Slashdot Mirror
WCG Tournament Director Admits Drugs In E-Sports
SlappingOysters writes "In the lead up to the World Cyber Games finals in Germany, Gameplayer has an incredible interview with Tournament Director Alex Walker in which he freely admits knowledge of participants taking illegal drugs to enhance their performance. The interview came in response to a previous article by the site in which they examined whether there was a need to bring drug testing into professional gaming events to ensure a level playing field. Walker said, 'I've seen a number of players at national tournaments who came in "baked" (that's stoned for the uninformed) purely so they could play better. In most cases they did, although obviously they couldn't just pull out another joint midway through. In one WCG, a player I knew took amphetamines an hour before his match to boost his reflexes.'"
While I think illicit drugs should definitely be banned, as always we have to ask what extent does this go to?
I can get in there and hook up a coffee/Red Bull IV, and do almost as much damage to my body as taking dexedrine. So they ban caffeine, which means no moutain dew, and we know mountain dew is one of the nectars of the gods.
As soon as you start eliminating caffeine, we get to the point that they can't take cold medicine before a tourney as it will show up as a drug.
As soon as money and egos get involved, people will look for any advantage they can get. I think drugs should be outlawed, but that the organizers need to be realistic, and understand that anything in excess can be harmful, and that a well rounded approach is necesary
My guess is focus. On some games, if you become too focused, it is easier to make a mistake. If marijuana assists their ability to do abstraction then it could be beneficial.
Another example might be a scenario where being tense is worse than the loss of dexterity incurred from being slightly stoned. The best example I could come up with, for myself, is sniping. I do better at sniping (and instagibbing) moving targets when I relax and anticipate my enemies moves. If I was extremely tense (due to a money competition) I could see how chemical relaxation could increase performance.
I don't know for certain, but one would imagine that the competition level at such an event would put a tremendous amount of stress on someone, especially a gamer who is probably does not have an audience outside of fellow players normally. Much like in athletic sports when a professional makes one mistake in the actual game it generally snowballs into more and more of them simply due to the pressure that being on that stage causes (hence why they always say to have a short memory). In that regard, I can see it being beneficial as it relaxes the person and allows them to have less of a memory for mistakes. This in turn would improve their overall performance, in theory.
However, the dulled reaction times and giggle fits would seem to negate those advantages...in least in my way of thinking. Someone with genuine experience might be able to provide more insight. Of course, Cannabis may not be a great example as it's not illegal in every country of the world.
Amphetamines carry an even more debilitating crash than most stimulants. Imagine what happens if, when stuck against a superior competitor who is not drugged, the matches run longer than the duration of the drugs? Final round failure is annoying, but final round narcolepsy? That just proves you're an idiot.
Those things you're doing with that stuff you just bought? That's not what it's for! -
Drugs affect people differently, and people attribute all sorts of effects to them, accurately or otherwise. Where there is a marked improvement on cannabis, however, I suspect it's mostly because the gamer is simply accustomed to playing that way.
Yep, it's called state-dependent learning.
Do you know people who code stoned? It might allow you to focus more on the task at hand.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
It's not the game action slowing down, rather the sampling frequency of your brain going up.
I noticed the same effect while listening to music: you can explore a few seconds of music as an infinitely detailed landscape of sounds. The same with thoughts (you can witness how thoughts are forming in your brain).
I have a CrystaLens implant that allows my old left eye to focus, unlike unmodified eyes in people my age. Before the implant my vision was incredibly bad; I wore "coke bottle" glasses all my life. Now my vision is vastly better than the normal 20/20. If I were in these games I would need no eyeglasses, unlike most nerds young and old, and unlike almost all geezers.
Sweat dripping down your glasses is a definite minus in any game.
Would my implant disqualify me? If not, I say let 'em ruin their lives with cocaine or amphetamines.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Computer/console gaming can be a professional endeavor but it isn't a sport anymore than professional chess is a sport. A sport requires some degree of physical activity beyond clicking a mouse or gamepad.
I'm not taking anything away from the level of skill involved and maybe I'm just getting into the semantics too much, but I'm tired of people equating professional gaming with sports. Again, the chess analogy comes to mind.
Oh, ok, I just thought it would make people slower. Guess I have missed out on never actually testing it and figure out myself.
And here I thought I was hardcore when I took rhodiola rosea, ginkgo biloba, acetyl-l-carnitine, caffeine and theobromine, green tea / egcg and finally tyrosine and taurine though I don't see how the later would help before a couple of games of WC 3.
(I won 3 games in a row but there's a 1/8 chance for that so nothing special, since then I've won my last 11 games in a row at a chance of 1/2048 which is more weird :D)
Anyway, thanks for the info, and enlightenment on consideration of educational use :D
If the issue has to do with unfair advantages due to drugs, they better ban ritalin and prozac and xanax and anything else that tweaks the dopamine, seratonin, or acetylcholine levels in the brain. In fact, I think if they're going to be really serious, they should make everyone fast for two days before they even let them into the convention hall. Then once they are there they are only allowed to drink water and eat soups and organic salads. I can honestly say that every "gamer" I know is on something. Either they're caffeine addicts, alcoholics or stoners. I don't associate with any tweakers but it wouldn't surprise me to find a couple of meth-addicts online at 4am racking up kills in whatever the FPS of the week is. If drug use is an issue in "professional" sports then video game playing will never be a professional sport. Or if it is, your champions are going to be seven and eight year olds who haven't ever visited a psychatrist for acting like a normal kid.
