Long Awaited Update

I'm a failure at blogging these days, I admit. So what I'm going to do now is try to keep this place updated by posting short-assignment, completion style assignments here on my blog. My first post will be on the "2nd Account of Creation" as seen in Genesis 2 and 3, specifically in regards to the relationship between men and women.

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The first thing that I am struck by in this passage is how vastly different it is from the creation story in Genesis 1, however, that is not really part of our discussion, though it brings up several interesting questions.

Adam is created and he names the animals. This is Adams's first job. I think the most important aspect about this is that, despite the Garden of Eden being considered “perfect” Adam was given work. My mother loves to talk about how “work” is a Biblical concept and this ideal life with no “work” is actually against human nature. We want work, it is just so often we hate the work we must do to provide for our families.

In regards to the relationship that humankind has amongst itself, especially in regards to the genders, this chapter has a lot to say. First of all, Adam is created alone, yet it seems to me that it was God's intention to add women to the mix all along. I say this in the context of Genesis 1, which says “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” I say this also with the realization that the vast majority of “complicated” creatures, that is, most plants and animals, have two sexes. The idea of having a single sex human race does not seem to fit with common trends in biology. However, if we assume that God intended to create a second sex, the question that follows then is that why did God create Adam first, and then later Eve?

I think the wrong answer is to say to show that women are under men, as many would think. Eve is “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh,” she is not the weaker, less powerful, less intelligent, less important, part of humanity, she is an equal member of the newly created human race.

The correct answer is more subtle, and perhaps more brilliant. Women is part of humanity, but more important, Adam is incomplete without Eve. “So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found,” reads chapter two. So God creates a helper from the very same substance of Adam. The perfect model for relationship between men and women seems to be, thus, marriage, the union of these two beings created from the same substances. I find it interesting to note that such a statement reminds me of the Trinity as taught to me in Basic Christian Questions. I forget the exact definition, but I believe it was something along the lines of three separate beings of the same substance.

This story ends with the Fall and the curses that humanity receives as a result. These curses are interesting because I really believe that many people forget them and how vital they are for understanding the issues that plague not only male-female relationships in general, but especially marriages. I remember once when I heard a sermon/teaching by Landa Cope, a theologian I respect very much, she providing interesting insight into this situation using New Testament references. These verses, in as much, say that men will toil for the rest of their life, corrupting the idea of “work” as we see it before the fall, while women will be ruled by men. I think this is something that so many people do not understand about the Bible. It says, in the Bible, that women will be subservient to men, yes, but because of the Fall. The Fall, man's own sin, created this system, not God.

Goals for This Next Year

A friend asked me what my goals for the year are, I responded, “Goals? Yeah, those are good things.”

I admit I'm often rather abstract about my goals and about how I do things. “DO THAT!” But no actual written down “goals.” So, what are my goals? What do I really want? Where do I want to be in a year?

Well, this time next year I'll be starting my Junior Year of College. Scary thought. What do I want to do?

1. Good Grades. I had okay grades this year, not great. This year it'll be the year where I can see whether or not I can really get “good” grades. Honestly, I don't care about my grades, I just care about learning. I did a lot of that last year, but I also wasted a lot of time. See: College Algebra (didn't learn anything and got a bad grade) and Issues of Social Justice (95% sure that my Professor didn't read my final paper, you know, the most important document created that entire class. I was so angry about that class. Such a waste of time. I don't care about the money, I care about the fact that we spent hours basically just saying what we felt and not really backing it up with anything, stupid). Maybe if I have better classes I can get better grades. I dunno. We'll see. This is an important goal, yet I don't feel so drawn to it. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or a good thing.

2. Go to Church more. I didn't go to Church much last semester. I'm going to try to go to Mass a little more. I feel... drawn to that Church. I realized today that I enjoy going with my grandparents to the “traditional” service at their church more than the “contemporary” one because I don't have to deal with “bad” music as much. The music at more traditional services is so different than what I'm used to that I don't have to worry about that. The music at the contemporary service today was terrible. The drummer was just bad, they had silly songs, and they messed up Breathe. I had to fight with that in additional to standard spiritual warfare (ugh... spiritual warfare is so annoying and stupid. More time wasting. Thank you Satan?). I might have to actually go to a Protestant service at some point, but... I don't want to do that. And I feel drawn to that Church on Campus somehow. Don't ask why.

