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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.'"
'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 ...
Um, I'm not a regular drug user but how are the effects of Cannabis beneficial to gaming?
Acute effects while under the influence include euphoria, increased appetite, anxiety, short-term memory loss, and circulation effects which may increase risks of heart attacks.
I understand how drugs that affect your nervous system -- like uppers -- can increase your reaction time and muscle twitching for those games involving twitch skills. And nobody can shred on a guitar like an coked up hair band ... but how does a drug that made my college roommate double up in laughter and fail at communication make someone better at video games?
My work here is dung.
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
Ok, amphetamines I can see, but weed? It doesn't exactly make your reflexes better and it's hard to pay attention when you laugh incessantly for no apparent reason. But I suppose it could help you focus more intently if... man my hands are HUGE... wait, what was I saying again?...
They didn't come in baked so they could play better - they came in baked because they're stoners. If they were at home watching tv, they'd be just as baked (and it's not so that they could watch tv better though I'm sure being stoned makes some of the crap on tv seem better...).
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! -
News like this make me ashamed of my hobby in a way that even Barbie Horse Adventures couldn't manage.
I find that playing video games after smoking some of the finest herb allows me to get into a very relaxed state of mind. This I think is the ultimate factor in defeating many of my opponents. It just puts me "In The Zone."
because now it is not a display of human mastery, now it is a display of biochemical mastery
this is not some subtle philosophical point, because the followup point is that the emotional connection with the competitors is what drives audience attention, and that emotional connection is lost as people will tune out when they think it is the drug performing, rather than the athlete
any sport that openly accept drug enhancement is a sport that will see its ratings drop.
of course there will always be cheating, of course this means we must wage constant war, constant arms race, forever, on drugs in sports. this is simply the price you pay to retain interest in the sport
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Most of the stoners in my life respond to high stress situations by telling their boss to kiss their ass, going home, and laughing hysterically at their DVD of "The Last Dragon" for about 12 hours.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
While the performance effects of cannabis are questionable, the fact that drug use, be it for recreational use or performance enhancement, is well known to gamers who actively compete in these kind of events.
Of the dozens of events I've attended, there's always a significant number of people getting baked before the evens. It's also not surprising to see a handful of people taking amphetamines to keep them on their A-game after hours worth of match ups.
Frankly this shouldn't be surprising, the entire sport centers around high caffeine sodas and gamer themed energy drinks. These events last for 6-8 hours at a time and winning becomes even more critical as the matches move towards the 11th hour.
The community's resistance towards the entire drug testing issue best highlights all of this, when a number of leagues started pushing around the idea, there was both apathy and outrage over the idea, yet few voices of support on the issue. The suggestion that nearly every team has at least one guy who probably does some kind of narcotic also plays a part in this viewpoint.
Until pro-gaming starts to get some real ad dollars behind it, the drug use will continue.
Clearly you're very upset about this. You know what would calm you down? Weed.
Most recreational drugs are recreational because they produce an altered state of consciousness. Alcohol does the same thing. If you study a subject (say physics) while intoxicated, your recall of the material will be higher when intoxicated. It stands to reason that a similar phenomenon could exist with video games. They practice stoned so they play better stoned.
I'm not sure if that really counts as a "performance enhancing drug" though.
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
Yeah, but have you ever played Barbie Horse Adventures on weed?
I was more annoyed at the clumsy parenthetical aside explaining what it meant.
It's about time we had a sporting event in which drug enhancements are welcome so we can see the effects of the different drugs. "M0nstrMan took a double dose of crystal meth two hours before the contest, and we can see that he's 27 frags up on his nearest opponent. WeeTimmyLeary decided to go for tabs of acid today, and he's spent the whole match crouched in a corner screaming about purple caterpillars -- he doesn't have many frags, but nobody wants to go near him, either. 1nc1inerator's joytick hand is just a bloody stump at this point, but the heroin is really helping with the pain; he hasn't slowed down."
In all the non-drug sports it come down to genetics and chance, and that's hardly fair.
I piss off bigots.
