Jack Kieser
Smash Champion
This started as a response to a post to the planking poll in Brawl Tactical, but I didn't think it'd be right to get all preachy in the thread proper, so I'll post it here. It's not rant-y or anything, not very in depth, but just something I thought should be put out there for discussion.
TL;DR: I don't think we put enough value on the health of the community anymore. I think people forget that without a healthy community, there are no tournaments and no playing to win, so community health should start to be one of our priorities, and our tournament actions should reflect that.
******
You know, I expect not many of the people for planking are going to like this, but I really don't care. I really think now that people are taking "playing to win" too far. People want to use that as an excuse to do anything they want, regardless of the consequences. People, the community is falling apart. Hell, there isn't really even a community anymore. I don't know what to call us anymore.
You know what made us so awesome back in 06-07? Our community. We had a kick *** community that people wanted to be a part of. Now, we have a bunch of individuals who care more about winning a single match than the health of the community as a whole; remember, if there is no community at all, there won't be any tournaments for you to "play to win" at. Of course, I'm sure that's the goal of a lot of players: destabilize the Brawl community to try to force people back to the "superior game". I have no problem believing that a lot of people here genuinely WANT to see the Brawl community collapse, and will do anything they deem necessary to make Brawl fail, planking included.
Seriously, people. When is having a healthy gaming community going to be important to anyone? Doing your best is commendable, and sandbagging sucks, but doing anything to win, even if it means completely destabilizing the community as a whole? I think we need to start re-thinking our priorities if we want our community to thrive the way it once did.
But hey, I'm sure there are plenty of players who don't want the community to thrive. I'm sure they're just fine with having the entire competitive community consist of only the current high-level players and no one else. **** everyone else, right? They're just scrubs. The high-level players: they're the only ones who matter. They ARE the community, as far as they are concerned, and everyone else can go **** themselves.
TL;DR: I don't think we put enough value on the health of the community anymore. I think people forget that without a healthy community, there are no tournaments and no playing to win, so community health should start to be one of our priorities, and our tournament actions should reflect that.
******
You know, I expect not many of the people for planking are going to like this, but I really don't care. I really think now that people are taking "playing to win" too far. People want to use that as an excuse to do anything they want, regardless of the consequences. People, the community is falling apart. Hell, there isn't really even a community anymore. I don't know what to call us anymore.
You know what made us so awesome back in 06-07? Our community. We had a kick *** community that people wanted to be a part of. Now, we have a bunch of individuals who care more about winning a single match than the health of the community as a whole; remember, if there is no community at all, there won't be any tournaments for you to "play to win" at. Of course, I'm sure that's the goal of a lot of players: destabilize the Brawl community to try to force people back to the "superior game". I have no problem believing that a lot of people here genuinely WANT to see the Brawl community collapse, and will do anything they deem necessary to make Brawl fail, planking included.
Seriously, people. When is having a healthy gaming community going to be important to anyone? Doing your best is commendable, and sandbagging sucks, but doing anything to win, even if it means completely destabilizing the community as a whole? I think we need to start re-thinking our priorities if we want our community to thrive the way it once did.
But hey, I'm sure there are plenty of players who don't want the community to thrive. I'm sure they're just fine with having the entire competitive community consist of only the current high-level players and no one else. **** everyone else, right? They're just scrubs. The high-level players: they're the only ones who matter. They ARE the community, as far as they are concerned, and everyone else can go **** themselves.