3. Get better at Video Games. This is actually important for me. Don't ask why. I take my hobbies very seriously. I want to get Gold/Platinum rating in Starcraft II (Gold is easy, Platinum will take effort) and I want to win some major events in LoL. That means lots of practice. This is third cuz yeah, video games shouldn't be that important. On this note I need to be able to go full troll one day and only respond with Internet comments. “Real dumb.” “Real terror.” “dat x.” “ok.” “full retard.” Etc. It'll be fun. ^_^

4. Read my Bible More. I know this is important. But I feel that between Religious Studies Classes and attempting to go to Church more, this is actually less important than it seems. I've always operated better, spiritually, while in groups, so I'd like to continue to do that more. But Church is so... bleh. I hate Church. >_> I just need to find a prayer group or something. Why don't people pray more? Its so much easier than listening to sermons, so much more productive.

5. On that note: Pray more. I pray some, I pray a lot maybe. I don't pray enough. I need to pray without ceasing, I don't do that. I need to be constantly talking to God on a daily basis, and I'm sure there are days when I don't talk to God. That's... bad. That's not something I should be doing. I should be constantly asking for spiritual guidance in every waking moment. There are plenty of times when I shut down my spiritual center and just go and “have fun.” This is real dumb.

6. Grow more awesome facial hair/longer hair. I look pretty awesome right now, but I could look awesomer. Hippy/Metal/Fantasy Warrior look is nearly complete. Once thats done only thing left to do is get some awesome Facepaint, braid my hair and go to a Folk Metal concert. /m\

Those actually are rather reasonable goals. Hmm... this is good, I guess. This is a really rough post, but I'm tired and have stuff to do before I sleep. So, good night I guess.

Team Comps in League of Legends

This post is really for my benefit more than anything else. I need a place to write this down. If its outta your league, then so be it. I like League of Legends.

In league of legends, LoL, there are 4 “lanes.” Top Solo, Mid Solo, Bot Duo and Jungle. Every team needs a AP Carry, a Support, an AD Carry and then initiation of some sort: Ashe Arrow, Sona Ult, Annie Stunbear, Amumu Ult, etc.

Current heroes that appear viable:

Jungle: Gangplank, Amumu, Warwick, Nunu, Nocturne, Trundle and Jarvan. Of these heroes, Warwick, Amumu and Nunu are the best. Warwick works in every team comp, Nunu has the strongest early game, and Amumu is the best “tank” in the current meta. Gangplank is a new addition and is really OP, but I'm not sure how he fits into the meta. Probably as another kind of Jarvan/Irelia tankyDPS type. Jarvan Jungles when you want a top solo that is not Jarvan, but want Jarvan. See: EU Double AP style meta.

Top Solo: Top Solo is weird. Basically, anything that can afk farm effectively is a good top solo. Heroes like Singed, Teemo, Irelia, Warwick, Corki, Tristana, Jarvan, heck, even Garen are viable top solos. Basically this lane is the lane that tries to make anyone work. Best top solos are either beefy enough to avoid getting Burst in a gank or have natural escapes like Tristana and Corki. There is never a reason to send Ashe top because she has very bad escapes and will just be ganked really hard.

Mid Solo: Mid Solo, in the current meta, is often a mage. Swain, Vlad, Annie and Brand appear to be popular mages in the current meta. I favor Oriana for her insane AoE follow up to melee initiation such as Irelia, Jarvan, Amumu and Jax, other heroes are viable. Ashe is a viable mid.

