Forum Moderators: open
As with other pro sports, the entrepreneurs behind tournaments like the World Cyber Games believe that in the multibillion-dollar video game industry there is enough interest to support an elite level of gamers who play for pay.
"This sport is still under the radar," said Angel Munoz, 44, the creator of the Cyberathlete Professional League
Jeez, I had a hard enough time not laughing when the cheerleaders called themselves a sport.
Taking Their Game to the Next Level: Professional Video Game Players [nytimes.com]
;)
Anyway, love to join a competition one day (also have to get my skills up to shape).
Its great! they have a problem with their online stats :(
I dont think they have had any prize competitions tho...
[mongabay.com...]
you may mock at the lack of ambition, currently unemployed, I took a job stacking shelves in a supermarket - Blokes there have been doing this as a fulltime occupation for several years and take it very Seriously indeed.
Id rather play games and save the universe from extinction than wrestle with a can of beans.....
But who the h*ll wants to watch somebody play a video game?
We STILL don't want to WATCH YOU play them. We might want to play them ourselves.... (I don't - I want games for my computer, NOT console etc....)
We STILL don't want to WATCH YOU play them
As crazy as this sounds... Have you been to a video arcade lately? People do watch this. I've seen whole groups of kids gathered around a machine to watch a good player play. It makes me shiver, but it happens. I know guys that will watch their friends play for hours. I think it's partially a need to see another person's techniques to improve their own play. ButI also think that they just like watching it like a movie, except you don't know what will happen next.
*shrug* No clue.... just glad I don't have kids at home.
I still don't care about vid games.... I've no interest in ANOTHER machine just to dink around in a game.
And yes, I like sports - as a background to my computer. They go on "behind" me all the time as I sit here, because my husband is a HUGE sports fan. As to actively watching.... if it's the Dodgers, Yankees, Cowboys or Rams; or a horse race or rodeo/bull riding, I watch. Otherwise it goes in one ear and out the other.
(Plus I really like Half Life.)
I think it's the money that goes into the arcade stuff that gets me. Some of these kids don't get breakfast before they go to school because mom supposedly doesn't have the money....
Ah well. At least if they're lining the pockets of the arcade owner, they aren't out buying drugs - until closing, anyway.
and if someone's ultimate goal in life is to become a level 84 mage with Adamantite power armour far be it from me to stand in there way!
As a public elementary school teacher (by day), I spend a good portion of my time trying (hoping, striving, fighting) to get kids to set somewhat, er, loftier ultimate goals than this. I know you were speaking at least somewhat faceticiously there, but the truth is someone really must stand in their way. I have kindergarten students (that's five years old) whose ultimate reward at home is to get to spend a few hours playing dad's Playstation or X-Box, and if you think these people are taking out the Super-Ultra-Kill-Sport-Death-Match-Army-Recon-12 game and putting in a CareBears disc, you're wrong. It's disturbing.
And let's not even get into the whole violent images = violent kids thing, which is undeniable after ten minutes on an elementary school playground. Then to promote participation in these games as a potential long-term way of life? Oi!
many say the same about reading a book
Gaming Olympics:
Mr Schenkuizen took gold and $25,000 (£13,900) for his efforts and his team-mate won the bronze medal and $5,000 (£2,800) in the World Cyber Games.
[news.bbc.co.uk...]
People are still under the illusion thta video games are played by 5 year olds who then don't do well in school. The truth is 75% (approx I have seen variations on this figure) of gamers are aged over 18.
Video games ARE played by 5 year olds. They are OWNED by people over 18, who then have children and let them play DOOM. And, frankly, you'd have to be an idiot to think that it's okay for a 5 year old to play DOOM.
Its more to do with the upbringing than anything else but its easy to blame a game for the parents errors in bringing the kid up.
Its more to do with the upbringing than anything else but its easy to blame a game for the parents errors in bringing the kid up
Okay. First, let's agree that the above is true. Then, let's agree that letting your small child play violent, blood splattering video games ranks as an "error in bringing the kid up."
I played violent games when I was growing up. I am pretty well off, and I haven't killed/hurt anybody.
Because you played violent video games, or in spite of the fact that you played violent video games?
