Maverick

I was going to talk about Final Boss encounters today, and the I saw this, Top Gun. That link will take you to a forty-minute video talking about Brandon Crisp, a young man who died last November after running away from home because his parents took his XBox360 away from him. The video talks about Brandon's death, his obsession with video games that led to his running away, video game addiction, and professional gaming.

Let me preface everything I am about to write by saying that Brandon's death was a tragic accident and I would never wish for this to happen to anyone.

This video perfectly demonstrates how those in video game culture (or the industry) see those who aren't, as well as how those outside of the culture see those who are in it. The scenes between the professional gaming team and the interviewer I feel are the most pronounced in this aspect. Here we have a woman who has almost no knowledge of video games, asking weighted questions to a group that in order to exist has to legitimize gaming in the eyes of people like her. My favorite moment is when the interviewer presses the group on the fact that they are killing people in these games, as she makes a legitimate statement, but you can see in the gamers' expressions that they can't make her understand with just words, as she'll just keep going back to that single point. The group does a very good job of keeping their cool, as I'm sure that if I were in that situation I would either burst out saying, "it's just a game!" (thus countering my own attempts to legitimize my career) or going off on a long tirade about how when you really kill people they release their bowls and can't come back to life in fifteen seconds.

The most heartbreaking scenes in this video are those with the parents. It's just so sad to see them, that even after this tragedy, they don't understand their kid well enough to know why he ran away after they took his XBox. The father talks nonchalantly about having to go in and rip the cords out of the wall sometimes (did he never learn that this could damage the system?). The saddest to me is how they begin to learn that their son wanted to be a professional gamer, but decide to create a scholarship in his name that promotes "real" sports, completely neglecting the fact that their son began to game in the first place after he got kicked out of Hockey because he was too small to be a goalie. It's like watching them spit on their own son's grave. It just seems to me that Brandon would have preferred that they try and make a scholarship that would help someone break into professional gaming (not an easy task considering you won't see any monetary rewards until you are among the top 100 or so gamers amongst several million rivals, all while your practice is looked down upon because you're just playing games).

The video is an interesting look into both of these worlds, and even though it does some things that make my blood boil (ignore the fact that he got kicked out of hockey for his size and putting the burden of parenting on game companies) it is still a very interesting video to watch.

As a final note, most professional gamers make roughly $30-$40k a year, and this is not including those who can't support themselves by gaming alone (the vast majority). This is most likely why the professional gamers refused to answer how much they make, which is a very personal question anyways.