The major league gaming arena has been one that has always seemed to favor the younger more reflex capable crowd. In order to take a closer look and maybe even have some fun, the 2old2play crew decided to enter the tournament and send some members out to Chicago. In the end, we met some very cool people and also had a first hand account of why the older generation isn’t normally present at MLG. Being pro takes time!
To begin, I would first like to say that our attendance at MLG was doomed from the beginning. The idea to go began only a month or so before the actual event so getting a team together seemed like a silly thought. Most of us, me included, had taken a break from Halo 2 and moved onto our Xbox 360 or back to our PC’s (damn you WoW). It wasn’t until we saw some posts from other site members that we realized a trip to the tournament might be in order. At first one of our California members, Lotus Eater, was going to make the trip out here and join our team of 4 in the Last Chance Qualifiers for Halo 2. Unfortunately for our team, we learned the first reason why older gamers are not normally at MLG; Jobs.
Lotus had just received a promotion due to his fine quality of work and so we were out our 4th man. No problem, c93rich would take Lotus’s plane ticket and place on the MLG team. Well, apparently neither Lotus nor Rich had ever heard of that little 9/11 thing and didn’t know you could not transfer plane tickets in someone else’s name. Of coarse this bit of news came only a week before the actual event in which I had already purchased c93’s ticket. So now we were short a man. I suppose we could have picked up a random, but I really wanted this to be a 2old2play team so that seemed out of the questions. Did anyone come to the rescue? Well yes and we can all thank brotherly love for that.
SubT , my brother, decided at the very last minute that he would jump in for Lotus/Rich and fill our final spot. The only problem was that he had not even seen Halo 2 in about 3 months. In fact earlier this month he had given away his Xbox to a friend and was mostly playing COD:2 in his free time. In any event we at least had our team together with MLG only 2 days away. We didn’t log on all that much to go over any maps or strategies. I think by this point we all realized our fate and didn’t have any illusion of the matches to come. So instead we opted for our current games of habit.
The Thursday before MLG marked the second reason why older gamers are not at MLG; Obligations. Only a day before the event I realized that both my brother and I were required to attend a family wedding on Friday night. As most of you know, it’s not something that you can really duck out of for a gaming tournament. So we figured the two of us would have to miss the seeding round and take a forfeit. At least Knaabi and Bliznot would have a shot at the FFA for a better seed, or so we thought.
In came yet another obstacle that every older gamer must face; Responsibility. The night of the event we began to plan our schedules when Bliznot received some bad news from the homestead. His dog had become ill and needed to be rushed to the vet that night. Since no one else was around to take care of it, Bliznot had to forfeit the seeding round as well for Friday night. At this point Knaabi, feeling a little left out, decided there was no real point to showing up with one man so we all ditched the Friday night FFA seed match. We figured a loss at this point was inevitable so we took the whole event as a reason to see what MLG was all about.
The next morning we woke up at 7am to get over to MLG to check our seed. Out of all the teams, 127, we got the last seed! It was decided that because we were going to face one of the best team, we would at least make light of the situation and have some fun with it. Maybe a few “Timmy” comments here or there wouldn’t hurt for a little site promotion right? Wrong. Again, lady luck through as a curve ball when we saw our opponents would be none other then 16th seeded PMS PRO. So now we couldn’t even talk smack. How well would that go over for a bunch of old guys talking smack to some younger ladies? Not Well.
So we took the match in stride. Surrounded by what seemed to be hundreds of people, the match began promptly at 11:00am. Lucky for us we were not nervous since the outcome of this day had been set in stone almost 1 month ago. What happened during the match is mostly a blur, but I do remember hearing the people behind me saying, “They’ll never live this down” and “Wow, this is just embarrassing.” I’m pretty sure they got us on VOD so it’s quite possible that you can see us fall from glory. In the end, the PMS ladies were very nice and we shook on a game well dominated.
Before we could even collect our composure we were instantly force right back into a match in the losers bracket. Oddly enough we didn’t even know that there was going to be another game so we had no idea what maps or gametypes we would be playing. Lucky for us we got to meet the real “Timmy” types this time around, so we had a little more fun with the game. They started off with the smack talk faster then you can say respawn, but we held our own for a good portion of the slayer match. I must say, even though we ended up losing we didn’t do all that bad for 4 guys that hardly play Halo anymore.
After the match ended we finally got the chance to take in all of MLG. Lucky for me, I had a woman on the inside, PMS EM, who helped introduce me to many of the PMS clan and other MLG regulars around the event. I couldn’t believe how much of a community aspect this all really was. Don’t get me wrong; there is some major cash at stake here, but mostly its people who just enjoy hanging out and catching up with others on the circuit. A lot of the people are friends with one another which gives it an almost traveling high school reunion type feel. Most of these people play with each other everyday on XBL from around the globe. This is their chance to meet up, have fun, and play some video games while they are at it.
Through out the weekend I got to chat with a lot of these different people and for the most part it was good. Obviously, there were the yelling and screaming children of the event, but it is expected given the average age seemed to be in the teens and not much higher. I even had a chance to chat with the business leader and one of the founding members of MLG about a possible Older Gamers bracket. The bad news is I don’t think we will be seeing it anytime soon, but they do seem to have a lot of good ideas for the future of the League. While this might be disappointing to some, I also thought back to how hard it was to get to this MLG which made me think how difficult it would be for an older guy to make the entire season.