Bot Duo: Bot Duo is mega weird because its is the most flexible lane. Bot has 2 heroes instead of 1 and thus has lots of options. The standard setup right now is support+carry bot lane. However, my team has protested at this for several reasons, our backup support player doesn't like Passive Lanes (yet she plays support. Then again, she really likes Janna, the most aggressive of all supports) and our Carry Player likes soloing Irelia and Corki. As a result, I've been considering other laning options such as Blitz+Alistair or Jarvan+Support (Jarvan+Sona seems really strong). Garen+Taric/Sona seems good as well. As far as support+Carry goes, Soraka+Caitlyn or Sona+Caitlyn works well, Sona+Tristana is very strong. Taric+Ashe or Sona+Ashe should work okay. I dunno where Corki fits into the bot lane meta, but he does somewhere. Vayne is amazing, but my team has very little experience with Vayne. I would assume Sona and Taric work great with her. I wouldn't use Soraka expect with Caitlyn, but I'm not a fan of soraka outside of Lane. Oh, and Support Alistair is amazing when laning with whoever. I need to learn alistair.

So as a result we have a lot of options for picks. Standard Draft mode only allows for bans and thus standard banning for my team usually goes like this:

Fight over gangplank cuz he's OP right now, then ban Twisted Fate because he's OP. Other ban is either Rumble, who is stupid OP right now or Vayne who none of us play and is very strong.

If we get 3 bans things are better. This usually means we're in a tournament game and we can look at a few things. Priotity bans tend to be TF and Gangplank. But banning Nunu and picking Amumu first seems pretty good as well. Another strong ban is Annie because she's really OP right now. In fact, if I was in charge of bans against a standard American Comp I'd probably ban Nunu, TF, and Annie every game, first picking Amumu. If we ban Vayne instead of Annie Annie becomes priority pick. Annie is too strong.

I really favor Jarvan for Top Solo. But I need to see how he works in a duo lane. I also want to experiment with serious Morde and Garen comps. Morde requires a double mage comp and probably Ashe to be 100% effective. Maybe just pick Alistair for support and you can get away with Corki+Alistair bot lane. Garen works if he can farm, I think Garen is very underestimated, because a garen with Ghostblade+Hexdrinker does a lot of damage.

Mid, for our team should be Brand, Orianna, Malzahar or Annie. Period. There is no reason for us to pick any other hero.

Top is a weird lane. Right now I think we should be running Corki top lane a lot. But it doesn't really matter too me. I want to see if Morde and Midwick really work. I don't see a comp where Warwick does not work well because his kit is so brilliant. I think I should convince Yocham or Arb to start playing Midwick more.

Jungle is simple: Pick one of the top three. If the enemy picks Nunu pick Warwick, if the enemy picks Amumu pick Nunu, if the enemy has banned nunu and picked amumu, consider picking Trundle or Nocturne. Nocturne works very well as a tanky DPS, fitting in nicely with the Double Mage+Support/Carry bot lane meta, though is more DPS than Tank in comparision to Warwick. Trundle has problems, but operates as an effective anti-carry, especially against tank heavy teams, like those that run Alistair+Jarvan. Jungle Jarvan: I don't really see the point right now, not with the way our team works.

Bot Lane: I have no clue. I need to see what our team comes up with.

Yeah, this is really random. But it helped my thoughts. Maybe you found it useful, maybe you didn't.

Good Games make good Communities? Sadly not

Watch This Video first

So video has 2 guys doing a PAX East “mini-panel” on gaming communities and what makes them bad and what makes them good.

They used several examples. The first one was Heroes of Newerth, which is basically a DotA clone played straight, with the same stats and the denying mechanic which allows you to kill your own soldiers and structures in order to “deny” the enemy the rewards inherent in gaining this kills. In addition, a public rating system makes players highly competitive as they play to increase their rating and not to have fun. This is a good observation. Good players don't want to be teamed with bad players who don't understand confusing game mechanics and cause them to lose the game.

They also pulled out a game called Natural Selection, a Half-Life Mod with a small community of only a few hundred players. This game was quoted as being a good example of a community because of the way the game worked. The first reason they quoted was that teams had to work together, so players would teach noobs how to play. The second thing was obvious and logical mechanics, unlike denying. Finally, a pre and post match common room where players would put trance music to their mics and have impromptu raves made the game have a very positive community.

Now, I have not played Heroes of Newerth much, I played DotA amongst Friends and did not experience the horrible community that surrounds DotA. I have played League of Legends, a similar game, however.

