Super League4Dead Party IV: Ultimate Edition

(ignore typos and perhaps some rambings. wrote before going to sleep and didn't spell check or reread... probably many more errors than I'd care to admit). 

Tonight isn’t a personal entry. Sorry for those who thought I’d keep that up a little longer than a single issue. For those interested, still in a relationship, still have the car in the shop, still work at a shitty job, and still talking about video games. So, nothing changed, no reason to discuss most of that.

Today, I’m talking about video games, but not in the usual way I do or about the games I usually talk about. Today I want to discuss the latest bit of news surrounding eSports, ESPN, and League of Legends.

For those who know me, you know that I really don’t like League of Legends. I don’t hate it in the same way I hate Final Fantasy in that I think it’s given too much love and attention from too large a group of people who think its god’s gift to humanity… because it isn’t any of those things. It’s actually kind of dumb. If I had to compare these to mives, Final Fantasy is on the same level as Amazing Spiderman in that it looks nice and has small bits that are fine, but overall it does a lot of things I’m just not happy with or would rather not have in my video games (like full length movies in place of gameplay). League of Legends, on the other hand, is more like Public Enemies. Not necessarily a bad movie, and it may even be a well-made movie with lots of good actors and technical bits. But it’s just so boring that I can’t stand to really sit around it for more than a couple minutes before I want to watch something else more stimulating.

In fact, let me go further. Most of you know how much I love Achievement Hunter and RoosterTeeth. Any game they play, I’ll typically watch, regardless of game, because no matter how boring it might be, they tend to make it fun in some way. While I found Gears of War visually dull and vapid, their comedy was at least enough to give the video itself some kind of life. Their League of Legends video on the other hand… watching it was absolutely boring as fuck and minimizing it to do something else and only listening to the audio, it’s not terrible, but it’s certainly the least stimulating Let’s Play in their playlist. Yeah, if these guys, who are genuinely entertaining everywhere else can’t make League of Legends interesting to me, then I simply don’t give a fuck. Maybe the Two Best Friends can try their luck with it, but I’m doubtful.

Fine, Aaron, but what’s all this have to do with anything? You don’t like League of Legends, who cares? I just wanted to establish that first before I get into my next bit of information and the opinion of that.

An HBO series “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” will be doing a behind the scenes look at League of Legends. What’s this mean? It means either HBO, and by extension most of television, have nothing worthwhile to show on TV anymore now that Breaking Bad and any other good show is over… OR The majority of the sports world (at least the very commercial and business side of it) had decided to make eSports, mostly League of Legends at the moment, part of the sports discussion. Or, to put it simply, games on a competitive level are now considered to be sports on some level.

Before I get too deep into this, yes, this is considered a win overall. Games are finally being recognized by those outside the fanbase as something other than just toys. There are people out there taking these things “seriously”. But… if that’s the case… why am I not excited by this? Why do I have a somewhat unpleasant feeling about all this? A part of me thinks it stems from this being solely about League of Legends, and that might play a large part of it. But I think there’s more to that.

For me, I don’t really view games on a competitive level. When I play with friends, I prefer working as a team. If I have to do a competitive game or game-type, I typically don’t play it seriously and just fuck with people. Example, in Halo multiplayer, I usually give up on the shooting aspect of the game within the first couple minutes, find a vehicle, and just waste time racing around in circles, maybe hitting people if I feel so inclined. In fighting games, I generally only play as joke characters or things I find amusing or broken in some way rather than a conventionally “good” character because I’m in it for fun.

When not playing with friends, I generally just don’t play with people. I have never liked gaming online because I’ve viewed it as a hassle. First, I have to have a solid internet connection, which I’ve never really had most of my life. Second, I have to play with a person or group of people who are decent at the game and not assholes for me to even come close to enjoying it. Third, there’s an uneasy pressure in having to play better with them so as to not ruin THEIR enjoyment of the game either. But, and most importantly, in playing multiplayer, I can’t sit back and enjoy aspects of the game I might otherwise appreciate. I can’t enjoy small quirks in the level design as much. I can’t look for hidden Easter Eggs or read the referential bullshit on a wall or some other spot on the map.

