Two teams face off in a Search and Destroy Sovereign match in Call of Duty: Ghosts. Thousands of gamers competed at the Major League Gaming tournament in Columbus Friday through Saturday (Brandon Carte | For The Post)
We spent Saturday at the Greater Columbus Convention Center for the Major League Gaming championship. The entire scene comprised a subculture the likes of which we’d never seen, with the possible exception of South Park’s World of Warcraft episode.
By all means, the three of us enjoy an occasional night in the dorm room dedicated to Xbox Live, Doritos and inhaling copious amounts of Mountain Dew and pizza, but never have we seen a level of gaming as intense as what was present at MLG 2013.
The gamers practice for hours and even have coaches who help them memorize maps and develop specific strategies to defeat their opponent in games such as Call of Duty: Ghosts and Dota 2. We met some gamers who made the trek from North Carolina and others who came all the way from the United Kingdom.
The atmosphere at the convention center was incredibly lively. Dubstep music filled the conference hall, but gamers had their Turtle Beach headsets fastened tightly to their ears so they could drown out the room and focus solely on gaming.
We were surrounded by hundreds of 23-inch monitors, Xbox 360s and Windows gaming machines as various teams competed to make it to the main stage.
Major League Gaming is just like any other professional sport: thousands of fans were present to watch their favorite teams compete for more than $170,000, there were commentators, commercials and fans were asking for autographs.
The attendees’ passion can’t be understated, as they talked trash while proudly adorning their favorite players’ jerseys. The cavernous convention hall erupted like The Convo any time a player “pwned” a foe.
The most exciting moment of the day, though, was undoubtedly the colossal upset of OpTic Gaming, known as “America’s favorite team,” at the hands of Team KaLiBeR.
KaLiBeR had never won a Call of Duty Domination match before Saturday, but the team quickly got the monkey off its back and never looked back. The players fired their machine guns mercilessly and dastardly sneaked throughout the war-torn city where the in-game competition took place.
Members of the “Green Wall” — OpTic’s fanbase — slinked out of the convention hall in disbelief.
We live-tweeted the upset along with the time compLexity Gaming beat Skyline Gaming 35-5 in the first round of Blitz.
The most interesting part of the event was also what shouldn’t have surprised us: how dedicated both the gamers and their fans were to victory.
Video gaming is a pastime and an outlet for us and those we know. But the gamers gathered in Columbus this weekend were as exhilarated by a kill in Call of Duty as a football player who scores the game-winning touchdown.
Watching players yell after they toggled the thumbstick and pulsed the trigger at exactly the right moment opened us up to a culture we didn’t know existed. Their passion only increased our wonder.
But it gave us a respect for something we always thought of as a fun and meaningless way to relax. The culture we found should be embraced, not insulted.
The next time you want to find something different and at odds with your daily life, visit a video game tournament. It will make you recognize that there’s another equally intense and beautiful experience to which you can devote your time.
Brandon Carte is the associate editor, Will Drabold is the assistant campus editor and Sam Howard is a staff writer for The Post. The three study journalism. What is something new you experienced? Email them at posteditorial@ohiou.edu.
