Well, over here in England our head of state has formally threatened to arrest all those who go outside unnecessarily, so I feel it's safe to say that our lockdown is in full effect. These are the same sorts of measures that are starting to pop up all over the globe and as a result the usual day-to-day of our lives is slowly becoming distorted. Suddenly everyone is being expected to keep themselves entertained in doors, which may be business-as-usual for some of us out here but for others this is proving a true test of wills. Some folk have the right idea it would seem, as Steam recently reported their highest concurrent user days of all time (with highs in the 20 millions), but others are spending their days on Amazon or eBay paying through the nose for price gouged family board games. (Or you could pay £15 for tabletop simulator. But what do I know, right?)
In this brave new minimally physical world, two things have become clear. Firstly, that Supergirl's current anti-VR season isn't just terribly written and woefully uninformed, but also excessively dated; and secondly, that gaming can be the solution to a lot of folk's current woes. (Is that my second Supergirl reference in a month? I need help.) By that latter statement I mean to say that there is not necessarily a need to cancel every single event of the year if the digital world of gaming has the infrastructure to accommodate for you. Afterall, just look at Poland. Over there the government has followed the lead of their many peers by shutting down all schools and public services, but they've made up the time to keep kids entertained (and educated?) with a country-wide Minecraft Server. (Wow, MCProHosting must have hit the big leagues!) This initiative, dubbed 'Grarantana', intends to keep students of all ages hooked to building virtual creations on a plot instead of outside being delinquents and spreading their viruses.
This isn't a precedent limited to the Polish either. Back when sports events started to get cancelled, there was a growing contingent of folk who called out for alternatives to be implemented. Afterall, when you shape your entire life and personality around your fandom of a regular sports event it can be rather daunting to be forced into going a year without. one of the more 'out there' ideas has been using those 'official' sports games that are the bane of the entire gaming industry in order to simulate matches. But that's crazy right? That'll never happen! And it probably won't. But there was an exhibition NBA match that was held between two representative players for the delight of a live-streamed audience. Yes, that actually happened.
But that isn't even all. Just recently there was a NASCAR event that was streamed to homes around the world that even Dale Earnhardt Jr. came out of retirement in order to take part in. And yes, fitting the theme of this blog it was event that was held completely within a game. The 'Virtual Homestead' race was conducted by providing all the racers with a professional racing set-up and allowing them to all take part from the safe isolation of their homes. The streamed footage, meanwhile, was held in a spectator mode which perfectly mirrored the sorts of angles that you'd get from an official event whilst risking the exposure of no camera men. The whole event was also commentated upon by real commentators who all managed to treat the event with some seriousness despite the whole scenario, leading to a race that even hardcore veteran NASCAR fans concluded was: serviceable.
So perhaps out of quarantine could spring some new level of understanding between the mainstream and the world of gaming, as more and more people come to see the benefits of the medium. Of course, I doubt that gaming will ever be used for anything other than exhibition rounds of a certain sport, as otherwise it would remove the physical prowess aspect from the respective sport, but in times like this even that helps nurture a hungry community. If this habit were to catch on even more we may even make it to the point where virtual matches find their way into the everyday, once we've moved out of social isolation and lockdown. Perhaps then some of the wind will have be knocked out of the sails of the next politician who tries to use gaming as a whipping boy whenever they want to distract from a real world issue. (Wouldn't that be a novelty?)
Of course, this isn't the cure-all solution to every single delayed sporting event. After all not long ago the IOC's Dick Pound announced how it was likely that the Olympics could be delayed until 2021. (Yes, that is his real name.) Now sure, I would recommend that they simply just throw all the athletes into 'Mario and Sonic at the Olympic games' but something tells me that our Greek forebearers might spin in their graves slightly at such a proposition. But with sports that aren't so tightly linked with hundreds of years worth of history, why not? Heck a year of virtual matches could ultimately turn out to be one of the most expectation shattering years of sports history ever. (I'll bet even Biff's almanac couldn't have forseen this! But then, that book only went to the year 2000, so I guess that's a given.)
In the meanwhile, expect a year wherein E-sports grows more than it ever has in popularity, as sports bets aficionado's have to risk their cash somewhere. Some of the bigger and more public events might be getting scaled down, but it would be ridiculous for them to receive the same 'blanket ban' treatment that traditional sports is getting. That goes doubly true considering that this is set to be the year of Overwatch 2 and has already seen the drop of 'Call of Duty: Warzone'; those are E-sports darlings that are just waiting for their chance to shine. Personally I still find very little to enjoy out of these communities, probably due in no small part to that one time I caught a Ninja stream, (never again) but I'll bet there's a whole market of folk soon to discover that watching folk play video games isn't quite as boring as it sounds. At least not to them. I still find it a little boring.
In the ideal world this would be the birth of a new age of mainstream understanding, but I'm also a pessimist so I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't become the case. But even if this year of gaming supporting the traditional sports community gets entirely written off as an anomalous fluke of history, at least the precedent will have been lain, and perhaps that's enough. In these times of lockdown people often forget how important a little bit of entertainment can be in order to relieve some stress, take it from a guy who's currently undergoing the effects of a mild psychotic break himself. (It sucks and I hate it.) but this still doesn't mean that Gamestop is an essential service, stop it guys.
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