« IPW Guest Article: From Fan to Fanatic – The Welcoming World of Gaming »

[Editor's note: This guest article from Trevor "Scan" Scanlon of GLHF.tv gives thanks to the competitive gaming scene in general - RTS and fighters alike - for being so accepting and, well, awesome. A great read for fans of any competitive gaming scene, be it fighting games or otherwise. Enjoy! -Kumo]

For the majority of my life, I lived on the East Coast.  My childhood was spent in Connecticut, my college years in Boston.  Neither of these places are particularly known for their gaming communities.  Sure, there were small CoD4 tourneys in Boston every now and then, but there was no fighting/arcade scene at all to speak of.  I was a typical gamer, spending time between RPGs and fighting games and, yes, I even used to like Halo.  While I loved video games, they were still a recreational activity between myself and some of my friends.

Two people changed that.

The first of these two people is Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham.  Before watching his live casts and weekly webisodes of Epileptic Gaming in early 2009, I really had never even heard of a truly competitive gaming scene.  Sure, I had heard of Fatal1ty and Justin Wong before, but I underestimated the scope and size of the worldwide competitive scene outside of the dens and basements crammed with Xbox Live players.  I found myself enamored, if slightly perplexed, by the passion that djWHEAT was expressing during his broadcasts of games such as Quake or Street Fighter 4.  

Marcus "djWHEAT" GrahamThe expressions and terminology of in game tactics fell on deaf ears.  The speed at which a SK.Rapha turned and fired a group of Railgun shots with perfect precision or the intense rhythm of a combo with Rufus by Justin Wong threatened to frighten me away from the pro gaming scene.  It was too much for me to handle.  There are players in this world that are just that good?  Here I was, thinking I was a pretty damn good gamer, and I see M. Bison comboing into his Ultra off of a Hell Attack, something I had tried dozens if not hundreds of times, and in my scrubbiness could not fathom.  Still, the passion with which djWHEAT commentated these matches with drew me further and further into my current obsession with all things pro gaming.  Before I knew it, I was a fan, and soon a contributor to Epileptic Gaming (via call ins and videos I edited for their Game of the Year awards in 2009).  Still, I was essentially a casual gamer who loved to watch high level play, and doubted my ability to grasp the majority of the concepts that these webcasts were presenting to me.

Then the community stepped in.

djWHEAT’s show Epileptic Gaming has a very loyal fan base, and one that was readily willing to accept me amongst their numbers.  Not a member amongst them scoffed at the fact that I was finding difficulty absorbing this new torrent of gaming information and high level gameplay that, at the time, seemed impossible to me.  A few of these fans were readily willing to teach me what they knew, and assist me in coming up to speed.  I began to understand the patterns in the movements in Quake Live, I began to understand the importance of framecounts and the basics of comboing in Street Fighter 4.

I hadn’t been ostracized like I expected to.  I hadn’t been brushed off as an idiot who had no idea what I was doing.  I had been helped.  I had been accepted.  This was the first in a trend of many steps that would make me fall in love with the gaming community as a whole.  Without a doubt I was now addicted to gaming.  Now I wanted to learn about more, about game genres I hadn’t really ever focused on before.

PC Games.
RTS Games.

The domain of the second person I wish to speak of.  One of my greatest friends.

Justin “TheGunrun” Ignacio.

Justin "TheGunrun" IgnacioTheGunrun is just as much a fan of djWHEAT’s work as I am.  He had begun to show me the ropes in Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3.  I was just starting to understand every unit in the game, their purpose, their strategic use.  He and I would spend the time after episodes of Epileptic Gaming playing random games and webstreaming some of the gameplay.  I found the streaming fun, but never really dreamed of going down the same casting path that djWHEAT was already far down.

That changed with an urgent Skype call on a snowy Boston morning in late November of 2009.  TheGunrun needed a casting partner for a Red Alert 3 tournament, and he wanted me to commentate with him.

Wait, me?  Really?  I barely knew the game.  I barely grasped the names of all of the units and the structures that built them.  But, again, I found myself accepted.  I found the gaming community again willing to show me the ropes, to accept the fact that I had things to learn rather than spurn my attempts.  And so, TheGunrun and I began to webcast these Red Alert 3 tournaments on a regular basis.

Five months later, on March 2, 2010, GLHF.tv was founded.  

For those of you who have made it this far into this article, Bravo, you’ve stuck through a lengthy non-fighting-game test.  You must be wondering why the hell this kind of article is on a fighting game website.

Again, another gaming circle had accepted me.  Starcraft, a game whose fanbase had a decade’s worth of passion and devotion behind them, readily accepted and embraced GLHF, despite us being the new kids on the block.  TheGunrun was already a PC Casting legend in his own right, and deservedly so with the passion and input he given to webcasting as a whole, which drove me to learn as much as I could and be the best caster I could be in turn.

Scan's main in SSF4While my casting passion certainly lies with Starcraft 2, my gameplay passion lies with fighting games.  Super Street Fighter 4 is one of my favorite, if not my overall favorite, fighting games of all time. Every chance I would get I would be watching a stream by iPlayWinner or LevelUp, and would cancel all of my plans the weekend of Evo or Devastation.  The fighting game scene was just so drastically different than what I was used to with games like Starcraft 2; both have their own tempos, their own energies that compliment each other but at the same time have different pacing.  Fighting games are games of the moment, where things happen at fast speeds and a game can be decided with the timing of a single button press.  Starcraft 2 is more like spectating a hockey or soccer match; there will be small skirmishes throughout, but the deciding plays only come after calculated moments that take a deal of preparation, but turn out no less exciting and energy driven.

I found both of these energies addicting in their own ways.  After being a spectator to these fighting matches for so long, I received word in January of 2011 that I would be moving away from my east coast home.

To Los Angeles.  To the last great stronghold of fighting games.

I’d have my chance to go to arcades, to play SSF4:AE,  to meet some of the best gamers in the country.  Was I nervous?  You bet your ass I was.  I had no clue what to expect the first time I walked into Family Fun Arcade and put my quarters into that AE machine.

Family Fun ArcadeWhat did I get?  What I’ve come to expect of the best of the gaming community.  I received comradely, advice, friendship, the things that gaming SHOULD stand for.  The heat of competition is enthralling, to be sure, but it is the connections that gamers make with one another that I’ve learned to truly appreciate.  Just a few weeks later I met up with the LevelUp crew at Wednesday Night Fights, and was shocked when they were actually willing to place the mic in my hands to commentate Marvel vs Capcom 3, a game that I literally had less than three hours worth of experience with beforehand.  But again, I was shown the ropes, I was helped, I was taught what worked and what didn’t, how the game flows.

So, what’s the point of all of this?  I suppose it is to say thank you.  Thank you djWHEAT.  Thank you TheGunrun.  Thank you Starcraft 2 players.  Thank you SSF4 players.  Thank you gamers.  Thank you enthusiasts.  Thank you fans.  You have all accepted me into a world of fierce competition, brotherhood and memories.  You sewed the seeds dream, a goal, that has slowly begun to flourish.  We, as fans and as competitors, are a brotherhood that is growing by the day, and I want to do everything in my power to share the love and passion that we have for these games and tournaments with the world.   

Thank you for welcoming me.