In the end I had a great time in my home city and I’m glad I had a chance to make it out there. I learned a lot just by watching the pro’s and I will definitely make it a point to go back. In fact, I plan on putting together some 2old2play PRO teams for the next season in order to let the public know that old guys can still hack it. Now all I need is a sponsor. Bungie, are listening?
NOTE: Thanks to PMS EM, Pickle, Mary Jane, 2 old 2 play, and all the other people that I met up with while I was out there. I had a lot of fun and I can’t wait to do it again. I’ll try and get some picture up ASAP. Em, where are those photos?
Lotus had just received a promotion due to his fine quality of work and so we were out our 4th man. No problem, c93rich would take Lotus’s plane ticket and place on the MLG team. Well, apparently neither Lotus nor Rich had ever heard of that little 9/11 thing and didn’t know you could not transfer plane tickets in someone else’s name. Of coarse this bit of news came only a week before the actual event in which I had already purchased c93’s ticket. So now we were short a man. I suppose we could have picked up a random, but I really wanted this to be a 2old2play team so that seemed out of the questions. Did anyone come to the rescue? Well yes and we can all thank brotherly love for that.
SubT , my brother, decided at the very last minute that he would jump in for Lotus/Rich and fill our final spot. The only problem was that he had not even seen Halo 2 in about 3 months. In fact earlier this month he had given away his Xbox to a friend and was mostly playing COD:2 in his free time. In any event we at least had our team together with MLG only 2 days away. We didn’t log on all that much to go over any maps or strategies. I think by this point we all realized our fate and didn’t have any illusion of the matches to come. So instead we opted for our current games of habit.
The Thursday before MLG marked the second reason why older gamers are not at MLG; Obligations. Only a day before the event I realized that both my brother and I were required to attend a family wedding on Friday night. As most of you know, it’s not something that you can really duck out of for a gaming tournament. So we figured the two of us would have to miss the seeding round and take a forfeit. At least Knaabi and Bliznot would have a shot at the FFA for a better seed, or so we thought.
In came yet another obstacle that every older gamer must face; Responsibility. The night of the event we began to plan our schedules when Bliznot received some bad news from the homestead. His dog had become ill and needed to be rushed to the vet that night. Since no one else was around to take care of it, Bliznot had to forfeit the seeding round as well for Friday night. At this point Knaabi, feeling a little left out, decided there was no real point to showing up with one man so we all ditched the Friday night FFA seed match. We figured a loss at this point was inevitable so we took the whole event as a reason to see what MLG was all about.
The next morning we woke up at 7am to get over to MLG to check our seed. Out of all the teams, 127, we got the last seed! It was decided that because we were going to face one of the best team, we would at least make light of the situation and have some fun with it. Maybe a few “Timmy” comments here or there wouldn’t hurt for a little site promotion right? Wrong. Again, lady luck through as a curve ball when we saw our opponents would be none other then 16th seeded PMS PRO. So now we couldn’t even talk smack. How well would that go over for a bunch of old guys talking smack to some younger ladies? Not Well.
So we took the match in stride. Surrounded by what seemed to be hundreds of people, the match began promptly at 11:00am. Lucky for us we were not nervous since the outcome of this day had been set in stone almost 1 month ago. What happened during the match is mostly a blur, but I do remember hearing the people behind me saying, “They’ll never live this down” and “Wow, this is just embarrassing.” I’m pretty sure they got us on VOD so it’s quite possible that you can see us fall from glory. In the end, the PMS ladies were very nice and we shook on a game well dominated.
Before we could even collect our composure we were instantly force right back into a match in the losers bracket. Oddly enough we didn’t even know that there was going to be another game so we had no idea what maps or gametypes we would be playing. Lucky for us we got to meet the real “Timmy” types this time around, so we had a little more fun with the game. They started off with the smack talk faster then you can say respawn, but we held our own for a good portion of the slayer match. I must say, even though we ended up losing we didn’t do all that bad for 4 guys that hardly play Halo anymore.
After the match ended we finally got the chance to take in all of MLG. Lucky for me, I had a woman on the inside, PMS EM, who helped introduce me to many of the PMS clan and other MLG regulars around the event. I couldn’t believe how much of a community aspect this all really was. Don’t get me wrong; there is some major cash at stake here, but mostly its people who just enjoy hanging out and catching up with others on the circuit. A lot of the people are friends with one another which gives it an almost traveling high school reunion type feel. Most of these people play with each other everyday on XBL from around the globe. This is their chance to meet up, have fun, and play some video games while they are at it.
Through out the weekend I got to chat with a lot of these different people and for the most part it was good. Obviously, there were the yelling and screaming children of the event, but it is expected given the average age seemed to be in the teens and not much higher. I even had a chance to chat with the business leader and one of the founding members of MLG about a possible Older Gamers bracket. The bad news is I don’t think we will be seeing it anytime soon, but they do seem to have a lot of good ideas for the future of the League. While this might be disappointing to some, I also thought back to how hard it was to get to this MLG which made me think how difficult it would be for an older guy to make the entire season.
In the end I had a great time in my home city and I’m glad I had a chance to make it out there. I learned a lot just by watching the pro’s and I will definitely make it a point to go back. In fact, I plan on putting together some 2old2play PRO teams for the next season in order to let the public know that old guys can still hack it. Now all I need is a sponsor. Bungie, are listening?
NOTE: Thanks to PMS EM, Pickle, Mary Jane, 2 old 2 play, and all the other people that I met up with while I was out there. I had a lot of fun and I can’t wait to do it again. I’ll try and get some picture up ASAP. Em, where are those photos?