League of Legends tries to be obvious in its gameplay mechanics. There is no denying. They recently removed Ward Blocking, where players could drop a ward right in front of certain spells and block the spell, or use use some spells to jump to wards and escape. There is a public Rating for players who chose to play “Ranked” games, and there is a lot of mean and annoying players who play these ranked games. However, unranked “normal” games are just as bad, in my experience. Its just not as frustrating because you don't lose rating when your team is bad and frustratingly abusive to each other.

Now, these guys claim that Natural Selection is good because it has sen sable gameplay mechanics. So does League of Legends. They claim that because teams require players to work together, new players are taught what to do and the sensible gameplay mechanics are then easily reinforced. They claim that the post game lobby where players can enjoy themselves after a good game encourages community-building.

League of Legends is a game that requires teams to work together and new players have this knowledge reinforced by sensible gameplay mechanics. League of Legends also has a post-game lobby where players can view stats and discuss the game amongst themselves. League of Legends has a horrible community, even disregarding Ranked Games. These guys are not entirely correct. They have a good thesis, one I want to believe, but its not entirely correct.

A couple of things come to mind here, as to why these guys might be wrong. First of all, Natural Selection only has a few hundred players. If we assume that 10% of the population of the internet are a bunch of horrible trolls that live to make our lives miserable (and that might be a rather conservative estimate) that means that a game with an active population of 500 players has 50 trolls. Thats a lot in terms of percentage, but its a small number that is manageable in terms of flat numbers. Good admins can block these trolls and keep an active blacklist going so as to prevent these players from mic-spamming and the like. A small community, like it or not, makes for a community that is easy to manage, where trolls can be hunted down and banned easily. League of Legends has had to fight severely to create useful and effective report and ban functions, and even these have not been 100% effective in removing trolls. It has helped, I admit, though. But these methods have taken a very long time to create, test, and implement in effective fashion. When you have a userbase in the hundreds of thousands, a blacklist of trolls is not that easy to create, especially when you don't have private servers and most players randomly queue with the entire active playerbase instead of a group of well-trusted friends. This is perhaps the least important problem with the theory proposed in this video. I think its fair to say given an infinite number players there will be an infinite number of obnoxious people. Smaller playerbases are easier to manage period.

However, there are other, more severe, problems with this thesis. League of Legends is a team game. That means a team needs to work together to win. That means players need to compromise. For instance, League of Legends teams benefit from having a jungle, a carry, a mage, a support and then either another carry or another mage. However, in many games the last player to pick will pick what he or she wants to play instead of a hero to compliment the team. If the first three guys picked guys that deal physical damage it makes sense to get a guy that does magic damage, but sometimes you just want to play what you want to play. That's what happens when you play with random internet people. Meanwhile the enemy team gets a balanced comp and simply outpicks you because players on your team refuse (for good or bad reasons) to pick heroes that create a better team comp. BOOM, you lose.

Then these guys say that you need to work together and that this can be accomplished by saying stuff like, “hey, try to last hit, try not to push, build an Infinity edge first on Ashe.” This is all good advice. However, it has been my experience that there is about a 50% chance that my allies will say “fuck off,” when I offer them advice. Pardon my language, but you have no idea how many times people flat out tell me to “shut the fuck up, noob, I know what im doing,” and then proceed to die and again and again. In other words, they're rude and mean and they don't take my advice.

Finally, the idea of an end-game lounge where players can converse with each other and look at stats and talk about awesome moments. This is a good idea. However, this doesn't happen too often. Most of the time the end-game lounge is a place for players to rant about how horrible their team was, or for players to conintue their shouting match they have been having all game long. Only very rarely have I, in my 1000+ games played in League of Legends seen the lounge used in such a method.

I want to believe these guys with their thesis that a good game creates a good community. I want to believe that Heroes of Newerth has a bad community because it has bad game mechanics. But I can't believe this given my observations in League of Legends. People can say that you can remove stats like creep kills and hero kills and deaths and assists, but this isn't fair since these are ways to observe how good or poorly your team is doing against the enemy team. You need those sometimes.

