The ScooterBlog

First of all, before I make any more mentions of anything else, I want to put a rest to everything from the last blog entry by saying that the responses by a certain commenter, after giving them a heck of a lot of thought, only leave me feeling extremely sad and concerned for the person who made them. The amount of hate that must be filled in that kid, and the road he must be headed down having the thoughts come out of his head, I can only pray that somehow, he figures out the wrongs in his thoughts and in his emotions, instead of letting that become who he is. I’m concerned that their parents have no clue about the hate in their child, I’m concerned what will happen when this kid is brought up against real life problems, will lashing out like he did be the standard response? Prayer is all I have on this one, and while I may not have great amounts of compassion, I do have the ability to pray that the hate within this kid can somehow be removed.

Of course, the moment you wonder why kids like this feel like they can act like prima donnas and say whatever they want and get big heads, a team of players (including 2 from Pickerington, the metro area of my new home), got a million dollar contract from MLG. I don’t know whether to be happy for them or scared for where gaming is going, but I think it’s more scared. I guess at the end of the day, I’m much more of a gaming purist, and a million bucks to play Halo doesn’t seem real pure. But, more power to ‘em, if someone offered me that, I’d sign the contract before someone had the chance to reconsider.
Anyways, on to more fun stuff.

Over at RetroMags where I help out with distributing the magazine scans, the board there has a very cool “Battle RPG” type system built into the forum software. You use weapons to attack other users, build hit points and strength, and even get money to buy potions and other items by interacting on the forums, and you don’t have to be into Nintendo Power to post, there’s talk about gaming systems, current events, all kinds of stuff. Anyways, there’s about 12 active participants, and guilds are just beginning. I’d love to see a few of the regulars who post here every now and then peek over there and start to participate. The more people playing, the more fun it is. Ben would be proud to know I’m playing ANY RPG anyways!

I’ve also began a Pokemon NetBattle server for Game Junkie players to hone their skills. You can read about that on the Game Junkie forums, as I want it to be just for the Junkies. If you’re not one, go sign up and post and become one and see why I love the store and the people so much.

That’s all for this one. Tomorrow I’ll write about my job some, which I have now been at for 3 months, and it could not be going any better!

P.S. – Thank goodness my boy Cena lost the belt. I want to see him chase for awhile, even though he is the man.

These thoughts are being posted on my personal blog because they represent my personal thoughts on an issue. They do not represent Game Junkie or my work on tournaments there. From that sense, the players make the event and it’s nothing without them, regardless of whether I question motive or not.

Anyways, I do need to call out the team who did win, Team ITZ. I did do a little bit of background reading to discover that they did place 8th in an MLG tournament. Yes, MLG’s … the pro’s … where their amateur division is even basically semi-pro, and yet they decided to enter this amateur tournament.

What I am questioning is their pride and dignity as supposedly good players. I get the impression they came knowing they could and would dominate, and that they would win, basically have a cash grab. That’s fine, except for the realm of which they are doing so … at an amateur event! Non-MLG rules for a reason, lower entries for a reason, and still entering.

Yes, by the letter of the rules, they were allowed to (their best efforts were 4th in a GJ event), but by the spirit of the rules, I don’t think it was their place to. It’s not the biggest thing in the world, it’ll be taken care of come next event as they will be ineligible for amateur play, but all of those things said, I think it says a great deal about the mentality of this particular team, and it shows a lacking of pride or caring for their own abilities and who they should be competing against.

In the same sense you can blame me and those of us who organize the event for even allowing such a thing to happen, and that statement can be valid, and the only good response I have is that there isn’t a perfect system to keep the competition level perfectly set for an initial event. Lessons definitely learned though for a follow-up tournament.
And, personal pet peeve here … someone was starting to ask me question after question about the rules, and I flat out asked them, “did you bother to read the rules on the web site?”, and he said he just found out about the tournament … a week and a half ago! Yep, couldn’t find 10 minutes out of 10 DAYS to read some rules for an event he was going to attend. A bit irresponsible, don’t ya think?

Enough ranting for me for now. I do like the passion of the Halo 2 players, but I wish it was better placed and shown more in a decorum of respect then it’s ever shown, would do the group of players as a whole a lot of good.

There were a few that looked interesting or that I wanted to know more about, or just wanted to see their review … ThinkFree Web Office, Network Magic 2.0, Yahoo Maps, Opera 9 Beta, Deal Finders, MioNet Remote Access, Collaboration and Community, and Wireless Networking Stuff.

They had a whole Top 100, somewhat interesting, although the PC chips are cool, #1 and #2 cool?