ESPN to cover MLG (Pro Gaming League)

Hell no. It was awesome. They'd do it all serious-like, too.

On the Magic broadcasts they'd have have these two dorks facing off at a table, the PBP and analyst talking in hushed tones.

"Oh man! He just pulled out the Magic Wizard card with two staffs and a crossbow! That's gonna beat his Pegasus! I can't believe it!"

The stacking championships were unreal, too. Four kids per team, like 20 cups all stacked on a table. They'd stack them, unstack them then move to the back of the line only to have the next kid do it again.

Great stuff.

 

This has fail written all over it. I'll go ahead and call it right now -- by the third week of this stinkfest they'll be pimping girls in tight bikinis playing Halo 3. Who aren't even ranked in the "league".

 

Watch, ESPN will start showing highlights of this on SportsCenter.

 

Didn't they try something like this already? They had the Madden Video game tournament. Some geeky videogamer would meet with the NFL player, receive the player's jersey and then get on a bus. On the bus he would compete against other people and people that lost would get tossed off the bus.

It seemed like it was produced by the same people that do that And1 Mix Tape crap.

 

I'd rather watch 10 people lined up in front of toilets eating their own shit, too.

 

Hey, watch what you say. I have a casting power of plus three on this giant fireball.

 

Nothing like watching idiots talk trash about what they did non a Madden game.

Do they get bonus points for having cheesy poof stains on their shirts?

 

MLG Pro.com: Shockwave talks about his career as a Halo 2 pro, the transition to Halo 3, the elusiveness of girls and what it takes to be a Pro Player with MLG.

 

That is too much. I went on the site last night and was overwhelmed. When I was younger I used to daydream what it would be like to be a pro gamer, but then I realized I wanted a life. I probably pay video games 8-10 hours a week and it usually comes on my days off. These are logging 80 hours a week play Halo, Madden, etc. And then Shockwave wonders why he ain't tapping any ass.

 

I wonder if ESPN has a stake in the league.

 

At some point, too, doesn't the futility of it all kick in? The best of these guys might make, what, $30K a year in prize money? And in two years nobody gives a shit about the game they're experts in. Then they're reduced to hustling 11-year-olds on a 15-year-old Mortal Kombat II machine down at the bowling alley, talking about how they were once the "No. 4 ranked Mortal Kombat II player in California" in 1995 as they unleash Sub Zero's 15-hit combo/spine-ripping fatality to end the match and cackle with glee.
"That was awesome. Little fucker never saw it coming," they say, as the defeated child eagerly runs off to get more quarters from an increasingly nervous parent.
When the quarters run out -- and they will run out, oh yes -- they're back to pretending to play while the demo screen rolls by, like they did in their misspent youth when daddy would give them just a few quarters and drink at a nearby barstool. Just wishing some stranger will give them a quarter so they can show their skills. And when that doesn't happen, they do things they truly regret.
Yes, that's right.
They get a 9-to-5 job and give up the dream.
And in those quiet hours from 6-to-8, before they go off to their horrible job as a disgruntled salesman at Best Buy (where they sell DVD players, totally wasting their video game skills in a final, cruel ironic twist), they sometimes break out the tape of the 2008 MGL championships. Reflected in the blue light of the HDTV they won that warm June night in Las Vegas is a tear, gently rolling down Shockwave's cheek. A tear for what once was and what might have been. And in that moment he screams the name of Matthew Bromberg for growing the MGL too fast. All of the glitz and glamour, and for what!? For this!?
"Why, dammit, why!?" Shockwave yells, as his neighbors yell for him to keep it down.
Shockwave then sobs softly into his pillow. It's 1 a.m. now and he must get up soon for another day of selling DVD players. He'll wander over around lunch and look at the box for Halo 4. He's never played it. Will never play. To do so only takes him back to the heyday of 2008, before the second great video game crash left thousands of gamers dead by their own hands, stabbed to death with their plasma sword letter openers. He can't go back now. He can only go forward, one grudging step at a time. Every day is a struggle to find himself, to find an identity other than "ShocKWav3."
Now, he's just Bob. And he'd like to know if he can help you find anything you need. His soul dies a little each time he says it. When he feels the cold metal of the name tag pin brush against his chest he wants to jab it in a little further. But yet he soldiers on. Just like Master Chief. Or Kratos. Or Marcus Fenix. True heroes all. He does what he must in the hope that one day his name will be mentioned alongside theirs.