I think its better to say that small communities are more likely to be better, and that some games, while they can attempt to make things “fun” and “noob friendly” are not going to succeed if the majority of the players want to be jerks or don't feel they should be teaching other players. I understand this. I really don't have the patience to explain to players I've played with why Clarity is a bad summoner spell, and why Malphite doesn't need it, or farm for that matter. I've done it, and when the player rejected everything I said with “well you don't play malphite,” I had to end the debate. I was nice enough to say, “Okay, you're right, I don't play malphite,” instead of “real malphite player. Takes clarity. Fuck noob shit,” like a real LoL troll. There are a lot of players who simply do that, “don't take clarity, it sucks,” “I think its good,” “gg. Noob malphite. No way we can win.” That's the attitude players have in this game, and its independent of skill or game mechanics. It doesn't help that there are some heroes, items, and abilities, that are not the best, but this is the same in every video game. So, I have to, sadly, reject this belief that its the game, not the community, that determines the community. Unless we're talking about a very small, close-knit community that can heavily monitor its members, I don't really believe these guys have a good thesis.

State of "Balance" in League of Legends

Originally posted on the LoL boards. But I might as well post this here.

This is just a thought about how Riot does some of its Balance Changes. This isn't an angry rant or anything, I want to be thoughtful and hopefully interesting, I am however, frustrated with some things that Riot does.

Recently, I read that Phreak or another one of the other Red Posters on these boards said that Nunu was getting nerfed. Thinking about it, this makes 100% sense and I will not complain if Nunu gets nerfed, despite being a jungler and having greatly enjoyed Nunu.

However, let's think about this. Last year at WCG was when I realized that Jungling was really important. During the NA semi-finals Epik Gaming ran jungle Nunu and I was surprised because I thought Nunu sucked. Now, EG lost that series and no one really jungled with Nunu for a long time because “nunu sucks.” (I think one of the Asian teams, China hero, IIRC, did run Jungle Nunu at WCG proper, but nobody really took notice). It took a while, until counter-jungling became popular and properly understood, for Nunu to really gain dominance. Before that, Warwick, Trundle, Olaf and Amumu were all higher priority picks in the jungle. But then suddenly, TSM started playing him and people began to actually BAN nunu against this team. Sure, at the time TSM wasn't nearly as good as they are now, but I remember several games where Nunu was banned just as TSM began their journey to being what they are now, probably the best team in North America (and let's be honest: the odd one is probably the best jungler in the game). However, nobody really cared. They just let Nunu be strong and went on with it.

However, at the Dreamhack qualifiers and now at Dreamhack proper, as far as I can tell, there have only been five jungling champions: Warwick, Jarvan, Amumu, Nunu and Nocturne. Nocturne has already been nerfed heavily, Warwick is balanced for certain, Jarvan has been constantly declared OP since his release and really does need to be nerfed in some regards, Amumu, while strong, has his weaknesses in the jungle, primarily due to him getting very low and being countered easily enough by strong junglers. However, this isn't about them, this is about Nunu.

Riot has finally decided that Nunu, now that he is, apparently, the #1 contested jungle pick in the game, that he is too strong of a jungler. I understand. His slow is insane, his ability to counterjungle is unrivaled. Sure, he sucks late game and basically turns into a buff/aura bot like most supports, but his early game is unrivaled.

Now, in the meantime, Riot has buffed Alistair then nerfed him. This is despite the fact that he recently reentered the game as a 100% viable support/tank. Meanwhile, riot created the monster that is currently Annie. Meanwhile Riot released Jarvan and the entire community pretty much said, “Wtf was riot smoking?!” (Not that I'm complaining about Jarvan, because, hey, I like having OP champions on my team :D). No offense to Riot, but it seems to me that often times you guys don't balance your champions properly and then let a select few champions such as Vlad and Nunu remain in the game at what is apparently an “OP” stage for much longer than they should. Vlad is OP and everyone knows it. Vlad has been OP since his release despite being nerfed to hell, and his story is rather different than Nunu. But nonetheless, Nunu is similar in that his has been essentially unchanged in role and power since his release, yet, suddenly, a shift in meta and a shift in picking priority makes him “OP.”

