. One article was titled, The Five Biggest Problems With Twitch, posted by Patrick Klepek on Kotaku, a gaming news website. A brief summary of the article consists of Klepek bashing and insulting main core elements of what makes Twitch unique, such as the live chat feed so streamers can communicate with their viewers, and the stream delay which helps streamers so that viewers do not “stream snipe” their game, or get into the same game was them so the viewers can mess with and kill the streamer repeatedly, hindering his ability to produce content to watch. One the other side, there is an article titled, The Biggest Gamer In The World Breaks Down Twitch For Us, posted by Tom Ward on Forbes, a news website. I like this article because it talks about all the goods Twitch does for people. The article consists of Ward interviewing Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, who is the most subscribed and followed channel on the platform Twitch. Blevins blew up his channel from the popular online battle royale game, Fortnite, where he consistently put out high tier gameplay that was hard to find elsewhere. Ward asked many questions related to what Twitch does, how it works, and what it offers, and Blevins answered each question perfectly, and explained the many things Twitch can offer. He mentioned streamers doing charity livestreams and raising millions and millions of dollars a year to many different charities, and it also talked about upcoming streamers being aided by already popular streamers, who help them get started with their streaming career.

Personally, I believe Twitch does more good than bad by far, just for the pure factor that the article by Klepek on the problems with Twitch can easily be refuted by simple solutions that one would know if they spent a lot of time on Twitch (A.K.A me). Take for example the second biggest problem that Klepek lists which is talking about the stream delay that Twitch has implemented to the viewers. A stream delay is a delay between the camera capturing an event and the event being displayed to the viewers being longer than instant. In most cases, there is at least a 10-15 second delay. An example on how this could affect you is that if you ask a question in chat to the streamer, the streamer may be able to see it and respond in real time, but to you it will seem 10-15 seconds after you asked the question, because that is how Twitch displays it’s content. This may seem tedious in how I’ve explained it, but stream delay actually helps the streamer in many ways, one way being that it helps prevent “stream sniping” dramatically. Stream sniping is a popular slang term used by viewers and gamers where a viewer intentionally queues in the same game as the streamer playing the game in order to troll, kill, or mess with the streamer and hinder their ability to produce relevant and good content. Luckily, Twitch is aware of the issues involving stream sniping, and if caught, stream snipers can be banned from certain channels.

Caption: This video displays two streamers playing the online battle royale Fortnite suffering from a major, yet not over exaggerated version of what stream sniping could look like (Source).

However, the other article that was posted by Ward still makes me question the reliability of what he is saying even though he has a major influential body with him, such as Blevins. At the beginning of the article, Ward immediately states, “I'm a 40-year-old guy, who hasn't played a video game since Super Nintendo. So, I had no idea what Twitch was until recently” (Ward). These two sentences were the first two listed in the entire article, and because of this, it makes me question the reliability of this entire article. When Ward says this, it immediately makes me on edge of the information he's providing, because he is presenting a topic that he has only recently researched. At the same time, this source does provide me with a lot of good information because they are quoting a major influencer for this topic, yet the interviewer, which is Ward, seems to not know much at all about this topic. Luckily, I know the inside and outs of Twitch as a platform and its community, so I am able to fact check his information from pure memory and personal experiences.

In the end, both articles are well thought out and good articles to read to see differing sides of problems that Twitch has been debating with. The articles, although they provide bias, they are essential to read in order to compare and contrast viewpoints in order to form your own opinion on Twitch related problems and solutions.

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“From Out of Nowhere”

The main question that this blog emphasizes is, what do video games do good for the world when it comes to entertainment and jobs? To help me answer this question, I watched a touching documentary by SpiffSinister on YouTube titled, From Out of Nowhere: The History of Obey SMITE. This documentary had us follow the complete history of a professional gaming team, Obey Alliance – SMITE.

To start, a little back story. First off, Obey Alliance is a gaming organization that hires professional gamers in certain games to play under their name, just like any other sport. Since Obey Alliance is a very popular brand, there are many different Obey teams in many different games, such as League of Legends, DOTA, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and pretty much any other game with a professional gaming league. However, for this post, I will not be focusing on any other games instead of the game SMITE, which the documentary is based around. SMITE is a MOBA, which is an acronym for “Multiplayer Online Battle Arena,” where you choose different Gods from real life mythology who all have different abilities. The goal of the game is to destroy the enemy’s titan, or basically what is known as their home base.

The reason I chose this documentary is mainly because SMITE is near and dear to my heart, and I have been playing the game for over four years now (see pic below). However, that is not the only reason. This documentary does an excellent job in explaining how this team evolved through the years, how they have trained to be the best, and how they grew to be the team they are today. It emphasizes the main theme of that any kid can become the best at what they do, whether it be video games, or any other job or hobby. The documentary also emphasized hope, because Obey Alliance were complete underdogs for the longest time and keeping that hope alive through failure made them become one of best in the future.

Caption: As you can see, looking at my top seven games played on Steam, SMITE is at the top of the list. It has engulfed a lot of my life, with me clocking in 1,201 hours playing the game to this date.

The documentary was very credible for a majority of reason. First off, who the video was created and posted by on YouTube. SpiffSinister was the account that posted and created the video, and funny enough, SpiffSinister was a major employee at Hi-Rez Studios, the company that created SMITE at the time of the video’s upload. So, because of this, SpiffSinister would have all the necessary inside information, like knowing the professional players and seeing the professional game’s first hand, so he is a great source to trust. Another great first-hand source in the documentary were the professional players interviewed. The main two players that SpiffSinister interviewed were Nathaniel “Ataraxia” Mark and Emil “PrettyPriMe” Edström, who have both been on the Obey Alliance roster since the very beginning. They both talked about the history of their team in great detail and explained how they developed throughout the years. Because of these two sources being the main sources used throughout the documentary, it makes the whole video extremely credible.

