We love a good moan in e-sports. It’s understandable. Volunteer workers stretched to breaking point, genuine community people overshadowed by greedy hustlers, talent never sees a fair return and the people with the cash to make a difference never spend it in the right way… It’s a wild, wild west of cowboy bullshit of the most amateurish kind, the e-sports illuminati playing out their gamer related wet dreams like some cyber mafia of the mediocre.
Still, we don’t exactly make things easy for ourselves. Like the offspring of abusive parents we invariably go on to repeat the same mistakes in the e-sports world, a major part of the reason why things really don’t seem to have changed much since the late nineties. But don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with a rant about more e-sports corruption, the sheer tediousness of the constant piss-taking on all sides… I’d much rather lay into the so called “movie makers” that are tasked with promoting our respective scenes and yet, more often than not, fail miserably.
Any “movie” relating to e-sports these days, bar a few, is so depressingly generic and bereft of any invention that it’s hard to see how people can fuss over them so much. I mean, we’re still at the point where if you merge LAN footage with in-game footage (HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT AN IDEA) people will proclaim it to be the best thing they’ve ever seen. They might not even be lying, so poor is the competition, but it does beg the question where all those other techniques have gone. Where’s the narrative? The different types of footage? The over-reaching storyline?
Seriously – is this it? Is this how we like to present the best bits about the world of e-sports to both ourselves and to outsiders? I mean, it’s bad enough that someone talking direct to a webcam with all the charisma of those nerds lip-syncing to the Pokemon theme tune can be considered some sort of internet sensation and there’s dozens of them. Yet, these people have technical know-how, talent, equipment and passion… How is it then that for the most part they make a final product that is so bad?
I think the first problem I have is with the term. It sounds so lofty. I mean, “movie makers” for me would conjure up images of guerilla film makers trying to put together their artistic vision armed with nothing but some inherited, battered equipment. At the other end of the spectrum I might think of the greats… The likes of Welles, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Almodovar, Lynch. The term just doesn’t seem rightly applied to someone with a cursory knowledge of Sony Vegas and absolutely no grasp of how to do anything except repeat the formula of previous failures. For me it’s a term that denotes someone in possession of vision, which few of them are. Even most of those regarded as the best are average, their followings all in no position to criticise nor praise.
The other issue is the constant misuse of effects. In the real movies it used to be the case that special effects were employed to save money, a way to not actually have to go and do whatever it was you wanted to depict. Then the special effects became the part where the largest chunk of the budget goes. Groundbreaking special effects can carry the most irredeemable movie through to a big audience. Just look at the piece of shit Avatar. However, imagine if the effects employed were the same all the way through, or actually obscured what you were trying to watch. What would be the fucking point of the film? Indeed, that is the question that frag movie editors should ask then realise where the majority of the are going horrible wrong.
It’s not even as if they seem to be familiar with the language of film. Sepia tones denotes something that happened in the past, mimicking the hues of aging photographs and documents that have been stained with time and the way film would appear on the screen before projectors had powerful lights in them. Why even use the effect that looks like it is on actual damaged film when clearly the medium is all digital? For that to work there would have to be some sort of context, some sort of attempt to make it feel like a real (or reel) film. Slow motion is generally employed to show something is shocking or dramatic. These are cinematic conventions that have been pushed into all our media-exposed brains over years and years and using them in any other way isn’t really an option.
Of course, there’s not necessarily a lot to be said for just “vanilla” clips either, other than the fact you do get to see the important action, which is great for a highlight reel, but still they do all seem to blur into one another given the limitations on maps, skins, player positions and types of weapon used. If you’re going to take hours and hours of footage from a player and cut it down to some moments there’s got to be something different about the way you present it.
This is why I don’t understand people getting more upset about faked frags or cheated footage. Fuck it. Most of the time it’s so obvious it’s hilarious anyway and you know who’s doing it. I mean, moviemakers as a breed are completely full of shit but you probably have to let them be. It’d be like being angry at a musician for taking drugs. It comes with the territory. The sad cases that try so desperately to try and synthesise a little visual history of their non-existent talent in the clamour for e-fame… Pity my friends, pity. The far worse crime is to serve up the same eye-slop over and over and over.
Some people do hold themselves a little higher than the average German moviemaker and try and create something out of the ordinary. Even the “documentaries” that I’ve seen about e-sports are misleading and by the numbers. If you don’t interact with the subjects, then you need some sort of narration to put it in a context. Think of it like a nature documentary. If it wasn’t for the soft voice of David Attenborough what would those long panning shots of gorillas picking their arses actually mean? If you do decide to interact with the people you’re filming directly, then you need to have them tell a story. What’s the whole point of the film? You should have a rough idea of the structure of the story at the start, even though you can’t predict the end. With constant filming and the luck of being in the right place at the right time you might end up with a completely different finished product to what you had hoped for in the first place. It’s having the courage to edit it altogether, rather than worrying about what people will think about it, or who it might offend.
The reason for this ramble? Well, I got linked several times over to what was billed as a short film about “what is e-sports” created by fnatic. Everyone was raving about it and I was expecting something special. After all, why wouldn’t I? I’ve got respect for the organisation, consider some of the management to be good solid colleagues and the players have always played ball with this here journalist. What I watched was a short video that was akin to my first year media project at university and I make no bones about my ability in that field – it’s terrible.
Content wise it’s little more than some careful subterfuge – the terms “gaming” and “e-sports” are not interchangeable – surrounding the “facts” about e-sports, put on screen over footage from a handful of big tournaments. Did it answer what e-sports actually was? No. It barely attempted it in truth and then quickly became an advert for the organisation itself before ending with the routine montage of cheque holding players to denote “success”.
I was stunned by the entirely positive reception but I guess I shouldn’t have been. In a way, it did answer the question as to what e-sports is about. Low standards, no vision, repetition and half truths. That pretty much typifies everything you’re likely to encounter on your e-sports journey until the drastic changes are made.
This one though, it should be one of the easiest to make. You don’t need to take someone to court, or try and get a committee together. You don’t need to lobby a games developer or wait to be flown to their headquarters in a super secret meeting. You don’t need to try and force the mainstream media to pay serious attention to what you’re doing and then hope they don’t selectively edit what you say to them to make you look like a wild-eyed freak. All you have to do is some light reading and indulge your imaginations without fear of the consequences.