I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm frustrated with Riot's Design team and their efforts at balancing this game. I LOVE League of Legends. I love this game so much you wouldn't believe. But I am constantly frustrated at Riot's heavy-handed and seemingly stupid approach to balance. Often times balance changes are made that do little to change the game (Vayne's recent nerfs, Alistairs nerfs after his remake). Often times attempts to “balance” champions instead make them completely useless (Galio, Twitch), turning them from fun, interesting picks into heroes that no one seriously plays. I wish that Riot would try harder to balance their champions. I love the new champions that they're releasing and I think Riot has done a great job at creating innovative and interesting champions, the ninjas with energy, morde with his shield, Rumble with Heat, Orianna with her ball, Jarvan's ult is a very well thought of ability, if extremely powerful, but I'm frustrated that these champions often end up being stupidly strong and that Riot compensates by nerfing them to hell and back; how many nerfs did Shen receive? He went from “OP must pick” to “never picked again, ever.” The same with Kennen, the same with Twitch, the same with numerous champions.

I don't know what exactly I want from Riot except maybe for them to think harder about how they design their champions. I'd like a response from Morello (in fact I'd be honored if Morello read this thread and posted), but I don't know exactly what I want. A commitment to quality? An answer as to why Nunu is being nerfed but no one has mentioned Annie or Alistair (who are just as contested picks at high elo right now)? I don't know. I'd like answers.

Final note: yeah, I know, I'm unranked and I suck, but I feel like I can at least observe the meta and understand what's going on. I'm just frustrated, like a lot of player, low, mid and high elo are, at the way that Riot seems to fumble around and say, “lets nerf him!” only to screw things up more, while leaving obviously over powered champions in their stupid states for far too long.

Competative Video Games

http://archive.gamespy.com/top10/april03/progaming/index.shtml

Hmm so interesting article here. Basically its a list of “problems” with Professional Video Games as a spectator event. I just thought I'd go through this article and discuss/defend Professional Video Games. The article has some good points, but some of them are beyond stupid, so I thought I really should respond to this.

Point #10: Professional is not a Sport.
No. Its not. Video games are not sports, don't call them that. They are competative activities, yes, like Billiards. Did you know that Snooker and Pool are on ESPN all the time? At least, they are in Bangladesh. How is this event relevant? There are “fishing” competitions all over the world, why can't we have Video Game ones as well?

Point #9: Its no fun to watch.
I just feel the need to call bull on this. Sure, its no fun to watch the faces of two nerdy 20-something year olds as they gaze at a screen and constantly press the same 10 buttons over and over again. But then again, no one watches Wayne Rooney's face when he plays soccer, they watch him as he moves across the field of play. Video game players control virtual characters, you should be watching those virtual characters. Its extremely exciting (for me) to watch Starcraft II and League of Legends Games, and I know very little about Starcraft II. But I don't watch the players, I watch the field of play and what the players do on that field. If the camera is on the players for more than a few seconds before and after the game, then yeah, something is wrong.

Point #8: The Games Keep Changing
This is really valid. Its also kinda invalid. I'm sure its frustrating for casual gamers to watch '90s Quake and then 20 years later watch people play Halo, Call of Duty, and whatever newest Unreal Tournament game is out there. However, the truth is, these games have a lot similarities. Pretty much every shooter has a shotgun, a sniper, a automatic rifle, a pistol, etc. There are some differences, but these are not so huge as to make them incomparable. Sure, at the very highest levels of play, they make a difference, and this IS an issue, but casual gamers won't notice this, especially if the commentators are doing their job and properly explaining the nuances of strategy that are going on. This is a problem, its not one that is huge though.

Point #7: Online Leagues Don't Work
Meh. Maybe. I dunno. They have problems, especially in 1 v 1 games where its pretty easy to login under someone else's name. But in my experience, especially with the way the internet works today, online leagues work pretty well and we should continue to make them better.

