Ray Huling said:
A few hundred thousand is an irrelevant number, when it comes to mainstream media.
You realize what you've just said, right? A few hundred thousand is irrelevant? How can you say such a thing? You are talking about yourself too, you know, you are a gamer too, are you not? You like to watch these event's, do you not? Then you just called yourself irrelevant, along with me and, yes, many hundred thousand others just like us.
Mainstream media. You are saying that like it is some big, faceless, ignorant monster who controls our lives and doesn't care about anyone. When in fact, the mainstream media is
us! The "mainstream media" is what's irrelevant in gaming! That crowd is made of you, me, the guy posting above me, every gamer. And yes, some of us like to watch StarCraft matches online and still like to play Tekken 4 with friends. I'm not saying that we are the ruling majority around, but we are far from
irrelevant, so please don't say that.
Some people do like to watch competitive gaming. Outside of South Korea, which is a unique case, no one's been able to make a sustainable business out of it.
So you are saying, that only those people count, who can make a sustainable business out of competitive gaming? No offense, but you have pretty weird mindset. If you are talking about corporate interests, then you are right. But I though your piece was about the people who watch and play competitive games, not the ones trying to get a profit from that. But, I go with that for the sake of common ground.
Outside of South Korea there
are competitive gaming broadcasts/podcasts/shows/etc. From the top of my head, there is C&C's
BattleCast (a part of
C&C TV) for example. They are very American, and that is not South Korea, if I'm not mistaken. There is HLTV, which you can use to watch matches of many Half Life based games. There are many more like these all over the internet. Sure, these are not commercial TV channels, but don't say that the Internet is irrelevant too.
There is no discussion in my piece of racial slurs or trash-talk.
Maybe I wasn't clear. I think your article regards this issue with a strong racial (not racist really) overtone. Maybe I'm too accepting, but I never thought there is a problem of racial segregation in gaming. And I'm not talking about racism or trash talk here in general. What I wanted to tell in that post was, for most people, this isn't an issue at all. Most people I know never even considered to choose or avoid a game character based on race or ethnicity. This stands for the people they play with too. They are humans, just like everyone else. They are gamers, just like us, and that's all that matters. If they are from the
hood, from the West Side, from Guatemala, from South Korea, from Hungary... what does it matter? If we all speak at least one common language, gaming, why should the color of our skin, or the size of our wallet matter? I always thought about games like activities making people come together, to forget all their prejudices and have fun together. Boys, girls, blacks, latinos, caucasians, rich, poor... everyone.
I think the issue you are talking about has more to do with "cliques" and less with racial segregation. But that's just my opinion...