Professional/Competitive Gaming Chapter: Input from Smash Community

[unknownforce]

Hi everyone,

My apologies for posting this in the Melee forum, but from what I recall the melee general forum is the most frequently checked by all smash communities and seems appropriate given the topic (and I know many players don’t check the light house or pool room at all). I should make it clear that this message involves ALL the smash communities and is not melee exclusive.

As I mentioned in the facebook group, the book my colleagues and I are writing on Digital Technology has officially been approved by Oxford University Press, which means the chapter on Professional Gaming has also been approved. Needless to say, I plan on including the Smash games in the chapter, which means written interviews with some members of the community is somethingI definitely have planned.

For everyone unfamiliar with Oxford University Press, I recommend looking them up on google. They have an exceptional reputation for publishing high quality handbooks, which means the professional gaming chapter will be distributed across the world in many different academic, research, and professional settings. This likely means that a large number of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as various professional researchers and clinicians, will be reading it. Many of them, who know virtually nothing about professional gaming, will be learning about it for the first time in this chapter. I see this is an excellent opportunity to further educate the academic and scientific community on professional gaming and its potential benefits.

At this point, I wanted to discuss some of the general points I’d like to touch on in the chapter. I am very receptive to feedback, so feel free to post here if you think I’m missing something you believe I should cover. Additionally, I would be curious to hear what type of questions the community would like me to ask the professional and competitive gamers I end up interviewing. Please keep in mind that I want to keep the questions as interesting as possible to readers who may not know much (if anything) about professional/competitive gaming.

My current plan is to focus on the following for the chapter: 1. Professional/competitive gaming and skills development. 2. Professional gaming as a career choice. 3. Professional/competitive gaming encouraging prosocial behaviors. 4. Professional/competitive gaming redefining excessive game use. 5. Professional/competitive gaming redefining negative gaming stereotypes. 6. Implications of professional/competitive gaming and future research. 7. Player interviews and (possibly) case studies.

I will be sure to include information about various professional and competitive gaming communities throughout the chapter, with smash, league of legends, and starcraft getting the most attention (though I should probably include at least one big FPS game like Call of Duty as well).

Since this is a lengthy post, I’ll summarize what feedback would be most helpful: A. Feedback on the chapter topics and other areas you would suggest I cover. B. Specific questions to ask players being interviewed.

I’m greatly looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts, and I want to give a huge thanks to everyone that has already expressed interest in being interviewed or contributing in other ways.

 

[Kadano]

I don’t know whether this is relevant here, but one thing that has always intrigued me is reaction times. I would find it very interesting to learn how human reaction works in Melee, which kind of decisions we make and how our reaction times vary depending on mental state (fatigue, having eaten recently etc.), person and decision type.

 

[unknownforce]

Kadano-Definitely an interesting area. I don't think processing speed and reaction times have been studied too much in professional gamers yet, but it seems reasonable to conclude that it increases as a player becomes more skilled. The major question is how well it transfers to other activities aside from video games, though I believe there are some studies out there that indicate skill transfer is quite possible.

 

[EPsilon933]

My current plan is to focus on the following for the chapter: 1. Professional/competitive gaming and skills development. 2. Professional gaming as a career choice. 3. Professional/competitive gaming encouraging prosocial behaviors. 4. Professional/competitive gaming redefining excessive game use. 5. Professional/competitive gaming redefining negative gaming stereotypes. 6. Implications of professional/competitive gaming and future research. 7. Player interviews and (possibly) case studies.

Maybe you could also interview those who provide services to the community too like TOs, streamers, and youtubers? They might say some interesting things in different points of view

I will be sure to include information about various professional and competitive gaming communities throughout the chapter, with smash, league of legends, and starcraft getting the most attention (though I should probably include at least one big FPS game like Call of Duty as well).

Halo might go almost hand-in-hand with COD. A few top players from that game converted to COD because that's where the money is these days. There might be a few stories of game transitions. This guy shares a lot of player stories from both communities https://www.youtube.com/user/ScottGandhi . He won a Halo 2 national championship in 2006

 

[unknownforce]

Thanks for the input Epsilon. I'll definitely take a look at the youtube video, as I don't know much about the FPS community. I've been contacted by a few TO's and streamers, and I would like to interview them as well if I have the room for it in the chapter. Picking who I am going to interview is NOT going to be an easy task since I've gotten interest from a lot of community members that could provide interesting perspectives and insights.

 

[BigglesWorth]

Any mention of esports or competitive gaming in an academic setting without thorough analysis of Quake and Counterstrike would be a failure. They were too essential to the growth of competitive gaming. On top of that, they are much more skillful than FPS competitions today, so a much better representation. Seriously, Counter Strike is the King of Fighters/Melee of FPS, to use a metaphor. Honorable mentions should include anime fighters, competitive tcgs (like WoW tcg, Hearthstone, Magic the Gathering), and MMO's formats led to international esports (such as the old Guild Wars Guild vs Guild formats).