The documentary used a variety of different types of elements to suck you in. The main element that was used was pathos, because the documentary makes you feel for Obery Alliance’s struggle to gain a world championship win under their belts. It emphasizes the struggles brought to them in different ways, including explaining how they get destroyed in some games and lose horribly and team drama that forces new people to come and go from the team. It also emphasizes the word “hope”, by creating a symbol for Obery Alliance that the interviewees bring up multiple times.

Overall, I learned a lot from watching this documentary, and it makes me happy to see that anyone can become something even in something so abstract as video games. Going back to my first essential question, it really shows how video games can change lives for the better, and emphasizes the theme of “hope” for everyone who watches. Today, Obey Alliance has disbanded as a SMITE professional team, and the roster has split up into different teams to pursue their dreams on their own.

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Librarian Meeting

In order to perfect my research abilities and make sure I get the proper sources for my topic, I decided to meet with one of the librarians at Kutztown University, where I go to school. I have to admit, going into the librarian meeting, I was on edge if I was even going to get any help from this, and I convinced myself beforehand that it was a waste of time. Nevertheless, it was everything but a waste of time! However, since I do not know if he wants his name out there on the internet, I will be keeping him anonymous in this blog post.

The librarian started off by going over some databases that the University offers, which is an easy way to find online sources for ANY topic you have. He started by searching up the key words, “positives about video games”, and thousands upon thousands of sources immediately popped up. I was a little overwhelmed by all these sources, because how did I know which ones to pick? He then continued to click on some sources that looked appealing, and then acknowledged the abstract that came with each source which gave an overarching summary of what the source was about, which was extremely helpful in finding the exact sources I needed. He also showed me that I could sort the sources I was looking for by date they were published, and since my topic is on modern day video games, I wanted something that was published at the earliest in 2012. When I did this, my sources were narrowed down tremendously, (who knew that almost everything published about video games was before 2012).

After the data base tour, he insisted I also check out the books, SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully, and Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Dr. Jane McGonigal. He started off by saying that this book’s titles are not ironic in the slightest, and that these books will give me all the information I need to succeed with my project. I have yet to pick these books up from the library, but I plan to this week in order to get a lot of research for my topic.

To conclude, the librarian meeting was a lot more helpful than I anticipated, and I was glad that Kutztown had these resources to help me succeed with my blog about video game positives.

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“Press Start”

Anyone who plays video games knows that the earlier generations view video games and video game culture as “...a waste of time” or “...corrupting our children with violence” (My Mom). Many media sources have tarnished the video game name, and have accused video games to be related to acts of violence or terrorism. The reality is, why do so many people hate video games?

The go to accusation people make is that the violence in these games corrupt our children and make them into “killers” or “psycho paths.” Although this may be true in some cases of events, it is not the cause of every single teen violence act that is made.

Take this article by DailyMail for example: the article talks about the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012 committed by Adam Lanza. The article seems to focus on the fact that Lanza had over “83k online kills including 22k ‘head shots’ to train himself for the massacre” (Bates / Pow). While the statistics may be true on the number of online kills he got, the article displays no evidence of the perpetrator using these games to ‘train’ to kill innocent people. Instead, many of the victims parents agreed that it had to do with parenting issues in the Lanza household, an illegal gathering of firearms, and possibly some evidence towards mental illnesses. So, what’s the point?

The older generations do not understand the younger generation’s culture when it comes to video games. Now, I am not saying that EVERY single adult hates video games. If that were the case, they wouldn’t even be legal. I am talking about the group of people who use video games as an excuse for bad things that happen in the world. They just assume that because of one or two incidents with video games, they automatically make them the Devil’s path to Hell, when in reality, video games create a lot of good for the world; In fact, some researchers say that video games are better than actual television, because unlike watching a movie, while you play video games, you are using your cognitive functions and improving your cognitive skills, and improving the part of your brain that helps you multi task (National Public Radio).

Another problem that is involved with the older generation is that a lot of the kids and teens who play games are really good at them, some good enough to start getting payed to play the game at a professional level, yet the parents don’t understand this. How could a 12 year old kid get paid 60 grand a year to play a video game for 10-12 hours a day, while a company streams the game play live to millions of people? Simple. The pure fact that this particular 12 year old is one of the best players to play the game, and people like watching that. In fact, they LOVE watching it! Part of it has to do with that the people who watch these live streams are embraced in the same culture as this particular 12 year old, yet this 12 year old has this particular talent of being one of the best. People admire this, whether it be jealousy, where the viewer wishes to be as good as this 12 year old, admiration, where the viewer loves to see a good player play a game they really enjoy, or envy, where the viewer hates that the 12 year old is good and the viewer is not as good, yet they watch anyway.

Caption: A picture of the crowd at Intel and ESL’s IEM Expo Championship event, featuring many competitive games, such as Counter Strike: Global Offensive and League of Legends. Around 173,000 fans attended, and millions more watched at home through streaming services. It was labeled “...world’s biggest eSports event in history” (Source).

So, what does all this mean? I plan on covering the overarching positives of video games when it comes to entertainment and jobs, and determining why video games are not what the earlier generations believe.