Observations About Smash Brothers

A Wii console arrived in our apartment three days ago, and along with it, a game called "Super Smash Brother's Brawl." This amazing game features a collection of characters from a variety of video games. The game has good old Mario and Luigi, Link and Zelda from the Legend of Zelda series, and even some not-so-Nintendo characters like Sonic the hedgehog and Solid Snake.

This game is fun. I've spent hours and hours playing against my friends, and I find it to be extremely enjoyable. However, I've recently noticed something that slightly disturbs me, namely, the SSBB tournaments. The idea of competitive video gaming is not new to me, and probably not to many people, and I've never much considered it before. Why did I notice this time? I saw a YouTube video of two tournament "smash pros" battling with precision only afforded to those who've spent countless hours practicing. As I began to internalize what I saw, the word "gross" best described how I felt.

Two particular definitions of the word gross:
a) Offensive; disgusting
b) Unmitigated in any way; utter

Both apply in their separate ways. My roommate, who heard me use the word, suggested that the video had so far exceeded my threshold of tolerance for video game investment that it became disgusting (rather than merely meaningless.) I think so too. Video games are fun, but they are also not very productive. Many a comparison to sports has been made with the idea of justifying gaming, but an important difference: video game tournaments are too esoteric to bring in lots of viewers, which means they provide little benefit to society at large. Yeah, there are some people who survive off of tournament money, but I suspect that in general gaming costs more than it contributes.

Subjectively, I think the line should be drawn at solo practice. I admit to having practiced on my own several times. In retrospect, I think it strays from any useful form of playing video games into mastery of the irrelevant.