Posted by Gunner Eleven March 26, 2013:
If you’re like me, then what I’m about to share should resonate like a freshly poured pint of pub ale as the chewy draft canvases your mouth before leaving behind a malty sweetness that you will kindly remember forever.
Beer fantasies aside, there are days that I can’t wait to turn on my Xbox and play Halo 4. The trigger for my addiction could be a tweet letting me know about new gametypes or even watching a live stream on the video game broadcasting and chat community, TwitchTV.
I’m at the menu screen. My friends are online. Invites are sent and soon the game lobby fills with eager gamers ready to slay, conquer, and force our collective, competitive will on unsuspecting opponents.
And then it turns into a disaster.
Then the fun-sucking, rage monster that lives deep within every gamer begins to emerge. He whispers in my ear, “You’re lagging, there’s no way you should have died…they must be cheating…your teammates aren’t as good as you, and that’s why you’re getting killed.”
We have the most memorable and lasting moments from games when we win. At least we should, because we can’t win every game. It’s how we learn from the games we lose that offers an opportunity to progress as both a casual and competitive gamer. A twitter follower and good friend sent me a link to the video below. The video takes you inside the huddle of a competitive Halo team following a terrible scrimmage and practice session.
In the video, Trey Christensen aka TreyTri addresses his team and reminds them that every second counts. “A second in the futures, is a second forgotton,” he tells them. In the fractions of a second that it takes to gloat over your own double or triple kill, you must instantly forget, move on, and get back in the game.
It’s clear that he trusts his teammates and their individual skills. This isn’t a football coach at halftime reminding his quarterback how to throw an out route when the cornerback is cheating inside. He’s upset with their attitude and it’s negative impact on their team performance.
In traditional sports, they call it momentum. It can swing in your favor or away. When it’s bad, it’s the intangible but palpable feeling that the game is slipping away and out of control. Divine intervention seems to be taking place and at your expense. You know it’s happening during a game of Halo when your team begins arguing with each other.
Every second counts in Halo. The teams that win are the teams that make best use of those seconds, he added. Trey Tri recalled his own professional tournament experience to make his point clear. In order to practice team strategies, they first have to have the right attitude. Otherwise, it’s all a waste of time.
There’s still debate as to whether eSports is a legitimate sporting event ready for mass consumption. It’s my opinion, if more people understood the importance of teamwork, communication and attitude required to compete in eSports at a high level, then the negative stereotype of cheesy-fingered, basement dwellers and 40-year-old virgins competing for lifetime supplies of Doritos and Mountain Dew would just die.
There is little difference between Trey Tri’s speech to his team and the majority of scripted, halftime speeches that have defined, the sports halftime locker room cliche. Watching a video like this reminds me that gaming and Halo is competitive. It’s what pushes each of us to pick the controller back up after an embarrassing defeat or bad game. Because in the game as in life, we all get back up.
Sport is where an entire life can be compressed into a few hours, where the emotions of a lifetime can be felt on an acre or two of ground, where a person can suffer and die and rise again on six miles of trails through a New York City park. Sport is a theater where sinner can turn saint and a common man become an uncommon hero, where the past and the future can fuse with the present. Sport is singularly able to give us peak experiences where we feel completely one with the world and transcend all conflicts as we finally become our own potential.
~George A. Sheehan
You can watch TreyTri live on TwitchTV here http://www.twitch.tv/treytri or catch his videos on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/GameTreyN and follow on twitter at www.twitter.com/treytri
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(Reposted with permission)
Hey, he posts some pretty good stuff! Take me to his blog >>