The ScooterBlog

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.