Passion of eSports

I just want to talk about eSports. I love it. I would be doing a great injustice in just providing a brief description as to what eSports is. Just Essentially eSports is electronic sports, comprising of competitive play of video games. Now just by describing it like that it sounds silly and sad. There's definiting more to it than that. I mean is it as silly as scrabble, and chess tournaments. I mean chess is an olympic sport, so eSports can be considered a type of sport as well. I suppose you don't require to have that much physical exertion, but there is defintiely a mental capacity, test of dexterity and hand eye cordination. Regardless if you're just pressing buttons, it does require speed and reflexes in reading the game.

The video game population is obviously massive, but it's not all competitive gaming. Also you will have to seperate the community in terms of genre, such as fighting, first person shooters or real time strategy. Yet even though they're serperated by game genre they are collectly still together as part of the large community.

My first experience with competitive gaming is Streetfighter. And seeing crowds around arcades, having mini competition. I was only a small child, but I was just there watching. I love my streetfighter like any other gamer, it's great pick up and play as well in providing a lot of depth for the competitive scene. For me I only need to know a few special moves and a basic combo and you're well on your way to start competiting with the casual gamers too. Later on in the dawn of the internet watching some clips of some games of higher skill level and you can appreciate the skill involved. The Diago vs Justin Wong is the eptime of that the eSports environment is like.

Every tiny input is deliberate by the player, I mean when I play there's a bit of button mashing, or at times I end having to input the command moves to special moves a few times before it will take effect.. These guys can do it quickly and effectively. Regardless you normally have to play the games to appreciate what is going on. Fighting games are quite good in that you can see exactly what is going on at it's most basic level. Two characters on screen fighting each other to the death, with lots of flashy moves, simple for the casual viewer.

What I have gotten into, in the past year is a game called Starcraft 2. This is a real time strategy game, in the likes of Command & Conquer, Age of Empires etc. However the difference being that Starcraft 2, provides a very in depth game, that is also a great for specatators. The games can really vary, the worse type of game normally is when both players are slow to build and are not agressive until they reach a large army size, but even then it's a slow burn, because you know eventually they'll have to do battle, so it can be interesting to see how the battle that decides it turns out.

It's like real time chess, but you start off with a pawns, and you have to mine resources to pay for better units, and the board is large terrain, with high and low grounds, chokes points and open spaces.

Well saying all this MLG happened this weekend and a Korean Terran called MKP AKA Marine King Prime, beat a Zerg player DRG, Dong Rae Gue in the finals. It was a great series showing high skill of play. Even though MKP won quite convincly it was still amazing to watch. What increased my viewing experience, was watching it with my friends.

I had shown a lot of enthusiasm amongst my friends that it increased their curiousity, so now I somehow got them into it too. So on Saturday night we went round our mates house and watched a few games together. It was quite a laugh, then for championship Sunday, we watched the stream whilst on mumble chat. Then we actually played some SC2 inbetween games. It was a lot of fun.

Definitely getting back into the game again, after taking abit of time off from the game due to other commitments as well as GF at the time, studying, Skyrim and Mass Effect 3, of which I will talk about at some point. The pro gaming scene, really puts some inspiration into the playing the game again. A friend got the starter edition, which is free, but you're limited to playing Terran and only allow limited maps in multiplayer.  still it's great to have the option and we had a blast. Played quite a few 2v2 games we forgot about MLG was going on. He's now thinking of buying the full version.  hehe.

Having not played it in a while, it's pretty good feeling again. I still remember quite abit and was always staying active which was great. I remember the quick roach build, it's mainly used for rushes, but I use them to be safe. Although one game I decided to rush with them, and we pretty much won the game from there. My friends are not great, but it's a lot of fun and laughs.

I've been off racing as Terran, until my friends get a bit better, also I think it'll be good to get decent as Terran as they're strong in team games, at least I think so. The ability to be able to wall off and be strong in the early game is very important when I believe a lot of team games are rushed. However my friend seems to struggle with Protoss so I'm going to give Protoss a go to see where he's going wrong.

