5 ms·

Everyone Else Is Trash

69 points by fern12 9y ago

chias 9y ago
Gosh that page has infuriating scroll behavior. Maybe it's supposed to implement smooth scrolling, but it somehow gets confused as to where the scroll actually is, which means any scroll attempt including using the keyboard flickers up and down very rapidly for about a second before finally settling down. Thank goodness for Firefox's "Reader" mode.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- JepZ 9y ago
  Yeah, some should really fix that scrolling issue... (FF here too)
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  Has the same crazy jitter on Mobile Safari. Is there a browser that it does work right in? Chrome?
jack9 9y ago
This eSport hype journalism is as tiring as LoL public chat.
montyf 9y ago
Thanks, it's interesting to see articles like this every now and then as someone who briefly followed pro League back in the day. I guess it was Season 1 as I remember Doublelift being a lowly Blitz main before he switched to his current role. It was a lot of fun because there wasn't an officially sanctioned metagame -- not the case anymore. The game has been dull to watch for many years now. Video games don't interest me these days, but the spirit of competition is one thing I miss about them. I always wonder what it's like to face the kind of pressure that top performers do.
- Kagerjay 9y ago
  I didn't expect to find a LoL post on ycombinator. I used to be a huge LoL and DoTA player as well, played moderately competitively, but I don't play those anymore since they suck too much time up. A couple years back I went to The international Dota 2 in seattle for the first time with a buddy. Its a whole different dynamic actually playing DoTA / LoL vs watching professionals esports teams live with other attendees for 7 - 10 days in a row. The closest analogy to this is watching a football game on TV vs actually going to the stadium and seeing it live. You get back into the spirit of competition there, since everyone else is, even if you haven't played in years. Its only fun IMO if you don't go to an esports outing often though, otherwise it'd get dull after awhile.
  - montyf 9y ago
    I got into Dota 2 after League -- now THAT is a great game to watch. I played for a while before quitting that, too; as you say, it sucks up a lot of time, and there was no surrender option. Going to the International must be a great experience, though.
keyle 9y ago
I play pinball on a competitive scale. It's great fun and it's internationally ranked (IFPA). We get toghether, and battle on machine that takes a lot of skills and knowledge to master. Seriously, the silver ball and physics bring a world of constant chaos. E-sports seems like a bad joke that went on for too long. It goes to show that if you pump enough money into something, it will become a thing. The old saying "if you strap enough rockets to a pig, it will fly!" is basically it. I hope not every 'sport' or 'hobby' come to that level, as it brings so much sadness and fake happiness in competition.
- sushisource 9y ago
  Maybe I'm just misinterpreting what you're writing but are you really suggesting pinball is a more deserving sport than e-sports? That doesn't exactly feel like a convincing argument. If you're saying "I don't understand why League is big and Pinball isn't". Well, that's popularity. More importantly - who cares what other people like? If you don't like it, you don't have to jump in screaming "but this is baaaaaad!"
  - keyle 9y ago
    No what I'm saying is pumping too much money in a e-sport/hobby is bad.
    - gnahckire 9y ago
      Could you elaborate on how/why you view it as "bad"? From my POV this is a "good" thing. E-sports get a lot of eyeballs (views). More eyeballs (views) = more endorsement due to increased audience. Personally, I'm an advocate for e-sports because I enjoy playing games & watching people compete at them especially at the elite level.
    - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
      Pumping money into esports is a core part of their business model. Its their advertising budget and more importantly seeing really good players makes perhaps burnt out players play the game some more because it makes then excited about the game again, and eventually buy their in game items.
arciini 9y ago
I think it's especially interesting that this showed up on the player's tribune, which includes gems like Kobe Bryant's letter to his younger self. Esports is being treated like a conventional sport here The fact that e-sports has exploded I think has a lot to do with how they've become more similar to real-world sports. We've moved from very artificial e-sports like Starcraft, fighting, racing (usually 1v1 games with extreme focus), to distinct role-based "MOBA" games like Overwatch, League of Legends that are much more similar to popular existing games like soccer and baseball. Unlike in the earlier games, they rely slightly less than pure mechanical skill, which makes the sports accessible. They're team games with differentiated roles, allowing beginners a way into the game playing with, rather than against their friends. Sounds familiar? This could describe soccer, basketball, football, and all of the top spectator sports today. Their only real substantial difference is that they're far more accessible, requiring only equipment that many already have (the games intentionally minimize system requirements) and don't require real physical athleticism. I think it's no surprise they're becoming popular as spectator sports: they're building on a proven formula, but adding a dash of accessibility.
- drharby 9y ago
  >artificial esports like starcraft 2 So chess isnt a sport?
  - xyzzyz 9y ago
