There’s probably a rule against what I’m about to do right here. But I’m going to break it, and tell you what this article is about, and it is about reviewers.
And now I’m going to tell you to open up a new window, and watch this.
No seriously. Go on. I’ll wait.
I have some problems with reviewers. I said it. You know what I think reviewers are? They’re the expiration date you see on food. They are not there to tell you what games are good but rather, which ones are bad.
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Competitive gaming and the respective idea of “Electronic Sports” are becoming more prominent, and are still looked down upon by the majority of gamers out there. In all honesty, there is logic behind its potential popularity. Like sports, there is heavy competition, team work and reflexes. Everything but the physical aspect of gaming is, and I will admit this, a part of competitive video games.

But there are some things holding it back. And these things will prevent video games from ever being a sport.

Now, I’m fairly certain many of you are thinking about Starcraft now in an attempt to prove me wrong. Starcraft is an oddity that is the exception to this, but let’s be honest here: Starcraft would never be broadcast on the same level as a football game in America or a…football/soccer….game in Europe.

Let’s get to the meat of this article. What would NEED to happen to put competitive gaming on the same level as sports?

The answer is fairly simple really. A game. Just like how you don’t see many broadcasts (if any) of “Major League Lacrosse”, you won’t see the higher competitive echelons of just any game being broadcast globally. The game needs to fit certain requirements, and if it is to be held in the same standard as say…Hockey in the United States (known and fairly popular, but not a mammoth of professional competition).

I would like to emphasize a point here. ONE game. Do you know much about the competitive Korean Street Fighter II League? No. I’m not even sure there IS one. Starcraft is huge in Korea for reasons that don’t involve Korea’s open-mindedness to make all video games competitive on the professional level.

What does this one mysterious game need to be popular in America? It’s a laundry list of increasingly impossible features. I’ll name a few:

1) Competitive and entertaining on the 1v1 level- This is an absolute necessity. It needs to be easy to follow, because if it is difficult for a viewer to see everything that is going on, it is frustrating to follow, and will lose viewers, the lifeblood of a competitive professional league. If a team battle is easy to follow, chances are the game itself will not be complex enough to be a viable competitive game. If a team battle is complex enough to be a viable competitive game, it will not be easy to follow. Thus we can conclude that watching teams fight other teams in video games is not fun for people who do not play the games at competitive levels. This does not apply to 1v1 games, which can be complex as well as easy to follow.

2) Different selections for the player- This is fairly vague, there needs to be customization in some form, be it different characters or different weapons, different classes or different skills, something that differentiates one player from another through means other than skill. Could you imagine a Basketball team with Coach A playing THE SAME Basketball team with Coach B? Could you imagine a league of this? That’s not entertaining at all.

3) Balanced- Self explanatory. Unbalanced games lead to a roster of 25 being cut to a roster of 3-5. This means in 1v1 battles, there are 9-25 match ups, and yes, watching this paltry sum of different matches will get stale.

4) A lot of selections for the player- Yes, this does look familiar. It also bears repeating, you need a lot of avatars for a lot of players so that the difference between two random matches is not miniscule.

5) AND IT STILL NEEDS TO BE BALANCED- This also bears repeating. Because it is very important. VERY important. For every unbalanced character, you skewer the ‘meta game’ . A large list of balanced avatars. This is crucial and nearly impossible. I don’t mean that one character shouldn’t have an advantage over another, but this advantage shouldn’t be absolute, and it should be based on character attributes, not power.

6) No exploits- Far too often people exploit glitches in games to get that SLIGHT competitive edge that makes a ‘chump who exploits’ better than a ‘chump who doesn’t’. This doesn’t’ Why is this important? Because for any competitive league, a healthy selection of players is more than just a necessity. With glitches, you literally change the game at the tournament level. The game is different. “Glitches” is not even the correct term, because it implies bugs. Anything that can be used mechanically to disadvantage one player against another, whether intended or not, fits in this category. But the end result is that all that practice you had when you were having ‘fun’ is gone. This turns off far too many players, which leads to the stagnation of the competitive league. Imagine if college football (and lower) just stopped being played entirely. Eventually, football would die.

7) Visually Appealing­- Viewers can’t be turned off by a bad looking game.

Fun- You’re not going to get players if your game isn’t fun.

All these things need to be in ONE game. In essence, I am asking for the PERFECT game. Fully customizable, yet balanced. I also am very aware that this game is never going to be made, and I’m OK with that.

I feel like this article is getting wordy, so I’ll wrap this up:

I don’t mean to say “EVERY GAME WITH VS. MODE IS WORTHLESS”. At all. They can be fun as hell, just not material for a contract.

WoW – No. You’re not. Stop trying. You never will be. Seriously. Stop. You’re more of an embarrassment and a hindrance than anything else. Every other group of competitive gamers laughs at you behind your back and in your face. Your competitive league is everything wrong with Hollywood combined with everything wrong with gaming. Your game is not deep, not balanced, not customizable, and full of mechanical exploits that is advantageous to one character rather than another.

Every other competitive game- You are closer than WoW and this is not news to you. Another gamer might enjoy watching your matches, and may understand what is going on. Unfortunately, the average viewer won’t, so the few of you that believe that you may be able to earn a living off of gaming? Please stop.

So to the rest of you who play in competitions and the like: if all you’re looking for is a fun way to kill time by having serious business matches, by all means. Try not to look like too much of an asshole when drama hits which it sometimes does. I sure wish I could hold normal, physical athletes to the same standard.

But I’m not an idiot.

Today I’m going to address a little issue I have with more modern games.

You see, I decided to put SUPER REALISTIC SHOOTAR XXVII into my computer. My computer asked me what the hell I was thinking, putting that garbage in it, but I said “games are realistic now and I want to play games”. Also, I realized I was talking to my computer, and became very aware how pathetic that was.

But that’s ok, I said to myself. I’ll shoot some people realistically and that will make me happy again.

The plot wasn’t anything spectacular, but that was totally fine with me. My wife was kidnapped by terrorist-robotic-Nazi-zombies from the future alternate universe – Realistic-terrorist-robotic-Nazi-zombies from a realistic future alternative universe.

So I’m at the introduction where I find my first gun. This is going to kick ass. So I open the gold skull plated door to their underwater realistic base.

And inside, I see a terrorist robo…a guy with a gun. I shoot him. He falls to the floor. With his last ounce of strength he shoots me in the leg. I’m crippled and I can’t move. The alarm goes off. Someone else comes into the room and shoots me. I die.

Did I mention that’s the only possible outcome?

Well, SUPER REALISTIC SHOOTAR XXVII was an abysmal failure. The graphics were good, and the robot Nazi-terrorist-zombie-ghosts or whatever were probably realistic.

So I pop in ARTHURIAN MEDIEVAL RPG, the prequel to ARTHURIAN MEDIEVAL RPG II: MORDRED’S REVENGE.

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Ok, lets get this out of the way first to clear everything up. Video games are, in the most broad sense, role playing games. You play the role of SOMEONE, because I know for a fact that you’re not a bad enough dude to actually do half the shit you pull off in video games. That’s all the roleplaying you’re going to be doing. Yes. Even FPSes.

In Doom? You played THE DOOMGUY. THE DOOM GUY.

Let me tell you a bit about the Doom guy. He has been into hell twice. One time was a cheap trap, one time he VOLUNTEERED.

Both times he ruined Hell. They gave him a stairway back to earth just so he’d stop destroying everything.

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