I also really enjoy watching the replays afterwards, seeing how the other people play decisions they make etc, it's very well implemented by Blizzard the game makers, all they have to do now is be able to sync replays so a party can view it at the same time. I will probably record a replay at some point with mini commentary. It would be to show the rest of my mates and see what they are missing out on, and who knows maybe I'll get them interested too.

Here we go again!

It's been awhile but I think it's time to hit my blog again. Mainly because I find it is very therapeutic to write about myself and just reflect. Also I have some time again now, that being I'm single again, and that work is a bit slow at the moment.
I can say that I've been very busy this past year and a half. So I think I'll slowly write and tell exactly what has happened in my life since then, as well as write about my current thoughts. I’m pretty much the happy go lucky type still, nothing that much has change, in fact, I feel like I’m back where I’ve started but with more experience and a more mature outlook in life. Yet I’m still immature when I can and want to be.

I’m not too sure where to start but maybe will talk a bit about everything for now and then go into more details later. For now I'll start with:

Girl troubles

It’s very hard to say, because I feel it’s like a very complicated issue in why we couldn’t work it out. I suppose I am still not sure exactly what went wrong with our relationship, but I can say that we tried. Even though in her eyes I probably didn’t try hard enough. I tend to agree with her to a degree, yet ultimately it felt that what I did was never truly enough to satisfy her needs, and she has many needs and deserves much better than I could give to her. She rode me hard (literally as well, ahem) which was unnecessary and arguably unreasonable. I was not able to reason with her and I feel that was the ultimate downfall. I was always the one to give in, but whenever I stood my ground we would have the worst possible fights. Should I have to be the one to be constantly be abused? Sigh, I‘ve not put her in a good light already, when in fact she can be the most lovely girl. She has problems and I can look past them, but she is not reasonable.

I suppose more later, details and more personal stories, hopefully a bit more positive.

More recently I went out on Friday night with a few friends because my mate just wanted to, and it was the first time I went out in quite a while for a proper drink session. Met a new girl and she seems quite nice, but I'm not interested. I swear players can easily pick up girls who are looking for a guy. I feel it can be quite easy sometimes, as all you have to do is show a lot of interest and treat them out and give them plenty of attention. Not saying all are like this, but there are plenty that are. I'm not the best looking guy, but when someone has a slight interest in you, you have to grab it by quickly or it'll slip away. I normally always let them slip away. The girl has to impress me as much as I have to impress her.

Of course she could just be very friendly and I’m being deluded, as per my blog, hehe. My friend says it’s all a numbers game, he’ll just print off a ton of business cards and just hand them out to random girls he sees on the street. Which is hilarious, I don't think he'll go through with it but I'd be interested in the results, purely for science. ;) 

First world problems at its finest. In this day and age living in a fast moving city in the age of the internet, it can be a strange time to try and find love. Internet dating seems to be the current trend, but I don't quite like the forced environment, I feel like nothing quite beats actually hooking up with people randomly. The trouble is meeting those specifics to create a random environment for a particular outcome to happen. No matter what, it’s really down to you controlling what you do, if you don’t get yourself out there, then you will not get anything. Go out there and make a fool of yourself in a bar/club, go to many social gatherings, join clubs, etc. It’s down to having fun though, regardless if it’s outside your comfort zone. I hear and see people moaning about being single, but normally it is themselves to blame. Make your own luck.

I’ve liken to a website called Reddit, which I will probably dedicate a blog entry all on its own. In particularly I’d like to point out a sub group, solely for sharing experiences in the art of seduction, or at least tips and experiences in trying to get with the other sex. They refer themselves as Seddit. It’s enlightening and very interesting.  It’s like they have create a new language for themselves when talking about how to woo the other side. The game is always being played, and it’s quite fascinating. Even if it's a bit crude and they're solely in it to get as many as they can. They do tell much truth.

In any case my point of view at the moment, is that I’m not going to make effort for now, I’m quite content with where I am with my life right now, amongst other things to sort out. Women can come later, or it can hit me in the face or not regardless how much older I'll be getting. Love as they say can come at any age.