    It's definitely not popular as a spectator sport.
    - everdev 9y ago
      It definitely was with chess competitions broadcast live on TV.
  - IntronExon 9y ago
    It’s a sport in the same way that a tomato is a vegetable; by some definitions it is, by others it isn’t. What annoys me is that videogames have a chance to be themselves without glomming onto “sports” like chess and other games. Chess doesn’t need to be called a sport to be worthwhile and respectable, and neither do videogames. For the sake of money and “mindshare” though? Chess and Starcraft are sports, and tomatoes are veggies.
freetime2 9y ago
As I was reading this, I was reminded immediately of Isaiah Thomas' farewell letter to Boston when we has traded from the Celtics that I read a few months back (https://www.theplayerstribune.com/isaiah-thomas-trade-celtics-cavaliers/ https://www.theplayerstribune.com/isaiah-thomas-trade-celtic...). Then I googled it and realized that was also hosted on The Players' Tribune. So I guess this is a thing now, writing long-form farewell letters for fans when you are traded or cut. Honestly, I kind of like it. I've never liked IT more than when I read his farewell. And while I'd never heard of Doublelift or TSM before, and don't really know anything about League of Legends, I enjoyed reading this article too. Sports are more interesting when you know more about what the players are thinking. I dream of a day when 120 character tweets by celebrities and presidents are behind us, and long form content is back in style.
- jackschultz 9y ago
  I'll throw this in here since you were reminded of another Players' Tribune article. It has to be because they use of ghostwriters all the time. Every single one of their articles have the same form, same word selection, same pacing. Has anyone else noticed this? I'm not saying it's bad bad, but tough to take seriously if all of them are so similar. It'd be fun to go through and do some text analysis to see if it's provable.
  - protoplant 9y ago
    I think that's standard. Writing is hard, I imagine political books are similar. Though I think the purpose of the Tribune was to allow athletes to control how they are heard.
ggm 9y ago
It looks like the kind of motivation to succeed which works in classic sports, also works in new sports. If you are of a mind to aim to 'the best' then it doesn't matter what field its in, what matters (to you) is to BE the best. I rather like the US army recruiting slogan of old: be the best you can be It doesn't lead to being able to write blow-off letters on fan sites, but it makes me happy. I think I'm a low bar achiever.
- delinka 9y ago
  Be all that you can be I can still hear the jingle ;-)
Aloha 9y ago
I have enough trouble understanding why anyone likes regular Sports - I'm even more befuddled by eSports.
- ajkjk 9y ago
  Have you played either? Esports make a lot more sense when you play the game competitively yourself. It's (to me, and lots of people) always fascinating to watch people being excellent at things that I'm not that great at.
  - Aloha 9y ago
    I did, soccer as a kid. I didn't enjoy it much.
- cortesoft 9y ago
  Are you competitive at all? If you aren’t, it would be hard to understand any competitive venture.
  - Aloha 9y ago
    I'm actually pretty competitive, I just cant get over why anyone would get competitive about something with no long term value or meaning - it just doesn't register with me. (Edit: I guess people take umbrage at my dislike of sports - my lack of enjoyment in nowway is judging you for enjoying - its more a broad sense of bewilderment)
    - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
      That's the secret, nothing has any long term value or meaning. Just enjoy the ride.
lerie82 9y ago
I could never get into e-sports, it seems like a luxury that the world doesn't need. I don't play many games anymore, I normally write a hack or bot that gets me banned then I'm over it lol.
ahdroit 9y ago
" but one day I went to LeBron James’ Instagram, and I saw that his comments section was full of the exact same sort of garbage that I was getting"
ry_ry 9y ago
A little over a decade ago (so somewhere in the early triassic period as far as videogames go) I was involved in big tourneys within the terrible game I was no-lifing at the time for efame, eglory, and shitty prizes. My teammates and I had played for years at this point and despite being better at the forums than the game, we knew our way around the meta and had enough experience to make sensible decisions on the fly. Even then, we weren't ever within touching distance of the top tiers. Not even close. Every tourney we were watched, jeered and very occasionally cheered by thousands of other players as we muddled through early stages against other weaker teams before eventually being out meta'd and out played by better players and it was brutal, adrenaline-shaking dopamine-flooded experience. It was physically addictive at its best, and absolutely soul crushing at worst. Even within my short, strictly amateur 'career' in esports, the gulf between the top teams and everybody else was crazy. The level of dedication and raw focus the eventual winners possessed was frankly insane and something I simply wouldn't ever be able to muster. These guys who are already mechanically superb are living and breathing their games. I genuinely can't even begin to imagine what it's like for professional LoL players at the top of the scene, small teams competing for huge prize pools with individual performance publicly dissected and analysed in microscopic detail by hordes of armchair pundits. Throw in the inevitable post-tournament rosterpocalypse and flakey team management, I can't help but feel professional esports is cannibalising these players.