Point #6: Pro Gamers have no personality
This guy obviously has not watched enough gamer streams or been around a community of high level gamers. I know that HotShotGG, a professional league of legends player has a lot of personality. So does Reginald, and so does Guardsmanbob (all pro gamers in LoL). To be honest, I know HotShotGG, in terms of personality, a lot more than I know, say, Chase Utely, who plays for my Baseball team, the Phillies. I'm not sure where the idea that video game players are devoid of personality comes from, at all.

Point #5: There is no mainstream appeal
Obviously. That's why we support and promote gaming? There is no mainstream appeal for Baseball outside of a few select countries. Baseball players and owners of Baseball teams haven't given up and said, “we have a good fanbase. Europe only wants to watch Soccer anyways.” They're constantly trying to grow the sport into something bigger and more popular.

Additionally: “Besides, professional gaming leagues just look plain childish to the outside, uneducated observer. Who in their right mind is going to be intrigued by the likes of "-=[dAffY]=-d00k!" or "ClAn gH3tT0 bR0z?" You can’t even say the names of the majority of the players without damaging your larynx.”

Lies. All of them. Who are the top League of Legends Teams in North America? Counter Logic Gaming (CLG), Team Solomid (TSM), Epik Gaming (EG), Defy All Odds (DaO), Rock Solid, Oh God Bears (OGB), etc. These are not stupid or hard names to learn. Sure they are sometimes stylized in a more internet friendly way, but, let's be honest, your average 20 year old is probably going to realize that if your team is Eff0rtl3ss Victory, that the 0 and 3 stand for o and e respectively. Besides, everyone will call you EV anyways. The “team” I'm on is “The Cool Kids Table” (so CKT? I guess haha). We don't come up with stupid names like ghetto broz anyways.

Okay, I guess some of the screennames people use are annoying sometimes, but I honestly haven't seen it. And personally I'm a fan of screennames, because they let players title themselves much easier. Tiger Woods will always be Tiger Woods, but me, Isaac Johnson, I'm Lord Toasty or toastymow when I'm playing video games, and I like it that way.

Point #4: The Rules are Inconsistent:
This is valid. Take Super Smash Bros. Brawl and its apparently obvious that there are needs for serious rule changing from the standard setup to this game work in a hardcore setting. Realizing that an FPS game can be Capture the Flag, Team Deathmatch, or some sort of Siege Mode does make the game confusing. But the truth is that these are easily fixed. Look at Cricket, for instance, there are literally 3 types of games: Test Matches, ODIs, and Twenty20. Cricket is stupid popular in South Asia. There are other differences as well in other sports, these don't make a difference. Obviously, heavily modifying a video game to make it “work” in hardcore setting is going to bring about some problems, but that's why Counter Strike and Starcraft are so popular, because they've been designed to accommodate hardcore players. That's why the MBL and the NBA have different rules than High School Baseball or Basketball teams (at least, I'm assuming they do), because they're more serious. You can take an FPS game and made it hardcore or casual. It just takes planning.

Point #3: Too Many Leagues:
This isn't really an argument against video games as much as it is stating the obvious. Watching people play video games is incredibly niche and as a result, there hasn't been a big strong company to come out and organize these video games into regular leagues. Furthermore, because the games change so fast, and because most players can't really make a living off of video games, its hard to have leagues that last. This should change if more hardcore games with standard setups can evolve. Look at Starcraft and what it did in Korea. Starcraft has been out for over 10 years now, and it took several patches to bring it to where it is today, and now its there. Sadly, Blizzard wants to makea profit and they released a sequel, which will likely make it much harder to bring stability to that area of professional video games.

Anyways, this really isn't an argument against video games, its just a fact: there are not good leagues. The problem isn't that there aren't good leagues, its several other issues.

Point #2: Pro Gaming is to “serious.”
Okay, this is badly worded. What this means is that if me, as someone new to video games, asks a stupid question like, “why does XYZ player use a shotgun more? I like shotguns.” Someone will probably say: fking n00b, gtfo and l2p (that is to say, fking noob, get the fk out of here and learn to play). You don't get that in a sports bar when you ask why the Eagles rushed instead of passed. This is a valid point, and its an issue, its a huge issue. The main problem is though, often times the people asking these questions are indeed noobs and they play in your games and they ruin your experience. No one in a sports bar has to worry about the guy next to them throwing the ball to the wrong person. When I play LoL I often get players who do the equivalent in my games and I hate it.

