Hey guys, what do you think, should we tone it down on all the cursing over streams of tournaments? The more we progress, the more I think we should clean up our language because it’d be better for our scene over the long-term.
---------- Quick & Dirty ------------------------------------
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Keep it more professional on streams (mics)
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Any entertainment that is trying to pass itself off as professional has to work on its image:
- Whether it’s pro football/basketball/baseball/hockey, X-Games, Pro Wrestling, etc., polish on the delivery is key
- Slick production values (state-of-the-art effects; big events and commentary that flows smoothly)
- Polished commentator personalities, language the public can follow and that doesn’t put them off
- Being more professional (not cursing) helps the growth potential of the playerbase, audience, and sponsors by:
- Getting it accepted more as a real e-Sport
- Opening it up to wider appeal to other sponsors beyond those already on board
- Making for a more amiable climate/experience for general audience viewers (from the MC tone-setting perspective)
- Allowing mainstream media to play unedited footage a lot easier and to a wider audience
- Gives parents one less thing to be bothered by: when their kids are playing online, the language used by older players
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Now, I don’t mean, the casual conversations we have at tournaments, nor words used here in the forums; I mean, words said by announcers or players commentating over the mics. I’ve been hearing the word fuck a lot lately on youtube tournament videos, and I’m wondering whether this is a good thing or not.
It’s not like I’ve never heard bad words before. I use them myself all the time; I curse like a sailor. You know that show Inside the Actors’ Studio, with that guy with the goatee who sits up in front of a classroom with a famous actor each episode? He always asks the actor the question, “What is your favorite curse word?” I’ve spent many waking hours of my life trying to determine just how I’d answer that very question. First of all, there’s so many to choose from. Should I limit my answer to just curses in English? Talk to a Korean about it sometime, there are some really creative ways to curse in Korean. Why do we even have curse words and use them, and why do we use our particular curse words, and not others?* These are all worthy topics to consider, but let me get back on track.
I feel this question of swearing over the mics at tournaments is pertinent because we as a community are at a stage of such fast growth. What was only a dream in the past of putting on big shows with sponsors and big budgets is becoming a reality now. Fighting games have hit some big milestones recently. That entails that people who may not otherwise be interested in fighting games or watching tournaments might now be so inclined. Many from outside the community may know a player (such as yourself for example) in a tournament and want to spectate. Wouldn’t you want them to see it? This doesn’t just include your buddies that play FPSes who aren’t going to be offended by swears anyways, but maybe people in your family. If you haven’t gone home to be a family man yet, someday you just might. Maybe someday you’ll have kids and want to share something you’re proud of. Maybe you even want to show a work colleague at some point-- just kidding, why would anyone ever admit to someone in his workplace that he plays video games, that’s ridiculous! But someday, it might not be so taboo. I have a dream!
I’d like to see our recent progress be matched by what I’d describe as more professionalism. Zaspacer described it well by use of the word “polish” which is probably more appropriate. I’d like to see a little more polish in cleaning up the language used over streams because, for better or worse, videos of our tournaments are representing us as a whole. The NSFW acronym being used on srk’s front page makes sense- always good to help keep non-productive employees wasting company bandwidth without losing their job to someone more qualified/industrious. The “NSFW” acronym before a link is certainly appreciated, but how about we go that extra step? After all, you don’t hear network TV announcers ever curse on the air. (The players are always cursing, grabbing their crotches, spitting, etc., but not the guys in suits!) Jeff Skilling, one of the main villains of the Enron fiasco, was once on a conference call with analysts, and he was asked by one “Why can’t you show us a balance sheet?” but Skilling mysteriously just called him an asshole. And that was like, a big thing, even bigger than Enron not providing such a basic thing as a balance sheet, but also that he called the analyst an asshole, because suits just aren’t supposed to do that, so that was basically a chief executive losing it. He probably could have danced around the question with polite speech, but the curse alone became a red flag, drawing all the more attention to their enormous problems.
If you are announcing or commentating during a tournament, and suddenly find yourself saying “fuck”, how about trying this: consider quickly adding on, “–rying out loud”, as advised in a film I saw recently. E.g. “fuck–rying out loud”… Fucrying out loud!
Anyways, I’d like to know what you guys think about this.
-XSPR
*This essay about Why We Curse gives some great insight on the general etymology:
TNR Online | What the F***? (1 of 3) (print)