69 points by fern12 9y ago

Gosh that page has infuriating scroll behavior. Maybe it's supposed to implement smooth scrolling, but it somehow gets confused as to where the scroll actually is, which means any scroll attempt including using the keyboard flickers up and down very rapidly for about a second before finally settling down. Thank goodness for Firefox's "Reader" mode.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
JepZ 9y ago
Yeah, some should really fix that scrolling issue... (FF here too)
wlesieutre 9y ago
Has the same crazy jitter on Mobile Safari. Is there a browser that it does work right in? Chrome?

jack9 9y ago

This eSport hype journalism is as tiring as LoL public chat.

montyf 9y ago

Thanks, it's interesting to see articles like this every now and then as someone who briefly followed pro League back in the day. I guess it was Season 1 as I remember Doublelift being a lowly Blitz main before he switched to his current role. It was a lot of fun because there wasn't an officially sanctioned metagame -- not the case anymore. The game has been dull to watch for many years now. Video games don't interest me these days, but the spirit of competition is one thing I miss about them. I always wonder what it's like to face the kind of pressure that top performers do.

Kagerjay 9y ago
I didn't expect to find a LoL post on ycombinator. I used to be a huge LoL and DoTA player as well, played moderately competitively, but I don't play those anymore since they suck too much time up. A couple years back I went to The international Dota 2 in seattle for the first time with a buddy. Its a whole different dynamic actually playing DoTA / LoL vs watching professionals esports teams live with other attendees for 7 - 10 days in a row. The closest analogy to this is watching a football game on TV vs actually going to the stadium and seeing it live. You get back into the spirit of competition there, since everyone else is, even if you haven't played in years. Its only fun IMO if you don't go to an esports outing often though, otherwise it'd get dull after awhile.
- montyf 9y ago
  I got into Dota 2 after League -- now THAT is a great game to watch. I played for a while before quitting that, too; as you say, it sucks up a lot of time, and there was no surrender option. Going to the International must be a great experience, though.

keyle 9y ago

I play pinball on a competitive scale. It's great fun and it's internationally ranked (IFPA). We get toghether, and battle on machine that takes a lot of skills and knowledge to master. Seriously, the silver ball and physics bring a world of constant chaos. E-sports seems like a bad joke that went on for too long. It goes to show that if you pump enough money into something, it will become a thing. The old saying "if you strap enough rockets to a pig, it will fly!" is basically it. I hope not every 'sport' or 'hobby' come to that level, as it brings so much sadness and fake happiness in competition.

sushisource 9y ago
Maybe I'm just misinterpreting what you're writing but are you really suggesting pinball is a more deserving sport than e-sports? That doesn't exactly feel like a convincing argument. If you're saying "I don't understand why League is big and Pinball isn't". Well, that's popularity. More importantly - who cares what other people like? If you don't like it, you don't have to jump in screaming "but this is baaaaaad!"
- keyle 9y ago
  No what I'm saying is pumping too much money in a e-sport/hobby is bad.
  - gnahckire 9y ago
    Could you elaborate on how/why you view it as "bad"? From my POV this is a "good" thing. E-sports get a lot of eyeballs (views). More eyeballs (views) = more endorsement due to increased audience. Personally, I'm an advocate for e-sports because I enjoy playing games & watching people compete at them especially at the elite level.
  - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
    Pumping money into esports is a core part of their business model. Its their advertising budget and more importantly seeing really good players makes perhaps burnt out players play the game some more because it makes then excited about the game again, and eventually buy their in game items.

arciini 9y ago

I think it's especially interesting that this showed up on the player's tribune, which includes gems like Kobe Bryant's letter to his younger self. Esports is being treated like a conventional sport here The fact that e-sports has exploded I think has a lot to do with how they've become more similar to real-world sports. We've moved from very artificial e-sports like Starcraft, fighting, racing (usually 1v1 games with extreme focus), to distinct role-based "MOBA" games like Overwatch, League of Legends that are much more similar to popular existing games like soccer and baseball. Unlike in the earlier games, they rely slightly less than pure mechanical skill, which makes the sports accessible. They're team games with differentiated roles, allowing beginners a way into the game playing with, rather than against their friends. Sounds familiar? This could describe soccer, basketball, football, and all of the top spectator sports today. Their only real substantial difference is that they're far more accessible, requiring only equipment that many already have (the games intentionally minimize system requirements) and don't require real physical athleticism. I think it's no surprise they're becoming popular as spectator sports: they're building on a proven formula, but adding a dash of accessibility.