I've never been stoned (perhaps very mildly passively, but I've never done non-prescription drugs), but have played games for 12 hours straight a few times. I even took a couple of days off work for the release of GTA4. Then I went to see Iron Man after having no sleep the night before. I felt pretty crappy in the few days after that, but it was a lot of fun at the time :)
The most time I've ever played a game was when I got Operation Flashpoint 1. I completed it in 3 days, and I think I had something like 4-6 hours sleep in that time. No weed necessary.
which is totally what she said
Totally true. Ever since Quake 3 came out I played heavily stoned. Every day with lots and lots of weed. It does not boost my reflexes or "logical thinking" at all but I enjoy the game more this way and also I get more motivated to win.
I am not exactly a "pro" but I've attended tens of Quake and Unreal Tournament LAN tournaments. Plus a lot of online ones. And I would say that weed is the best choice for me. Amphetamines are not that good and do not boost your reflexes that much. Just feels this way :)
To be honest I am bored of playing games without weed.
I'm a past stoner. I still toke up every once in a while.
When people think of twitch gaming, they usually think of frantic gaming. Top players know that this isn't the case. A noob CounterStrike player shoots wildly. If cross hairs aren't over an enemy, why shoot? The noob ends up just missing and missing because whenever his cross hairs happen to cross an enemy, his gun is in between shots.
Top players know that it is better to wait a split second for the enemy to float across the cross hairs before pulling the trigger. For truly great gaming performance, the player must be in a "zen" like state, not a frantic twitch state.
Toking up can help a player reach this zen state, become immersed in the game, and oblivious to outside distractions. Of course non-potheads would probably be "ZOMG So high!" but for someone who smokes daily getting high is a calming state.
I've been to lots of big lan parties and most the time I'll be one of those people getting stoned beforehand or going out for the occasional joint during the day/evening.
Nothign to do with trying to "enhance performance", I just like playing games even better when mashed.
I suspect this explains a lot of the usage and why Cannabis (a drug not normally associated with performance enhancement) is the apparent drug of choice for gamers.
Maybe not, but perhaps it makes your writing more salable to tv execs.
Speaking of TV shows, Entourage covered this pretty well. The character Turtle is doing some kind of XBox tournament thing and reveals to his buddies that he has to get baked to play well. In a typical act of brotherly love they inform him that there will be drug testing at the event. Hilarity ensues.
Personally, I think marijuana might provide an advantage in that it supposedly breaks down the users normal tendency to focus on single things. It used to be said that listening to music while stoned allowed you to hear each instrument more clearly. Don't know if any of that is true tho.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
go in the opposite direction and "require" everyone to take drugs to enhance their gaming experience. That would level the field also.
I know why people play these games under the influence. I've been a regular cannabis user for approximately 5 years now. I've played in about 7 or 8 Guitar Hero tournaments(school/bar sponsored, nothing huge) and i think every time I've met up with mary jane before hand. I've won a couple of them, usually place in the top 3. It can help relax for sure. The article was correct that it can put you in a trance state to help focus on the notes. So that effect is definitely a bonus in music-type games. I don't think it helps at all in strategy games. When I play DOTA, the THC never really seems to help skills, but always makes the game more awesome. So i think it can clear your mind to help with focusing and reflexes, but can run you into trouble if your game makes you think too hard. So, I dunno, if people wanna rip the bong before a tournament, I don't really care. It'll make it more fun for them I'm sure.
Well, I think of cannabis like a performance equalizing drug - not performance enhancement.
Consider Ross Rebagliati from the Winter Olympics in Nagano who won gold in snowboarding (giant slalom) and was then disqualified for smoking weed. There is absolutly no way what so ever that cannabis will have made him a BETTER athlete during the games - all it could have done was make the other athletes relatively better (compared to him). Hence performance equalizing drug.
The fact that he could outperform the non-stoned athletes while being stoned himself is quite impressive. They should have given him a second medal (give him gold AND silver) instead of taking gold away. To be fair they did overturn that decision, but the point still stands.
Yes, it's an illegal drug in most places, and I suppose they should crack down on that to force the athletes to be "positive rolemodels", but I can't help but wonder what would happen if the same thing were to happen in a championship taking place in Holland. In that case you can't just disqualify on the grounds that the drug is illegal (because it's not), and it's obviously (well, maybe not scientificly) not a performance enhancing drug ... so what grounds would be used? "It's bad for you"?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Actually, I used to write the play-by-play and color commentary for the Madden NFL series at EA, so I know the John Madden voice pretty well. No shit, check it out.
"Now, ya see what he did here? 1nc1nerator thought M0nstrMan was gonna come through this gap, but M0nstrMan just gave him a little twitch-fake, and BOOM, suddenly he's eatin' raw plasma."
I piss off bigots.