Industry is a death cult

You remember the old Bart Simpson prank calls, right? He'd toss off a name like "I.P. Freely" or "Seymour Butz" and everyone would go HA HA HA and then probably Homer would injure himself somehow or whatever. I feel like Andy Mitten has one of those names, especially because he's a Brit. Can you even IMAGINE how many times he got shit for that as a kid? "Oi, look, it's an 'andy mitten! C'mere, 'andy, and let me stick me hand up yeh!" Parents, you have to think about that shit.

And speaking of people who have to think about shit, Mitten needs to think some more about his analysis of "eSports":

"I was recently asked to host an interview on eSports in Lisbon with Sam Mathews, the founder and chairman of something called Fnatic. A Melbourne-raised Shoreditch resident, Mathews' Fnatic has been called the Manchester United of its genre with its Counter-Strike team former world champions. The team even has a coach...

Sam explained how 60,000 had recently watched an eSports event at Beijing's iconic Bird Nest stadium. I struggled to get my head around why anyone would travel to watch people play computer games, but I was the odd one out here...They wanted to know what was the big deal about paying £40 to sit in the cold and see one goal in 90 minutes at a conventional football game?"

Here's a little hint for you, Andy. Nobody goes to a soccer game to see this silly thing:

You wanna see one of those, you can hang out at the toy section of a Target for free. You don't have to go to an overcrowded arena, buy a ten-dollar beer (or, if you're in the UK, a ten-twiddly-L beer), and risk getting stabbed by some drunken teenager with a dumb haircut.

People don't even go to soccer games for the games. For one thing, NOTHING HAPPENS IN SOCCER. And I say that as a soccer fan! But the fact is, nothing fucking happens. Plus, if all you wanted was to see the action, you could do that on TV, or you could watch the highlights after the game, or you could just tape the fucking thing and watch it later. (I know, I know - "tape." Fuck you, too, whippersnappers.) So let me reiterate: PEOPLE DO NOT GO TO SOCCER GAMES FOR THE SOCCER.

It's the same thing with all eSports, especially the FGC. Viewers and fans don't fly all the way to Las fucking Vegas, the amoral, soul-sucking Donald Trump of cities, just to watch people press buttons. They don't fucking do it! So why DO they go? Easy. Because of this:

But that's not Mitten's first guess, or even his second, which has to do with money:

"Thirty million watched the 2016 League Of Legends World Championship, where the winners took $2.68 million in prize money. Little wonder mainstream television channels want a piece...

Where there's mass interest, money will follow. The biggest Korean firms already sponsor teams of professional eAthletes. The last two championships have been staged in Los Angeles. It's accessible, fast improving, attractive, well marketed and a threat to conventional, professional sport games such as football, cricket, baseball, boxing or rugby – sports conceived in England and exported via the British Empire. Who's to say there shouldn't be new mass appeal sports?"

Andy! Seriously, Andy! Are you for real with this shit? IT'S NOT FOR THE MONEY. IT'S NEVER FOR THE MONEY. What kind of soulless vampire chooses their viewing hobbies purely based on how much money is at stake? Anybody who wants to understand the FGC has to start by ignoring the FGI, the fighting game industry. I mean, would you try to introduce someone to soccer by getting them excited about the graft, ineptitude, and all-around sliminess of FIFA? Would you try to get somebody into the NFL by showing them highlight clips of Roger Goodell's press conferences? FUCK NO! So why are we trying to understand "eSports" by examining its fucking finances?

Because he's a soccer fan, Mitten isn't fully happy about the idea that soccer might get displaced by LoL or SFV. But he's not exactly doing anything to help his own cause. You can't win new fans by telling them about TV contracts or ticket sales or any of that quarterly-earnings bar-chart boardroom bullshit. This is not a dick-measuring contest. If soccer has a problem, it's because soccer stopped being about the community and started being about the industry. The last fucking thing we need is for the FGC to follow suit.