V-Day: The Professional

Mike V. exists at the nexus of genius, insanity and uncompromising sex appeal. In each week’s V-Day, he tries to teach you something about the world of gaming. He fails miserably.

Professional gaming is the new way that ordinary dudes try to make it big with limited dedication. It used to be writing, where everyone thinks, “I can write. I will be the best at it,” but then they don’t put any effort to their cause and wonder why they don’t get results. Pro gaming is the new writing. With online multiplayer more available then ever, every kid with a copy of Black Ops thinks they’re the next tournament champion.

Some years ago, a few of these fellars decided to make a league and call it professional. That’s cool. I really don’t know precisely how everything works because instead of researching the tournament system, I tried to see how many push-ups I could do in a row. 33, that’s not bad, right?

Professional athletes performing at an extremely high level.

Pro gamers refer to the games they play as “e-sports” which I guess is an attempt to make sitting on your ass playing video games for eight hours a day be considered “training” and not “what I did everyday at college.” I’ll admit, these pro players have skills, but no one has a real frame of reference for what “great” is for video games. The only way I’m going to be amazed at a video game is if midway through the match you draw a knife from your sock and fight the security guards that rush to detain you. I don’t think anyone is genuinely impressed by tournament play other than other professional gamers or wannabe pros. This, of course, makes most people think pro gaming is just a giant circle jerk. Don’t make eye contact, you’ll be fine.

Another problem is that pro gaming is exclusively a “sport” of extreme privilege. You aren’t seeing any poor kids from Columbia emerging on the pro circuit and taking Starcraft 2 by storm. It’s all dudes who never had to worry about anything that are playing. It’s like Polo, if Polo were less dangerous and more pixelated. This severely cuts down what the talent pool could be, simply because only a select group of individuals are eligible to join the ranks of “pro.” It’s like if you and three of your buddies have an arm-wrestling match for douchebags only, call it a professional league, and the winner thinks he’s the best in the world. You know that Rocky Balboa is in Philly punching the crap out of a slab of meat, but you still pretend you’re the best.

This doesn’t really need a caption.

Distressed over the state of “professional gaming” today, I sought out a pro player and got the scoop from someone who’s a member of the club. “Kave” has been on the MLG tournament scene for over five years, and most recently played at MLG Dallas two weeks ago. I sat down with him to get a word from someone on the other side of the fence.

Me: Kave, I’m a big fan! Can I get your autograph?!

Kave: Uhh, what? Dude, I’m literally handing in my ticket to board the plane.

Me: You burn in Hell, Kave, you arrogant bastard! You sucked at Raleigh 2010!

Groundbreaking stuff. Really makes you sit back and rethink all my poignant arguments and remarks. Maybe, despite all my doubts, pro gamers really are legitimate professionals. I mean, I’m a professional accountant, and I don’t even know what accountants do. Something with little needles going in your back, I think.

Me worrying about tax season.

The moral of the story here is that there is no moral, because this is not a story. Maybe one day we’ll put on ESPN and watch Kave playing in the finals of a Halo: Reach tournament. Maybe I will be in the crowd, with a beer in my hand, cheering. More likely, the tournaments will not be shown on ESPN anytime soon, unless Terrell Owens decides he’s going to be a pro gamer. Even then, they’ll just do some ten minute feature on SportsCenter and at the end it’ll have a caption, “Terrell didn’t make the first cut. He is still excited to continue his e-sports training regimen.” And there’s me sitting in my Spider-Man underwear, pounding back a bottle of vodka, trying to forget what I just saw.

I’d like to thank Kave for doing an actual interview with me and then me pretty much giving him the finger and making fun of professional gaming. You should follow him on Twitter at MLG_Kave and yell at him for spawn camping and/or challenge him to a Halo game. If you beat him, you’re a professional gamer. That’s how it works, right?