 

[BigglesWorth]

If you are going history, you will definitely need to bring the roots of competition formats: arcades for fighting games, LANs for FPS and Dota. The addition of online play to consoles and PC groups are what created the international explosion and popularity of esports, mainly by giving people an awareness of everyone else in the world as well as providing ladders to compare themselves to each other. MMOs, around this time, also had a similar effect; this due to pvp areas/servers having a similar effect both in awareness and in providing more gamers a sense of being "better" at something than a huge number of people.

Edit: Correcting my grammar. XD

 

[Toronto Joe]

hype

 

[BigglesWorth]

There are more arguments for what transfers: competitive games could be said to aid in developing self-awareness and self-correction of actions, learning how to deal with habits, learning how to work with other people, taking on the habit of being obedient to particular role (helpful when for jobs), and learning new systems (which is an essential of playing games). These skills are all transferable. As for specific skills, it would depend on the level and type of game. There are studies that FPS's develop spatial awareness and movement tracking. Starcraft no doubt develops a person's ability to micromanage and multitask. Fighting Games develop people socially and also trains people how to watch human behavior. Competitions in general require focus, life management (unless you're Mango), commitment, and the ability to handle pressure which are all important things to have. So I'd say, on a case by case basis, there is definitely evidence to suggest Competitive Gaming can help in develop GENERAL skills that are useful in other areas. It's kind of like football: training your body to do one thing well like hurl yourself under another 200 lbs of something and hurling yourself on people in general are not necessarily the most applicable skill to a job, unless you are a security guard; however, no one doubts that the athleticism and discipline that comes with the sport is definitely valuable. If people learn to discern the real positive aspects of what competitive gaming does like they recognize it in other sports, then there wouldn't really be a need to try to pinpoint tech skill= better pilots or whatever. Chess improves IQ (slightly) and critical thinking. Being a championship chess player can mean something on a resume when placed under the right headline of "your ad said critical thinking skills, this kind of shows I have them."

Edit: Grammar. It's 2:16 a.m. and so I was tired and messed up a lot of my sentences. Hopefully, this is a bit more coherent.

 

[EPsilon933]

There are more arguments for what transfers: competitive games could be said to aid in developing self-awareness and self-correction of actions, learning how to deal with habits, learning how to work with other people, taking on the habit of being obedient to particular role (helpful when for jobs), and learning new systems (which is an essential of playing games). These skills are all transferable. As for specific skills, it would depend on the level and type of game. There are studies that FPS's develop spatial awareness and movement tracking. Starcraft no doubt develops a person's ability to micromanage and multitask. Fighting Games develop people socially and also trains people how to watch human behavior. Competitions in general require focus, life management (unless you're Mango), commitment, and the ability to handle pressure which are all important things to have. So I'd say, on a case by case basis, there is definitely evidence to suggest Competitive Gaming can help in develop GENERAL skills that are useful in other areas. It's kind of like football: training your body to do one thing well like hurl yourself under another 200 lbs of something and hurling yourself on people in general are not necessarily the most applicable skill to a job, unless you are a security guard; however, no one doubts that the athleticism and discipline that comes with the sport is definitely valuable. If people learn to discern the real positive aspects of what competitive gaming does like they recognize it in other sports, then there wouldn't really be a need to try to pinpoint tech skill= better pilots or whatever. Chess improves IQ (slightly) and critical thinking. Being a championship chess player can mean something on a resume when placed under the right headline of "your ad said critical thinking skills, this kind of shows I have them."

Edit: Grammar. It's 2:16 a.m. and so I was tired and messed up a lot of my sentences. Hopefully, this is a bit more coherent.

Eventhubs posted something similar like a month ago
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/this-is-your-brain-on-esports?trk_source=features2

 

[unknownforce]

Sorry for the slow response BigglesWorth.

I won't have much room to discuss the history of professional/competitive gaming, so I will sadly have to leave a lot of information out. I do plan to at least touch on it, but I can't possibly go into detail when the chapters can't be more than 15-30 pages (including references).

I definitely like your suggestions on some of the skills that transfer. I'd like to go into a further discussion on it, but my time is slightly limited as I'm writing this.

Does anyone have recommendations for specific questions they would be most interested in asking the professional/competitive players?

 

[BigglesWorth]

Questions I think would be good to ask different players from different game types: What do you feel you've gotten out of your competitive gaming "career"? What are some of the main things going through your mind during a game/match specifically (mechanics, checking, etc.)? What assets as a player (skills, certain expertise of the game, psychology, attitude) separate you from other players of your particular esport?

 

[BigglesWorth]

I need make blogpost now. I have been wanting to talk about exploring your particular assets as a player in Smash (from the limited ideas I have seen, read, observed, and heard on the matter) XD

 

[unknownforce]

Some good questions there BigglesWorth. Thanks for the suggestions! I'll be curious to see your blog post if you end up posting it.