A call for esports to become more local, recreational
One of the things I look forward to throughout the year is playing in various retro video game tournaments. Over the past few years I’ve attended tournaments across the country — Iowa, New York, Ohio and several in Wisconsin.
My game of choice is Tecmo Super Bowl for Nintendo, which came out in 1991. I hope to someday make it to tournaments in Seattle, Detroit, Columbus and Connecticut. My skillset is average to above average. I’m always a few bad beats or simple mistakes away from knocking off a higher seed and going deep into the tournament.
But I don’t play in tournaments to win and make money. I play to have fun and bask in the nostalgia.
Some of these tournaments have started having a retro gaming event the night before the main tournament. In Cincinnati this past weekend, there was an RBI Baseball tournament for Nintendo while others played NBA Jam and Dr. Mario.
In today’s world, electronic sports (esports) is making a dominating run to the top spot in popularity. Games like League of Legends, Super Smash Brothers, Rocket League and Overwatch are popular, but their popularity has increased exponentially due to something I didn’t have in my living room as a kid — a video connection to the world.
Twitch is a game-streaming website and was bought by Amazon for $970 million in 2014. Users can log into Twitch and watch competitors and tournaments across the globe for hundreds of games — and then leave comments on the livestream. YouTube Live and Facebook Live share this format. Play-by-play and color commentators have begun to take over the mics for the big games. It’s not a false show — it’s the real deal in today’s world. In 2013, the Staples Center in Los Angeles hosted the League of Legends championship and tickets sold out in an hour. The video game itself is worth more than $1.5 billion according to reports. ESPN now has an esports broadcast.
Video games have strategy and users are forced into quick reactions. Colleges and high schools around the country have jumped in on the action. More than 30 colleges now offer video game scholarships, and nine Wisconsin high schools have an official esports team — DeForest and Marshall are the two closest to Monroe. In the NBA, 17 teams — including the Milwaukee Bucks — purchased esports teams to compete in an online basketball league.
Just among my group of local friends there are men and women that play Overwatch and Fortnite, and others play in online leagues of Madden football and FIFA soccer. While online play is convenient because you don’t have to leave your house and can play a brother across the country or your college roommate who lives two hours away, it’s just not the same (to me) as sitting side by side staring at the same screen.
Which is why I wish there could be a local recreation league — or leagues — for gamers around here. Maybe it’s only 9 or 10 people interested. Or maybe there are 200. I guess we won’t know until we start something.
I, myself, am not a first-person shooter (FPS) gamer for any system new or old. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try or like to sit on a bar stool next to someone else and play for fun. A local league could have different nights for different games, or different genres (sports gamers on Mondays, FPS games on Wednesdays). At the end of the year, maybe there would be a local “gamer Olympics” to see who is the best overall. Maybe we don’t care who is the best and never have an Olympics and it’s just a club that gets together and uses their thumbs to play out a game on a television screen.
I game to relax. I feel like my gaming is the equivalent of doing a crossword, playing a game of cards or a board game. Sometimes, you need someone else to play against, like in poker or cribbage. I’m not suggesting three, four or even eight hours of gaming in a day. But an hour or two a week to go to a bar or community center, chit chat and get in a game or two before going back to your everyday life is not that far-fetched.
We just need a location, a set of games, and someone willing to lead it all.
And if I’m late to the local party and this is already going on — well, then I must not have been listening clearly enough.
— Adam Krebs is a reporter for the Times and wants you to know that in NHL ’94 for Sega, it’s not so much him as it is Roenick — he’s good. Adam can be reached at akrebs@themonroetimes.net.
