Journeys

First, my review of this great book (just in case none of you saw it on FaceBook, KillaNet, Village Gamer, Amazon, Chapters or Barnes & Noble:

Games Boys: Professional Videogaming’s Rise from the Basement to the Big Time by Michael Kane is the best inside look at the competitive videogaming industry I have read to date. He peels back the layers of this very complex subculture and lays it all out there for anyone to read – from the gamers themselves to the parents who try to understand. Game Boys has it all – the celebratory victories, the heartbreaking losses, the passion of its supporters and he doesn’t leave out the backroom dirty laundry either.

This book is an informative, exciting, unsanitized read; he does not sugarcoat the competitive gaming industry; instead he offers an outsider’s perspective of a largely misunderstood section of today’s society. Author Michael Kane has managed to translate the excitement of competition into his words, and sometimes I found myself reading faster through the competition gameplay to get to the moment of victory – even though I already knew the results of many of the matches he wrote about.

Author Michael Kane has managed to translate the excitement of competition into his words, and sometimes I found myself reading faster through the competition gameplay to get to the moment of victory – even though I already knew the results of many of the matches he wrote about.

As a participant full of passion for the videogame industry, there were so many times I found myself identifying with CompLexity GM Jason Lake and harbouring feelings of resentment towards Craig Levine. Like Jason Lake, I believe in the grassroots foundation of this wonderful industry, and even though Craig Levine has done much to get competitive videogaming out there into the main stream of today’s world, I often felt that Levine’s tactics were less than honourable, and I am of the generation when honour was at the forefront of how you conducted your life. These are elements which make for a great book – eliciting emotion and appreciation from the reader, making the reader care about the characters in the story.

Michael Kane has artfully included every aspect of our advancing technological world – global friendships and rivalries, heroes and villains, supportive families and families who feel the gamer is wasting his or her time. Corporations who only look at the biggest and the best for exposure, instead of looking at and supporting the grassroots events and players who keep the industry churning forward on a daily basis. Event promoters who are in it for the dollar, and to heck with the injury they do to our industry by scamming the players who have poured their heart, soul and often their last dollar into feeding their passion for gaming in hopes of making it to the winner’s circle.

I commend Michael for the honesty of his words, even the ones which cast a less than idyllic light on the e-sports industry, because the end result shows that our cyberathletes truly are no different from the mainstream sports athletes. They train, they play, they do things they shouldn’t, but when it comes right down to the final seconds it’s all about the game and the opponent in front of them. Game Boys shows how far we as a competitive market have come, but also shows how far we have yet to go. Michael touched very briefly on the girls in gaming, and while some things have changed since Game Boys went to print, much has stayed the same, from the disdain which meets many girl gamers head on, to the insults and unwelcome photos hurled at them on XBL. While the industry is still very much a boys’ club, the girls are rapidly gaining ground – perhaps in the future we can look forward to a book on Game Girls to compliment Game Boys – what do you say, Michael?

Next – it’s really freaking hot here – 33 Celcius, to be exact. That’s approximately 98 Fahrenheit for the uninitiated. I like summer and all – other than the fact that light is evil – but does it need to be this hot? Why can’t we have just a nice temperate 23ish degrees? Ah well, maybe some fluffy clouds will roll in and there will be some good shot opportunities tonight.

Now, back to Game Boys for a minute – because I can talk more in-depth here about goings on in the book. I meant every word that I said in my review, the book really is a great read. It also gave me a few ideas for the projects we’re working on with KillaNet and its various properties and productions. I very much relate to Jason Lake and the trials, tribulations and disappoints he went through on his journey to see competitive videogaming reach the DirecTV level.

It is sometimes -no, make that often- very frustrating on the sponsorship plane, and while I understand the theory behind supporting the big events which get all of the press attention, it’s the events and players at the grassroots level which continue to feed the pipeline of upcoming new talent to the massive events, and it’s those events and gamers who need support too. Not necessarily in the thousands of dollars in sponsorships, but even the gift of a few tournament prizes, or the lanyards most corporations seem to rain down on the masses at big events – even discount coupons for new games or products, something these corporations can easily track – would be most welcome. These are, after all, the kids who are out there on a regular basis buying the new games, participating in the community forums and upgrading their systems as new and cooler stuff comes available. They are the ones paying the daily wages for those who supply the products. These are grassroots players are tomorrow’s stars -whether it’s on the competitive circuit or on the design and development end- they all have dreams which deserve support. By the way, I would like to thank Michael Kane and Viking Penguin for graciously donating autographed copies of Game Boys to be given away at Digital Storm 2008. Their contribution is very much appreciated – and in no way influences my opinion of his book.

Michael Kane touched on so many areas in his book which I have been a champion of for many years – videogaming is definitely not anti-social, it’s not a bad influence on the psyche of our children, it won’t turn them into mass murderers, and they are a huge opportunity, through global tournaments and multiplayer game modes, for gamers around the world to learn from and about each other. Yes, there are the dangers of addiction, or predators, or scams – but that goes for almost any aspect of life, does it not? All things in moderation is a good adage to live by, no matter what your interests are. While it’s true that no one gets anywhere without hard work, dedication and passion (unless they have a money train, then things are a bit easier), there still needs to be some kind of work-life balance. In today’s world of constant connection with the outside world, though, that’s not always easily achievable.

As for the part girls play in gaming – so many people underestimate us. Just like the boy gamers, girl gamers inhabit all levels of the playing field – from casual to hardcore, from newcomer to elite. Why then is it so difficult for some males to just accept that we can, and often do, play just as well as they do? Why does there so often have to be a sexist angle to it? Why do girl gamers have to be submitted to rude comments, or be the recipients of very inappropriate photo messages on both computer and platforms like Xbox Live? Some girls even get booted and banned from game servers when it’s found out that they are *gasp* female. That’s not 100% of today’s gaming scene – there are many guys out there who are great to game with, I have some of them on my XBL Friends list. It’s the minority, however, who make it difficult to get the girls out to play. I’ve been a gamer since the first days of Pong and Space Invaders. I was one of those early Doom players – this is my playing field too, and I have just as much right to play in it as the boys do.

Wow – that was a bit more of a rant than I had actually planned on, but it doesn’t make things any less true. The game industry as a whole is full of very talented women who both play and design, and as more women come into the industry, perhaps we will finally see our presence more widely accepted. Perhaps we will see more realistic women characters who aren’t scantly-clad over-developed, under-proportioned eye-candy for the boy gamers to ogle. Maybe the armour we’re given to wear in some games will actually look like it could stop an attack while still looking pretty. That’s one thing I really like about Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 – the female characters look realistic, their attire is realistic, and the game isn’t full of eye-candy NPCs. Thank you, Ubisoft, for that.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Book Reviews, Random Opinions.