See, the difference between me and those who play eSports are vastly different. They play games to compete and show dominance. I find that boring and would rather play games to explore worlds, invest in deep interactive stories, and explore the larger and more interesting side of gaming that is its artistic side. I feel games are the best medium to tell stories and really connect with the audience. And I think a part of me is just disappointed, and maybe even somewhat upset by this new eSports development. Why?

Let’s face it, when companies find something that makes money, they don’t just stop with that one thing. They rebrand it, remake it, repurpose it, clone it, copy it if it wasn’t theirs to then hope for the same level of success, and so on. Need proof? Call of Duty is the most popular or at least most profitable franchise in gaming (though GTA5 might have changed that recently). With Call of Duty’s success, the gaming market then became oversaturated with FPS games, and a large number of them being about modern warfare and fighting terrorists. Why? Because everyone wanted to make the same money as Call of Duty.

And, in my mind, I can see that same thing happening here with League of Legends. It becomes popular and profitable enough to get regular spots on TV (free advertising essentially), which helps grow the player base EVEN MORE. This allows them to rake in MORE money the more exposure it gets. Then actually having big competitions on TV would clearly get them lots of advertising money. And I fucking guarantee EA is already working on their League of Legends rip-off simply to get in on this action for themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that games I like will come to an end to be replaced by this utter nonsense. But, looking at the way gaming is now, we are certainly heading a direction very similar to that.

Examples? FEAR was a single player experience that focused on telling a horror story. F3AR became a co-op experience in which two players collect points and achievements in a haunted house, one with guns and one with superpowers. Dead Space was a single player game that focused on telling a horror story in space. Dead Space 3 became a co-op experience in which two players go through a microtransaction-optional exploration of a big space-thing that reminds people of Lost Planet a bit. What I’m saying is games are starting to lose their unique flare for solo experiences and “great” story telling ALREADY because of this need to make them all co-op, multiplayer, or something other than what they were originally designed to be. Hell, look at SimCity, a game in which you build cities in your own little world for your own amusement. Then look at the newest SimCity which required online play to play a game that is effectively a single player game with the only online feature being that you can look at other people’s cities and connect yours to theirs if you wanted… but you didn’t need to. And there wasn’t any real benefit beyond that.

In short, I really don’t want eSports to be a thing. I’ve never looked at gaming as sport, but as art. And while I know both niches can be served, I don’t fully understand why the need to have it be a “sport” is even there. Sports fanatics will never fully accept it because they view gaming in the same way most gamers probably view golf or bowling or NASCAR. But I guess, yeah, that fact it’s League of Legends is another thing that really gets to me. Sports are supposed to be fun for those playing but also for those watching. If you like the sport, you’ll like watching it. I like gaming, and I love watching Let’s Plays. But, as stated before, League of Legends is really boring to me. And I can’t imagine them playing games on TV for people to watch because the audience there isn’t solely gamers. And that audience will probably be less entertained by it than I am.

Besides, surely there are better games we could push to make our eSports flagbearer. Hell, I’ll take Gears of War or Halo over League of Legends, and I don’t really care for those games either. Personally, I think it’d be fun if Left4Dead became an eSports phenomenon. Or maybe Street Fighter… NO! Wait! Mario Party! Think about it, it’s something that actually can be fun to watch with the right people involved. It’s easy enough for anyone to follow along and even play themselves to join in on the competition if they want to. It’s a fun and colorful game for all ages. AND I think it’d be funny to have celebrity appearances from athletes in other sports jump into a Mario Party game and see how they fare against actual gamers. The idea of that just seems hilarious to me.

Regardless, while I may not like eSports or League of Legends, this discussion is a sign that gaming and its relationship to the world around it is not only improving, but moving in ways that can help it attain greater heights in the future. Though I’m skeptical about this in the sense I feel this is really more about companies making money off advertising than showing a legitimately good game, BUT that’s not the discussion here. Gaming is getting accepted from those outside the medium and we should consider that a plus, at the very least. Now we just have to get annoying church groups to stop assuming we’re all serial killers and rapists waiting to take over the world in our horrible and violent rage. See ya next time.