Project Proposal
Andy Hampton, Neal Roessler, Zach Casull, Chandler Cell
We chose professional gamers as our target group for our ethnography project. We chose this group because of all the stereotypes and assumptions that are usually applied to this group without a second thought. Although, some of us have experience with gaming as a pastime, we decided to proceed because none of us can even imagine the work that we know is necessary to compete on a serious level.
The expectation from this group is that it is male dominated with varying personalities from the quiet loners to the obnoxious attention cravers. Tendencies towards violence and verbal abuse will be interesting subjects to observe while studying this group. The scope of this study will range from individuals to local group competitions and whatever else we can find that can provide us some insight into the minds of professional gamers. From this study we hope to learn enough about how professional gamers tick so as to be able to suggest a product that could be useful to them.
This study is appropriate because of the many personalities and behaviors we anticipate to observe while conducting the study. Demographic observations will show trends in the gender and age of participants which can further be broken down and compared to our own experiences with what would be considered “normal” people in these ranges. The violence and verbal observations mentioned above will also be valuable given the recent Supreme Court case regarding violence in video games and its effect on people who play games which fit squarely in our target group. This study is not inappropriate as we have no reason to gather personal information beyond age, gender, and possibly appearance. Conducting interviews and attending public gaming events also prove appropriate and do not in any way break laws. This study will be exciting because of the breadth of people we anticipate on studying in thier very animated, high-powered environment that keeps them interested in this pasttime and motivated to practice in the massive volumes that they do.
This study is feasible because we will cover many different aspects of professional gaming conducting several interviews with acquaintances that play games professionally as well as observing competitions and tournaments. We also hope to eventually participate in the activity if the opportunity presents itself to one of us or one of our acquaintances whom we can follow.
Week 1 Results
Andy Hampton
We attended a Gears of War 2 tournament at Clockwork Games and Events in College Station, Texas which we found out about through a search engine on the internet. This experience proved to support some of my hypotheses and disprove others.
Upon arrival in the outlet area where Clockwork was located, I found it on the side of one of the buildings with poor signage out front. This led me to believe that people who go here are a fairly tight knit bunch because advertising was nowhere to be found and the hours of the venue were odd, seemingly catering to an after school crowd. Once inside, I noticed a pretty sophisticated setup consisting of a row of 8 XBOX 360 consoles mounted about 1 foot off the ground on the wall with 8, approximately 20 inch, screens and 2 larger screens above them. The lighting was poor, as to be expected, and the interior was actually quite nice with about 6 tables, for card games I assume, and 2 couches in front of the console laden wall along with other various chairs. There was also a counter as I assume this place also sold games, cards, and snacks.
There were about 15 people there representing ages 9 to 40. There was talk that one of the participants there was a former Major League Gamer. We learned that people that usually come to Clockwork play card games and video games. Everyone there was relaxed and enjoyed the company of fellow gamers and it became apparent that many of them were familiar with each other suggesting a regular crowd usually played at Clockwork. They were happy to converse with us and answered a lot of our questions. It was heavily dominated by guys but there were two girls that attended but did not play.
It was explained to us that the Gears of War 2 tournament would consist of 10 participants in a 1v1 double elimination tournament bracket following Major League Gaming rules. Julio is the tournament manager and assigns the rules of the game and acts as referee by preventing cheating that might take place such as screen peaking, the act of looking at the opponents screen to gauge where their character was located on the game map. The winner received a new copy of Gears of Wars 3 sponsored by FX Games, represented by Chris who has known Julio for many years, and some prize money. We entered in 2 of our own members, Neal and Zach, to support the event and immerse ourselves a little.
In the first game there was a 9 year old kid that beat a 18 year old and he was calling him out by saying “Now Suck This!” Everyone was animated and very into the tournament, yelling at the TV’s and having a good time. There was a lot of smack talk, sarcastic hostility, and jokes among everyone there but as a bit of a surprise everyone seemed pretty outgoing and swearing was kept under control, if it even occurred.
We met Jacob who is in high school and aspires to be a professional. He plays at least 3 hours a day and recently played a $1000 tournament but got beat by some “hardcore kids”. He said it is a lot about getting in some people’s heads especially if they are younger than you, you can get in their heads with some smack talk he says, and “put the kids in their place”.
Overall, participants of the competition exhibited unforeseen outgoingness which may have been a result of being in their comfort zone as was apparent given the pre-existing relationships between the gamers. As was predicted most of the gamers had spent large amounts of time playing the contest game and were therefore very good at them relative to us. Some interesting observations were the age ranges which varied wildly and the highly competitive environment that developed after the tournament started which differed with the very laid back atmosphere that existed beforehand.
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