I read this article about parents who not only encourage their children to get good at Fortnite, but they’re actually paying “tutors” to “coach” them to become better at it, and I’m not entirely quite sure how I feel about it. In one hand, we have a microcosm of how much the world has changed in which video games aren’t just more accepted than they used to be, gaming itself has become a viable occupation for people to strive for and a platform in which real, legitimate earnings can be made through. But in the other hand, we have the basically the direct antithesis of the ideals and mentalities that people in my generation and older grew up through, where gaming was a waste of time, source of rotting for brains, and a definitive negative influence on our lives.
After reading this article, the question that popped into my head that I’ll probably query people on theFacebook about is whether they’d wish if they were a kid today, where video games are accepted and viable career options, but the world around them is psychotic, we live in a borderline police state, and school shootings are almost a reoccurring lottery in which one unlucky school seems to get chosen every few months for a tragedy. Or, if they were content with the lives past lived, where video games were frowned upon by our parents, but we still played them anyways, and the world was slightly less psychotic and was for lack of a better term, safer.
All I can think of is that if I were a kid in today’s world, my parents would probably very much encourage my gaming habits, especially since it’s already been demonstrated, primarily in Korea, just how lucrative video gaming careers could possibly get. Instead, I grew up in the 80s when Atari and Nintendo invented basically cancer machines that distracted, deviated and held back appropriate childhood upbringing, and was blamed for just about every negative behavior that children could possibly exhibit.
I remember reading in like GamePro or EGM, an interview by a Street Fighter II pro, that may or may not have been Justin Wong. They talked about how they had a manager, and how they practiced SF2 for 3-4 hours a day, and all I could think about was if my mom found out I played video games for 3-4 straight, she would yell at me and tell me to go read a book. No, this is precisely what occurred when I first got my Super Nintendo and was playing Super Mario World non-stop from when she went to work and came home, and I was in exactly the same place, still playing.
But going back to the article itself, I can’t help but feel annoyed at how pathetic these people are, hiring people who play Fortnite all the time to help them get better at the game. Not just back in my day, but even now, if I want to get better at a game, I do this thing called, playing the fucking game, and through repetition, experience and time, I will get better at it. It’s a novel concept, I know, but it is pretty foolproof at getting better not just at Fortnite, but just about any skill on the planet.
Instead, we have these coddling parents, concerned that they’re children are getting owned in a game, and fearing that the constant not winning of virtual battle royales is going to ding their confidence and ability to live normal lives, are going out and paying people who shouldn’t really be getting paid for providing hand-holding, to coach their kids, to get better at a video game. It really kind of disgusts me, and kind of makes me wish I cared enough about Fortnite to get better at it, to where I can beat not just these coached children and sometimes their sad-sack dads, but also their coaches as well, just to prove a point that time, practice and repetition trumps their expensive coaching.
Man, what a fucking world we live in now. Parents not only encouraging their kids to get good at video games, but paying people actual money and bailing them out of their stereotypically sad gamer lives to coach their kids, to someday become stereotypical gamers themselves.
Christ I’m getting old; I’m not even 40 yet, but just about everything that’s happening in the world seems to be obnoxious and saddening.