<edit>spelling</edit>
[edited by: createErrorMsg at 2:40 am (utc) on Oct. 12, 2004]
What does happen as regards very young people exposed to violent games is that their sensitivity TO violence becomes blunted to a greater or lesser extent depending on basic psyche.
I don't necessarily agree with the current "let gina play doom, it won't hurt her" attitude, but I also don't think you can over-simplify this to the degree that you state as incontrovertible fact "any child who plays violent video games will become a violent person later in life".
Can't recall where I read this (and of course, "journalese" is always rather suspect!), but this particular report stated that after a study of several groups (the control for which was a group of Amish kids in the same age range - no vid games there!), the MOST violent later on in years (talking 5 years I believe) were those children who experienced "up close and personal" violence, not those who were vicarious partakers through computer or video games, or tv and movies.
I don't think one would want to wholesale expose one's very young children to excessive violence of any sort, whether games or television or the ghetto. But one does have to make certain choices: if the option to keep your kid off the street and out of a gang is to allow her to play doom, which are you going to opt for?
createErrorMsg- Got any facts to back up that claim?
createErrorMsg- Got any facts to back up that claim?
but I also don't think you can over-simplify this to the degree that you state as incontrovertible fact "any child who plays violent video games will become a violent person later in life".
If you want 'facts' to back that up I've got a file folder full of drawings by four and five year old children that'll send chills up your spine.
<added>
vkaryl, I look back and see where I said this...
And let's not even get into the whole violent images = violent kids thing, which is undeniable after ten minutes on an elementary school playground.
...which may have been the comment you were referring to. If so, I should qualify. I'm not saying it makes them violent later in life. I'm saying it makes them violent NOW. Based on what? Playground observations. They act this stuff out..."BOOM, bANG, Your guts are all over the wall!" Five year olds don't make this kind of stuff up. They mimic it from...Blues Clues? Sorry, but no.
</added>
That claim.
That claim.
I'm NOT saying video games are evil (although I think some of them are designed by people who are). I am saying there is something seriously wrong with letting young children even SEE, much less play them.
I have to tell you that my brother and I both did "bang bang you're dead" stuff when we were kids (50 years ago now....), dressed to the hilts in mini-cowboy outfits ("I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy"....) with holsters and pistols. What does this have to do with anything? Well, today, my brother (after a stint in VietNam, where the only thing he actually killed was the little dog he couldn't bring home with him and refused to leave to be eaten) is about as pacifistic a person as you'd want to know even though he works in the US defense industry; and I? I hunt game for food, shoot for pleasure (at targets, not live stuff unless it's to eat), and play violent games on my machine (the ones where you have to mow swaths of orcs down wholesale to get to the next "level"....), and would have no compunction whatsoever about killing A PERSON if that individual meant harm to me or mine. Differing psyches, same early upbringing, gender difference OUTSTANDINGLY apparent, in the OTHER direction....
*shrug* Meaning? You can't make concrete, set-in-stone-never-going-to-change judgements about any of this because each person is an INDIVIDUAL, no matter if that person is only 5 years old. All you can do is say, based on YOUR observations, YOUR perspective (narrow as that may be, considering what you do for a living on a daily basis - and it IS fairly constricted....) that it might be a better thing if parents limited their child's exposure to violent stimulata.
In other words, I guess, don't be Don Quixote. Pick a more manageable beast: don't try to change the whole world all at one time, volunteer with Big Brothers/Big Sisters to work on a segment that's manageable; or do something constructive with single-parent households where the child is all too likely to have no after school supervision (and this isn't to say that I think you DON'T do something like that - but others might need a nudge....)
And while I almost think I shouldn't say this, I'm going to anyway: if you remove the knowledge of violence and its effects (the blood and gore you so abhor) from the knowledge of the small people today who will be the big people tomorrow, will they understand how to react when someone invades their world and seeks to do harm? True, one doesn't have to overload them with sensory outrage, but trying to make this world a peppermint patty/polyanna place, rose-colored glasses firmly on nose, is an opposite reaction which isn't to be preferred either....
[*sigh* Take the "standard disclaimer" as read, okay? I don't have it handy tonight.... this IS a personal opinion, and I'm not really meaning to piss anyone off....]
