Week 2 Results

Week 2 Results   

     At Clockwork Games and Events there was a Magic the Gathering tournament. There were people of all ages ranging from about age 9 to age 25. There were around 40 people that were in and out. There were actually two girls there that were hanging with the rest of them. The tournament took place in a very crouded musky room filled with tables that were for the tournament.
 
     People had big albums full of cards and there was a lot of trading and talking about stats before the tournament began. The smell was musky and kind of foul because of all of the bodies in the little tiny room. There was a football game on one of the TV's there but no one even cared to glance at it. Some common talk among the participants was all of the tournaments that they have been to and strategies they have seen other people use.
   
     The structure of the tournament consisted of teams of 2 each open up 4 packs and create 2 decks and play with that. It would be a round robin tournament with the first place team being the victor. There were 13 teams of 2 participating on this specific day. In explaining the game to us, one of the guys mentioned that it was a legitimate game like poker. There is a 400 page official rule book that explains all of the rules. The concept of the game is that you play as an avatar and summon creatures to attack, but you need certain landscapes to play certain creatures. There are also a lot of supporting and enhancing cards that will help you through the fight.

Deliverable 2 - Project Proposal and Week 1 Results

Neal Roessler
Chandler Cell
Andy Hampton
Zac Casull



Deliverable 2 - Project Proposal

Target Group:
     Professional and Hardcore gamers will be the main focus of our 10 week study period. We chose this group because although some of us have experience with gaming as a pastime, we decided professional gaming is very different than anything any of us has ever experienced. There are many opportunities to observe these people in their “natural habitat.” We will plan to meet at common gaming grounds such as, Clockwork Games and Events, FX, and eventually we want to go to a big dollar tournament.


Hypothesis:

     The expectation from this group is that it is male dominated with varying personalities from the quiet loners to the obnoxious attention cravers. Tendencies towards violence and verbal abuse will be interesting subjects to observe while observing as this has become a bit of hot button topic over the last couple of years. The scope of this study will range from individuals to local group competitions. From this study we hope to gain useful insight into this group that can be applied to our proposal of a product to be used by professional gamers     While having fun in the form of games is important to many people, few can say that they take it to the limit by playing on average 30 – 40 hours a week, and even fewer can say that they are “professional” or make money for playing. We expect that the players we meet will have very little time for other things in their life that most of us have time for. We believe that instead of the normal person who watches TV for a few hours then reads a book for a few hours, and then hangs out with friends, the hardcore gamer will replace all of this with pure gaming time. Is this an unhealthy obsession or is there a legitimacy of it all?


Argument of Appropriateness:

     This study is appropriate because of the many subjects we anticipate to observe while conducting the study. Demographic observations will show trends in the gender and age of participants which can further be broken down and compared to our own experiences with what would be considered “normal” people in these ranges. The violence and verbal observations mentioned above will also be valuable given the recent Supreme Court case regarding violence in video games and its effect on people who play which fit squarely in our target group. This study is not inappropriate as we have no reason to gather personal information beyond age, gender, and possibly appearance. Conducting interviews and attending public gaming events also prove appropriate and do not in any way break laws. This study will be exciting because of the breadth of people we anticipate on studying in a very animated environment that keeps them coming back for more.     This study will take us into the little known world of professional and hardcore gaming. Few can say that they have played a game 30 – 40 hours a week or that they are in the top 1% echelon of the entire gaming population. This is a highly competitive and profitable network of people who consider themselves as legitimate as any football or basketball player. This can apply to HCI in a variety of ways. Since video gaming consists of interaction from the human to controller we can find ways to improve this as their are few better to interview than the players who use them 10 fold more than anyone else.


Argument of Feasibility:

     This study is feasible because we will cover many different aspects of professional gaming conducting several interviews with acquaintances as well as observing competitions and tournaments. We also hope to eventually participate in the activity if the opportunity presents itself to one of us or one of our acquaintances.     There are many tournaments going on if you just look them up online. It is all about keeping your eyes open. Just walking on campus We saw a guy with an MLG shirt on. (Major League Gaming) and asked him if he played MLG and sure enough he does. Our first encounter at Clockwork Games and Events went great. There are magnitudes of people who are willing to talk to us and show us their world. There are plenty of opportunities to find and study professional and hardcore gamers. Through statistics and interviewing these we can learn enough to validate or contradict our hypothesis as well as form a comprehensive conclusion.

Deliverable 2 - Week 1 Results


     We attended a Gears of War 2 tournament at Clockwork Games and Events which we found out about through the internet. This experience proved to support some of my hypotheses and disprove others.

     Upon arrival in the outlet area where Clockwork was located, I found it on the side of one of the buildings with poor signage out front. This lead me to believe that people who go here are a fairly tight nit bunch because advertising was nowhere to be found and the hours of the venue were odd, seemingly catering to an after school crowd. Once inside, I noticed a pretty sophisticated setup consisting of a row of 8 XBOX 360 consoles mounted about 1 foot off the ground on the wall with 8, approximately 20 inch, screens and 2 larger screens above them. The lighting was poor, as to be expected, and the interior was actually quite nice with about 6 tables, for card games I assume, and 2 couches in front of the console laden wall along with other various chairs. There was also a counter as I assume this place also sold games, cards, and snacks.

     There were people of all ages ranging from 9 to 40. People were in and out but the amount of people averaged to around 15 or so. There was talk that one of the participants there was a former Major League Gamer. We learned that people that usually come to Clockwork play card games and video games.