Point #1:Games Are Supposed to Be Fun!

This has to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Do you think that if you want to play in the NFL that you're gonna have fun the entire time? Do you think that Tiger Woods plays Golf for “fun”? What about Kobe Bryant and Basketball? Now, I do not doubt for a second that professional sports players ENJOY their jobs, but I don't think a coach is gonna say, “Kobe, take a break, this is supposed to be fun.” Video games may be just “fun” for you, but for me and for a lot of other people these are serious events to be taken seriously. Call me an idiot or a loser or whatever you want, but when I play with my clan and we say, “This is a serious game,” I turn into a beast of strategy and cunning and my entire focus is on winning the game and destroying the enemy Its tough and it takes a great deal of focus and energy, but that's the same with any sort of serious event. If you don't want to play video games seriously, DO NOT DO SO. But don't tell me that I'm supposed to calm down and have fun and that competing for money in a serious event isn't a good idea. Its a brilliant idea, it gives me a reason to be intense and aggressive and scream and shout in joy and rage as much as I feel like.

So in conclusion a lot of these arguments were really... bad. Video Games have issues that are preventing Video Games from becoming mainstream, and I don't see them becoming mainstream any time soon, but many of these issues are hardly the reason why.

Symphony X, Blackguard and Powerglove Concert

So last night I went to a metal show. 5 acts, 7:30-like midnight (I left before the assumed encore of the final act). I payed twenty something dollars Good show, all-in-all.

The first two acts where local bands. Which means they were not that good. The first act, Immortal Guardian, seemed like a good band. Like, generic, but good. That's kinda the problem with small bands like that, I suppose. The second act was kinda lame. Their vocalist came on stage making the love sign instead of the metal sign (subtle, but key difference) and he didn't have a very good voice in my mind. Finally blackguard took the stage. Now, Blackguard is not by any means a special band in terms of sound. They have a good sound, but its generic. However, they have an amazing stage presence. They got on the stage and I instantly could tell the difference in their performance and even the quality of their music. Its generic, but its not super generic. They also managed to do something that I find very difficult: sound pretty much exactly the same as they do in the studio. They had a short set, like 30 minutes. However, it was a good set. I feel like they did their thing and gave us a show and it was over.

Next band was Powerglove. I knew very little about this band except that they were an instrumental band that sang music based off of 80s video games and TV shows. They come on stage dressed up as characters out of Mario, their drummer has flags attached to his back (more like Banners, honestly) and they start jamming away in the most metal fashion ever. I didn't think it was possible to Mosh to a Mario song, now I know it is. So amazing. I think these guys were the best act of the night, in all honesty. Its probably because I'm a bit biased towards silly music and the like, but a band that doesn't take itself seriously like that is my favorite. Their guitarist told me after the show that he “revels in the absurdity” of their style and I think he has the right mindset. Play your solos and riffs seriously, but play the silliest solos and riffs you can think of!

Symphony X was next and to be honest, I was a little disappointed. Metal is really loud, that's half the fun. But Symphony X is too technical to really have that enhance their music. You can fix that by making your bass and drums and low end sounds not so dominant, or you can ignore this problem and just hope the crowd doesn't mind. They chose the later and in my opinion they concert suffered as a result. Symphony X, unlike Blackguard, which is just a band you're supposed to headbang and mosh to, I feel are more of a “watch the performance” band. They had a good performance (props to their frontman for grabbing a inflatable sword left over from Powerguard and shadow fencing on stage), but I couldn't hear the details of their music, and that's what Prog metal is, in my mind, all about. If I could have heard their vocals and guitar solos 100% of the time, or even 80% of the time, really, I would have been happy. I felt like it was more like 75% or 60%, really. I mean, I guess their live sound works for them, after 8 albums and years of touring. But I wasn't a fan of it.

So Symphony X was a bit of the bummer, but the rest of the bands I think were respectable. Power Glove is amazing and everyone should go get their music, and Blackguard played a solid show just like I expected.