Thursday, September 10, 2009

Gamers or Spiritless timepassers?

According to wikipedia, gamers are people who spend much of their leisure time playing or learning about different games. Then again, people from different walks of life have different opinions about this. For example, my HoD claimed that gamers are drug addicts and a parent that I know believes that gamers are gamblers. But to me, gamers are people with time in their hands & passion for competition running through their veins. I will accept that I wouldn't have become a gamer if I was busy in dance classes & cricket coaching. But, if it wasn't for the competitive spirit that was burning inside me, I wouldn't have become a gamer at all. Sadly, today's gamers don't seem to have this spirit. In fact, today's gamers are people who like to hide behind a cupboard till the storm passes & then claim that he did his part to save the old man who was caught outside; basically, they are spineless cowards.

Why such harsh criticism against my fellow gamers? Well, its because I'm growing tired of this attitude shown by today's gamers. In the past year, there hasn't been even a single cafe/national gaming event in Chennai. Why? Because the only two games popular in Chennai (DotA & CS) already had clans a couple of clans who are good it. No one had the guts to stand up & fight against these clans. So, there were only two teams competing in events & thus, even a good cafe like Zap was forced to stop conducting events.

This is an age old problem now and there is no point in continuing that argument. But still, what pisses me off is that, even those special few gamers who still play in this dead city, are such cowards. Best example is probably the players at our local cafe, Zion. Except maybe one or two, everyone plays purely for fun. Of course gaming is for fun, but it will became a mindless cartoon if we don't add the element of competition in it. After a couple of failed attempts, they just give up and claim that they are playing for fun or that they don't like the game. They don't fight, they don't play their hearts out, they don't sweat, they don't research, they don't apply their mind or take any effort. They think that I'm better than them just because I have a clan of my own. Any person with a brain that works would figure out that I'm not natural at video games. I reached this level, purely because of my competitive spirit.

The irony is, I was once, in their shoes a long time ago. Me, Vijay (Maxi) and Karthik (fRosT) were just a bunch of new kids that visited a gaming cafe. We played against a guy who beat us 4 on 1. We got really pissed and planned for weeks together to beat him, in 4 on 1. Then, we improved in leaps and bounds to face them 1 on 1. I can never forget the top team back then, which was called Ashes. Praveen (Spk) and Riaz (00) belonged to that team and they were unbeatable at Age of Mythology.

Then, there was an expansion pack for that game which brought in new civilizations and powers. This was enough to motivate me & Vijay to practise our ass off in the newly updated game in a hope that we could catch them off-guard using the new strategies that come up with the additions. We literally studied international replays, took notes, mugged up strategies and trained like mad men. We then challenged them and played two games every day for a week and lost all the games. After a week, we started to win and then, we were almost unstoppable. Later, when Ashes collapsed, those two players and one more joined force with our little so-called team and thus, my team (Guardians) was created. My team might not have achieved much in the national arena, but I still have that sense of satisfaction because, we worked hard with a dream and we reached it. That is what gaming is really about.

Gamers in our cafe refuse to play in tournaments. Just to make them play, we are planning to introduce a rule by which, the winner is selected almost randomly, regardless of who won the game. That is how bad the competitive spirit really is, in today's gamers. The biggest joke of all is probably that, the parent's words that I quoted earlier, is almost gonna come true. To encourage competition, if we go ahead with this fun-tournament format, we will turn gamers in gamblers..

4 comments:

  1. A crucial point mentioned. People are afraid so losing that they tend to make such lame excuses. I guess its mostly due to the ego problems we Indian have. And gamers(most of them) turn out to be sore losers.

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  2. *Edit : People are so afraid of losin...
    sry

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  3. Ego is yet another important factor that I didn't mention simply because the post would become too lengthy. Conquering & controlling our ego is an important aspect of becoming a true gamer.

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  4. Every serious gamer experiences the same problem.

    Fun fact is playing an enormous role in competitions.

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