     It was explained to us that Gears of War 2 tournament would consist of 10 participants in a 1v1 double elimination tournament bracket following Major League Gaming rules. The winner received a new copy of Gears of Wars 3 sponsored by FX Games, represented by Chris, and some prize money. We entered in 2 of our own members, Neal and Zach, to support the event and immerse ourselves a little.

     Everyone there was relaxed and enjoyed the company of other fellow gamers and we know many of them were familiar with each other. They were happy to converse with us and answered a lot of our questions.

     It was heavily dominated by guys but there were two girls that attended but did not play. Julio is the tournament manager and assigns the rules of the game and prevents cheating such as screen peeking.

     In the first game there was a 9 year old kid that beat a 18 year old and he was calling him out by saying “Now Suck This!” Everyone was animated and very into the tournament, yelling at the TV’s and having a good time. There was a lot of smack talk, sarcastic hostility, and jokes among everyone there.

     We met Jacob who is in high school. He aspires to be a professional. He plays at least 3 hours a day. He recently played a $1000 tournament but got beat by some “hardcore kids” He says it is a lot about getting in some people’s heads. If they are young you can get in their heads with some smack talk he says, and “put the kids in their place”

Prior Assessments and First Results

Prior Assessments and First Results
Prior Perception:

     We decided to study the world of professional gaming instead of a single group of people. Expanding to this larger scale allows for a more comprehensive glimpse into a lifestyle and does not limit us to a specific set of people. In this paper we will describe our expectations, perceptions, and future plans regarding this field.
     Our initial expectation of what we will see is a stereotypically geeky culture that is predominately male and focused on what they do. These people will probably tend to be fairly private individuals that have been doing this kind of thing for years probably on the same game. We expect our interactions with them to be minimal as we do not foresee long, drawn out responses to questions or prolonged conversations occurring.
     Integration into this group may prove to be easy or difficult as we are not anywhere near as skilled, or even familiar with, most of the games we will see and they may be a good or bad thing. We will have to take the position of the audience for a majority of the study and will probably have only 1 or 2 people able to participate to any competitive degree in any of the events we plan to attend. We plan on attending gaming competitions and following some people that we have connections to during the study. We plan that our interaction with a group of hardcore professional gamers will go pretty smoothly. We think that they will be happy to have us interview and examine them. We think that if we play a game with them they will not get frustrated because we will not be that good. To get integrated in the group we will need to learn the game lingo and how the game works that my target group is playing. We could even practice a little or watch videos so we can figure out everything that is going on. We expect that some of the people I encounter will be “elitist jerks” and will not want to associate with us because we are “noobies”. We expect that for the most part though the pro gamers will be very helpful and explain to us their underground lifestyle and how they think. We think that eventually they will wonder why we are following them around and observing them and we will have to bring up the subject that we are following them around for a class assignment. We have a positive outlook and we think that this will be a good learning experience for us and others.     We hope that we will gain some meaningful insight into this broad area and be able to present an interesting perspective concerning this topic.

Initial Results:

     We visited a semi-pro gamer’s house and asked him some questions. Tyler was very open and helpful and seemed to like the fact that we were asking him questions about something he was passionate about. Tyler played a game called Halo Reach for the Xbox 360. He kept up with the actually professionals that played the game and he watched the Major League Gaming games when they aired. Tyler is currently sharpening his skills and looking for a team to go to this year’s tournament. The Questions and responses that we asked him are as follows:

What’s your ideal amount of time gaming per week?

· A: 40 – 50 hrs/week

What percentage of players would you say are considered professional gamers in any given game?

· A:About the top 1%

Where would you put yourself in the rankings?

· A: Maybe top 10% give or take. But in a team based game such as Halo, there’s only so much skill an individual can have, and it more comes down to how good you are as a team.

Do you see the same names across leader boards of different games?

· A: It’s usually pretty exclusive to one game. There’s only so much time you can devote to a particular game.

What’s the drink of choice for gamers?

· A: Red Bull

Who is the best pro in Halo Reach?

· A: RoyBorg and IGotYourPistola. They’re on the same team. Also, Ninja is top 24 and featured on Justin.tv

How does a tournament usually go?

· A: round robin style bracket into a 16-team pool

How much does a winner get paid?

· A: Depends on the size of the event and the buy in fee, but usually around $125,000

What is a team made up of?

· A: Four players and usually a coach

We expect that Tyler will gives us more information to this particular realm of the pro gaming phenomenon and introduce us to more people like him. Our group plans on going to local tournaments and observing the people that participate there.

Initial Results Summary:
     The first interaction we had with professional gaming consisted of an informal meeting with one of our connections that is a semi-professional. We only met with this one person, Tyler, so as to give us an entry point into this field.
     Our first meeting consisted of a meeting with Tyler at his residence on Tuesday, introducing ourselves and what we would like to do, and a small interview with Tyler consisting of some broad questions we had about the area and his personal experience as well. On first arrival, his apartment appeared how I expected it to be. Minimal, kind of messy, and what little furniture he did have related to his technology in some way (TV stand, consoles, etc.). We proceeded to introduce ourselves and describe the project in a general sense as not to influence anything Tyler would do or say later. Through questions we learned that about the top 1% of gamers in a particular game can be considered professional which usually equates to around 100+ players. An interesting made by Tyler was that at a certain point, a single gamer cannot get any better and they must begin working with a team to become truly professional which is why competitions usually consist of only team contests. In addition to being on teams, professional gamers must have a coach for their teams to act as an anchor and keep the team on task and off each other’s backs.
     Overall, we gained a lot of insight from Tyler and hope to continue our study with him and others in the future. We are currently working on plans to attend as many professional gaming events as we can find and maybe even find one that Tyler can enter in.