It gives you the munchies, makes you paranoid, and makes you giggle every time someone says "420" but it doesn't make you better at HaloDo you know what you are saying here? That black people love fried chicken and will steal my TV, that Mexicans will steal my job and eat lots of tacos, and that all Gays use Macs.
It is a sweeping blanket statement that comes from uninformed bigotry. I've never had the munchies, I've never gotten paranoid, and I certainly don't giggle. Neither has anyone else that I have had a smoking experience with. These are horribly inaccurate stereotypes thrown out there to make it seem like Marijuana being illegal is less ridiculous than it really is.
Sure, it has its undesirable side effects. So does drinking too much coffee. And to say that there can't possibly be any good effects from pot are only spoken by the sheep. The problem ultimately is, only the people who smoke will know what they are... because people like you have your mind made up, and nothing in the world can change it.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Dear sir, as I read your comment I thought of several well reasoned arguments as to why your first sentence was flawed. As opposed to firing back blindly I continued until the end, which made up my mind that rant or not, I had to reply immediately. By the time I had "Reply"'d I had totally forgotten my original arguments and decided to go get some timbits, coffee and have a smoke. While outside I was totally freaked out by the guy moving things to a truck, who kept nodding to me every time he passed despite my saying good morning to him once. Inside again I was refilling the sugar jar for my coffee when a variation in the bag's opening caused some to spill over my hand, I immediately burst into gales of laughter while thinking to myself it was a damn good thing I do the pouring over the kitchen sink. Man I'm so stoned!
I have been smoking marijuana since I was 12, am now 36, and work for one of the top hardware/software companies in the world running other people's Wintel backends. Today in my home office I'm building several servers remotely, attending meetings, and taking emergency calls. For further reference, see the excellent Penn and Teller show Bullshit!, episode The War on Drugs, especially the sections on the stock trader who works on the NYSE floor. He smokes several joints daily, all of which are provided by the US Federal Government for his possibly fatal bone spurs. There really are professionals out in the world who smoke quite regularly, even as often as several times a day.
Jonah Hex
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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.
I am always curious why drugs are considered bad because they enhance the bodyâ(TM)s natural abilities but things like glasses, earring aides, whatever are ok. Glasses allow someone whose natural ability to not see well to see just as well (or even better) then someone with normal vision. Is using LASIEK bad? Same thing. Either you are competing with what you were born and how hard you train or we use a variety of mechanical, biological, chemical techniques to be come better at something. Since we already do mechanical (glasses, better fabrics for clothes, swimsuits, etc) and we do some biological (or is it chemical) when athletes train in sealed rooms with more oxygen to raise their red blood cell count, why do we as a society draw the line with drugs?
I don't know about you, but the majority of us simply aren't built to compete in sports any more. How can I compete with Michael Phelps's body, that's designed for swimming? Sure, training helps, but the current top-level competitions are accessible only to those genetically suited for them. The Olympics might have had some relevance back in the Greek days, when you could look at the athletes and say "well, if I trained hard, I could run as fast as these guys". These days, there is no amount of training that can let me swim as fast as Phelps or run as fast as Bolt. So what's the point? All these athletes are necessarily "freaks" now, and the only way to beat them is to become a bigger freak.
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
Captain Kirk? Is that you?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
"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." Dude . . . you really need to get stoned . . .
Ohh spiteful one tell me who to smote and he shall be smolten!
wtf is an 'e-sport?'
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.
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.
But if I'm wrong, take heart! Ctrl-Z is just two keypresses away!
For what it's worth, this is analogous to a well known psychological effect known as state-dependent recall.
The effect specifically refers to the improved retrieval from long term memory experienced when the memory retrieval takes place in the same mind-state (in this example, of drug influence) that the memory was deposited in....
But my own experience of gaming while stoned will attest to a very similar (and strikingly simple) revelation, not strictly limited to memory retrieval: When you learn to play a game stoned, you play that game better while stoned.
In a skill based game, your chances of winning aren't 1/2... Unless WC3 is what you call flipping a coin... War Coin III!
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