

Good Game: The Rise of the Professional Cyber Athlete - austinz
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/good-game?intcid=mod-yml

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keerthiko
Ugh. The article made the mistake of making it sound like the casters were
amazed by the fact that Scarlett is female. This is the sign of someone who's
clearly an onlooker and doesn't pay close attention the eSports scene. While
there's definitely things such as GamerGate and such making the gaming scene
look terribly unsavory for female participants, in truth the eSports community
has long since fully welcomed Scarlett as a true gamer, girl or not. I dislike
articles forcing this focus on her being a girl and somehow sticking out for
it, much like women in tech hate being glorified just for being "a woman in
tech." They have real skill and contribution outside of being an outlier for
their gender.

If anyone who knows what's going on is ever amazed she won it's because she
was actually an underdog in the specific matchup, not because she's a female,
let alone for being a "foreigner" (non-Korean). In fact, the amount of
amazement for being a foreigner winning was pretty low by the time of the
match the article writes about. I remember watching the game mentioned here
last thanksgiving, and it coming down to the wire, and the audience didn't
care that Scarlett was "a token female" or anything, we were just excited
about the awesome match and that Scarlett pulled a miracle win. The casters
were no different, all eye-popping was purely about the awesome decision
making and creativity leading to an excellent game.

Don't make the gaming community sound more sexist than it already does on its
own. Scarlett may have faced difficulties or felt singled out in the past for
it, but it certainly wasn't true in the fashion depicted in this article.

~~~
debacle
Scarlett is not female. Female is a sex. Woman is a gender. Scarlett
identifies as a woman, but is not female.

While a minor point, it's important to remember when discussing eSports,
because apart from Scarlett no woman has had nearly the same success (as a
player).

Edit: Come on guys. How else do you want me to say it? I tried to be as PC and
limited as I could. The downvotes are unnecessary. It's impossible to have a
discussion on this topic when it's not okay to point out that Scarlett may
have an advantage in that she was exposed to male levels of hormones for most
of her life, socially developed as a male at one point, and didn't face the
adolescent stigma of gaming that girls her same age would have.

I have nothing against Scarlett (except that she plays Zerg) and her life
choices are her business (except that she plays Zerg), but she isn't female
and, barring some significant advances in biology, never will be.

~~~
Igglyboo
Just to be clear, Scarlett is biologically a male, correct? The terminology is
confusing me, not trying to be offensive.

~~~
debacle
I'm not sure what you mean. Scarlett was born a male, but as to her current
physiology, that's her business.

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ahstilde
McGrath provides an fascinating view into a unique individual. That is, he is
using Scarlett to talk about e-sports, not the other way around. And I think
this causes him to miss the whole story. Scarlett does not represent e-sports,
unfortunately. The fact that she was able to climb onto a global stage,
starting as a nobody, is undeniably incredibly. However, with "The Rise of the
Professional Cyber Athlete" as its title, I expected the article to be about
the rise of e-sports, not of a singular e-sports athlete.

E-sports is on the cusp on exploding, and video-game live-streaming service
Twitch.tv plus the increasing availability of the internet at all times
(smartphones help) are a large part of the reason why. Dota2 and League of
Legends (both MOBAs) lead the forefront when it comes to players and money,
but Starcraft II (real-time strategy a la Age of Empires), while declining, is
not going anywhere. Additionally, Hearthstone (Blizzard's online card game)
has exploded onto the scene in the past year, proving to appeal to casual and
competitive gamers alike with its free-to-play model and low learning curve.
Rounding out the pack are the fighting game communities (Super Smash Bros,
Ultra Street Fighter IV) and first-person shooters (Halo, Call of Duty,
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive). Yes, console-based games have a harder time
creating a high-level competitive scene, but it isn't impossible. Starcraft 1,
Counter-strike: Source, and Super Smash Bros Melee have all been being played
competitively since the turn of the century, almost.

I'm rambling at this point...

If anyone has any questions regarding the e-sports scene, from local
grassroots tournament organization to being a high-level competitive player,
to other Scarlett-esque people, please ask. I'm most familiar with Hearthstone
and Super Smash Bros.

~~~
debacle
I think the problem with the console games has always been that the
development of their scenes was not organic. MLG dropped Halo almost
immediately (or possibly as a result of) after Microsoft stopped sponsoring
it.

Smash and Street Fighter on the other hand, have developed somewhat
organically and Smash is starting to grow in spite of Nintendo (or at least
Nintendo's decision making 5 years ago).

I wish there was more Smash content on Twitch, because the game is incredible
to watch.

~~~
ahstilde
Smash is very difficult to stream, with the two biggest factors being that
it's not on a computer and the lack of built-in PvP in Melee and Project M.
GIMR of VGBC is doing some very innovative things, though.

------
0x420
I don't play Starcraft 2 much, or video games in general, for that matter, but
I do enjoy occasionally watching SC2 casts, mostly out of nostalgia for the
original game which I enjoyed quite a bit as a kid.

I've seen Scarlett's games before and while I had gathered that she is a
woman, I had no idea she was transgender - honestly, a pleasant surprise,
because I'm a trans woman too. I enjoyed this article, and I found it
refreshing that it wasn't invasive with regards to her gender identity, while
still being explicit and not just sweeping it under the rug. I'm quite happy
with this kind of representation - and I'm even happier to find out that I
have this in common with such a highly-regarded player.

One note to some of the commenters in this thread, though - please don't
speculate on our biology like that, it's incredibly rude. She deserves to be
celebrated for her accomplishments regardless of the gender assigned to her at
birth.

------
gabemart
The Scarlett vs Bomber game is on youtube:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIygo3bIVmo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIygo3bIVmo)

"Oh my god, Scarlett is going gas" at 1m30s

~~~
omni
Here's the bit where Scarlett breaks the stalemate with the burrowed
banelings, complete with caster excitement and audience reaction:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIygo3bIVmo&t=25m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIygo3bIVmo&t=25m30s)

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ozh
This article is 10 years late, honestly.

~~~
Thriptic
This. There was a similar article in the New York Times this week talking
about how surprising it is that COD players are competing in million dollar
tournament despite the fact that such large scale tournaments existed for
games such as counter strike over a decade ago. Major starcraft tournaments
have been occurring for even longer than that.

~~~
keypusher
The largest Counter-Strike prizepool so far was ~$500,000. And, while Quake,
Starcraft, WC3, and original Counter-Strike certainly had tournaments and a
devoted following, the scene has exploded to a much larger audience and larger
prizepools in the last few years, primarily on the back of streaming services
like Twich and games such as Dota 2 and League of Legends.

[http://www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments](http://www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments)

------
brotoss
Look, I'm a huge gamer. But I think calling them "athletes" is an insult to
actual athletes. Totally fine with referring to Pro gaming as E-Sports, but
calling them athletes is taking it too far.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
How about bowlers then? Or archers? Pool? Its a fuzzy line; but I agree, this
one goes over the line.

~~~
gadders
No-one calls Chess players athletes.

