It's always funny when someone says "I'm so good at TF2" and then you're like "Cool, we should MGE sometime."

"What's MGE?"

Destroy them 20-2.

As much as games might be seen as just games by people who don't understand them like your parents or whoever (people who btw 10 years ago struggled with learning how to use a mouse), playing eSports involves every aspect of every other competitive sport out there, it requires skill, practice, teamwork, passion and everything that makes watching a rl sport exciting.

As we've seen, eSports have been growing steadily during the years and they can only continue to do so, so there is no real reason why they won't be considered as serious sports in the future. The only thing it takes is people that care about the eSport, and we've seen that just in our small tftv community we care enough to raise over 60k usd in roughly a year just for the love of the game (i46, ToTH, i49 and ghos7ayama), money that could've well been spent in stuff that sponsors could've sold us through advertising and whatnot.

The more eSports grows, the more sponsors will want to get their products shown in eSports events, specially since they can precisely track the success of their advertising in this digital environment. The more sponsors the game get, the more money gets involved in prices and merchandising. And the more money the game get, the more serious is the competition.

There's a lot more reasons why I think eSports will be the hot shit in some years, but I hope I've made my point. So if right now it's awkward to explain to someone why you scream to your computer screen every night, in a few years it would only make sense to someone when you tell him in your free time you play games competitively. We might even call ourselves Olympic athletes someday HEH

Personally I do tell people I play tf2 when they ask me what I'm into or what do I spend my time on. I get different reactions from different people, and more likely than not it can get really awkward to explain how and why you do it, but hey, they asked, and I'm into it.

no

my roommate used to spend like 5 hours a day on facebook

there is no ESEA for facebook

i dont feel bad

I don't like the stigma attached to being an accomplished gamer. people consider you unsocial and having no life but what are they doing? If they're playing a sport it's the same thing no one fucking realizes that videogames are considered a hobby/sport. I accidentally gave people my steam before starting to play tf2 so they found out how much i played and i guess accept it more like "heyyy ____ got 2000 hours yaa let's throw a party :D" but it's really fucking annoying when strangers i hardly talk to are like "so is it true you have this many hours on tf2 omg lol XDD"

hahaha i know how you feel man. A couple years ago I moved and I added some kids on steam. More kids knew how many hours I had on tf2 than my name.

I only had 1000 or so at the time >_> now i have 2700.

I wouldn't say I'm proud but I wouldn't say I'm not proud either. I'm neutral towards it. But I'm not really a competitive gamer anymore as I only pub now with the occasional pug here and there. I've thought about coming back to comp but I have no time anymore, and even if I did, I don't think I would have fun with it anymore.

you know there's a record high of girl gamers playing tf2 now

i am games
games is me
all of the me and all of the games

On the one hand video games ruin my grades, on the other hand I got a 4k on badlands last night.

You gotta set your priorities.

I'm already awkward, I don't even get a chance to tell people how much weirder i really am,

Why would I be ashamed? Because people I barely talk to or work with will judge me and think of me as strange? I tell me Work Colleagues if they ask, I don't bring it up or talk about it unless it comes up in conversation - "what you doing in Telford this weekend?"

Think that competitive TF2 is a passion of mine, being in this community is a big part of my life and drives me through it. I actually pity people who don't have this sort of passion for anything, they could work 9-5 and go home to watch a shitty reality TV show, or spend all their time on Twitter + Facebook, or the highlight of their week is getting drunk and fighting in the Town Centre. If you're not proud of what you do, don't do it because if you can't tell people you work with or friends then you're conforming to an idea that what you do isn't acceptable by their social standards.

I don't go around gloating to people I play competitive TF2, I don't gloat about it like some proud father but I love this game, this community and competing in TF2. I happily added it in my CV, so long as you word it favourably - "I volunteer admin for ETF2L".

Quite a few of my friends know about me playing TF2 competitively and if they don't then they know I've spent loads of time playing. The ones who do know understand to an extent as they are mostly gamers although they have the casual gamer mentality "Why would you play video games in a competition, you should only play for fun" and cannot understand how I can spend so much time on one game and that I have more fun playing with a team than just random pub server shit.

Although another one of my friends who isn't a gamer actually thinks it's really cool that such huge communities are built around games.

It's not something I'm ashamed of, but when most of your friends don't care about tf2, and your family either makes fun of you for playing video games or just tells you that you play too much video games and don't focus enough on school, it becomes something you don't really want to talk about too often.

yes. i am.

am i proud of working really hard on one of my favorite hobbies and making a ton of friends along the way?

ya

.

I'm not proud of the fact that I've burned countless hours over the years on various games. I am proud of the fact that I can name hundreds of people I've met on the internet via gaming that I consider to be friends. I have even met many of them in person on multiple occasions. I can't name any other place where I could come up with more than a dozen people I could consider friends rather than acquaintances, so to me, that is deserving of pride.

I do not broadcast my affinity for games, however. I don't necessarily hide it, but in my everyday life, it is not a subject that comes up. Some of my closest friends know how much time I've dumped into gaming, but most do not.

I'm not ashamed of it, either. If I look at how many hours I've spent playing games and consider that I was socially interacting with numerous people almost any time I was gaming, I feel pretty good about it. I could have spent that time vegging out on the couch watching TV (which has no positive brain effects, unlike gaming). I could have spent that time doing drugs, drinking alcohol, being a thug, or learning new skills and hobbies. Learning new skills and hobbies might have been a better use for that time, but given all the possibilities, I'm pretty happy with the choices I've made.

smaka the thug

imo being a casual sounds less geeky than being a competitive gamer UNLESS you make a living out of it

All the kids who go to my school play console or minecraft.

rip me

I'm rather proud to have been in the first, maybe second generation of competitors to really make a wake in today's media. As the sport grows and grows and earns respect, it's a different feeling you get when you take a step back and look at this new perceived stance on competitive gaming. I have told my parents about my matches, not that I've done poorly or bad, but if we've won or not. It goes past my dad's head when we have dinner together and I get to talk about things, but it's cool that he can support me if I talk about it. He even supported me by taking me to my first LAN in Indiana, and he told my family about it and my family was pleased I did something. Didn't matter what it was, but rather I did something kind of worth merit with my time. My friends know (or at least the ones that are on my steam list, know I game for sport.) I compete and have asked me about it and I'm glad to tell them about it. Honestly, in public matters I don't care if I let out that I play a game for sport. I do other thins with my time that doesn't make me out to be a monitor-tanned troglodyte. I actually had blurted it out one time in class on the first day of high school. Nobody really batted an eye, got to talk about it and some people at my school thought it was pretty cool. Maybe it's just where I'm at, as my school was the center for competitive-EVERYTHING. We had top teams across the nation in anything you could imagine. I never had a thorough discussion, but people knew it existed because I went off n a risk and said it in class. At some point, I had regretted it and it made me feel weird because of the status of 'gaming' at the time, but has since changed, I feel fine. I don't see why it's an issue to keep the hobby to yourself. We live in different worlds though.

its ok smaka youre welcome to come thug out in our mumble if your heart so desires

I knew everyone would like that. :>

I'll do some gangsta rap for you. Because I'm a thug.

The fact that I was looking forward to actually meeting people in person at a lan says yes.

Even if I am a giant dick in pugs.