drharby 9y ago
>artificial esports like starcraft 2 So chess isnt a sport?
- xyzzyz 9y ago
  It's definitely not popular as a spectator sport.
  - everdev 9y ago
    It definitely was with chess competitions broadcast live on TV.
- IntronExon 9y ago
  It’s a sport in the same way that a tomato is a vegetable; by some definitions it is, by others it isn’t. What annoys me is that videogames have a chance to be themselves without glomming onto “sports” like chess and other games. Chess doesn’t need to be called a sport to be worthwhile and respectable, and neither do videogames. For the sake of money and “mindshare” though? Chess and Starcraft are sports, and tomatoes are veggies.

freetime2 9y ago

As I was reading this, I was reminded immediately of Isaiah Thomas' farewell letter to Boston when we has traded from the Celtics that I read a few months back (https://www.theplayerstribune.com/isaiah-thomas-trade-celtics-cavaliers/ https://www.theplayerstribune.com/isaiah-thomas-trade-celtic...). Then I googled it and realized that was also hosted on The Players' Tribune. So I guess this is a thing now, writing long-form farewell letters for fans when you are traded or cut. Honestly, I kind of like it. I've never liked IT more than when I read his farewell. And while I'd never heard of Doublelift or TSM before, and don't really know anything about League of Legends, I enjoyed reading this article too. Sports are more interesting when you know more about what the players are thinking. I dream of a day when 120 character tweets by celebrities and presidents are behind us, and long form content is back in style.

jackschultz 9y ago
I'll throw this in here since you were reminded of another Players' Tribune article. It has to be because they use of ghostwriters all the time. Every single one of their articles have the same form, same word selection, same pacing. Has anyone else noticed this? I'm not saying it's bad bad, but tough to take seriously if all of them are so similar. It'd be fun to go through and do some text analysis to see if it's provable.
- protoplant 9y ago
  I think that's standard. Writing is hard, I imagine political books are similar. Though I think the purpose of the Tribune was to allow athletes to control how they are heard.

ggm 9y ago

It looks like the kind of motivation to succeed which works in classic sports, also works in new sports. If you are of a mind to aim to 'the best' then it doesn't matter what field its in, what matters (to you) is to BE the best. I rather like the US army recruiting slogan of old: be the best you can be It doesn't lead to being able to write blow-off letters on fan sites, but it makes me happy. I think I'm a low bar achiever.

delinka 9y ago
Be all that you can be I can still hear the jingle ;-)

Aloha 9y ago

I have enough trouble understanding why anyone likes regular Sports - I'm even more befuddled by eSports.

ajkjk 9y ago
Have you played either? Esports make a lot more sense when you play the game competitively yourself. It's (to me, and lots of people) always fascinating to watch people being excellent at things that I'm not that great at.
- Aloha 9y ago
  I did, soccer as a kid. I didn't enjoy it much.
cortesoft 9y ago
Are you competitive at all? If you aren’t, it would be hard to understand any competitive venture.
- Aloha 9y ago
  I'm actually pretty competitive, I just cant get over why anyone would get competitive about something with no long term value or meaning - it just doesn't register with me. (Edit: I guess people take umbrage at my dislike of sports - my lack of enjoyment in nowway is judging you for enjoying - its more a broad sense of bewilderment)
  - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
    That's the secret, nothing has any long term value or meaning. Just enjoy the ride.

lerie82 9y ago

I could never get into e-sports, it seems like a luxury that the world doesn't need. I don't play many games anymore, I normally write a hack or bot that gets me banned then I'm over it lol.

ahdroit 9y ago

" but one day I went to LeBron James’ Instagram, and I saw that his comments section was full of the exact same sort of garbage that I was getting"

ry_ry 9y ago

A little over a decade ago (so somewhere in the early triassic period as far as videogames go) I was involved in big tourneys within the terrible game I was no-lifing at the time for efame, eglory, and shitty prizes. My teammates and I had played for years at this point and despite being better at the forums than the game, we knew our way around the meta and had enough experience to make sensible decisions on the fly. Even then, we weren't ever within touching distance of the top tiers. Not even close. Every tourney we were watched, jeered and very occasionally cheered by thousands of other players as we muddled through early stages against other weaker teams before eventually being out meta'd and out played by better players and it was brutal, adrenaline-shaking dopamine-flooded experience. It was physically addictive at its best, and absolutely soul crushing at worst. Even within my short, strictly amateur 'career' in esports, the gulf between the top teams and everybody else was crazy. The level of dedication and raw focus the eventual winners possessed was frankly insane and something I simply wouldn't ever be able to muster. These guys who are already mechanically superb are living and breathing their games. I genuinely can't even begin to imagine what it's like for professional LoL players at the top of the scene, small teams competing for huge prize pools with individual performance publicly dissected and analysed in microscopic detail by hordes of armchair pundits. Throw in the inevitable post-tournament rosterpocalypse and flakey team management, I can't help but feel professional esports is cannibalising these players.