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Posted by Jnorman

So, I'm not that great a writer, but I am going to try and articulate my point so it can stop distracting me while I'm at work. - The article about the Fighting Game Community thing that went up a day or two ago hit a string with me that I'm pretty sure it didn't with that many other people. I kind of understand what the guy Aris was saying about it being a trial by fire kind of community and his fear for losing it to the mainstreaming of it. It was especially clear after I listened to the dudes discuss is on the bombcast. But I thought of a a parallel that most dudes in this community probably don't think of. - I play a lot of pick up basketball. Its probably 60-40 with playing games.....or more like 80-20, but at one point I was really big into going into the arcades when I was younger. The attitude described by the dudes on the podcast of paying your dues in the arcade is strikingly similar to the attitude you could find at any pick up court or gym that takes the games seriously. I mean, there are people that come to the arcade to just play around, and there are people who come to take it really seriously and bet money and reputations. There are people that play pick up ball just for fun and there are people that take it really seriously and put their reputations on the line. - The point that Aris was trying to make was that he felt the thing that made his community so great was the competitive nature of it and not wanting to lose that . He chose some pretty poor words to try and describe that, but I get it. When new dudes come to the court we don't want them to win. If they do win, they have to beat our best teams or else we don't want them at our court. The difference to me, is that at some point in pick up basketball's history, someone or some people said, "Ok guys, we have to be resonable about this. We do want this to grow, we do want to be taken seriously, we do want to have semi pro leagues and we do want people to enjoy the thing that we enjoy so much.....so we have to stop being assholes." I don't doubt that the guys that were assholes still played, but I know at the varoius courts that I have been to and the leagues that I have been in the assholes were slowly phased out. The feeling was that there was no place for that extreme bigortry if we were going to let other play. And at least in my experiences, those people who were so stubborn in their ways just didn't come around us anymore. The dudes that were so stuck in the ways that it was that they couldn't or didn't want to grow up about it and let the game grow weren't picked up or invited to play, no matter how good they were. - I don't know if I articulated that analogy all that well, but I feel better now that I have typed it out. Thanks internet, you're the best.