By: Andy ‘Fro’ Popkin
(This is an editorial piece. The opinions in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of compLexity Gaming or its parent company.)
Well the old man is getting on me to start writing more, and since I have nothing to do today, here we go!
So anyway, gaming and the economy are going south. Gaming is not necessarily just going south because of the economy, but its gotta count for something. People don’t want to spend a lot of money right now, and that in turn decreases sales everywhere, especially electronics/gaming. When most 360 and PS3 games cost $55-60 it’s tough to decide if you wanna blow that much money to play the game for a week or be able to eat and drive your car so you can get to work. Same shit with computers, they are still pretty expensive and most people just don’t care to upgrade when they feel they don’t need to. Hardcore gamers will always upgrade their rig at least once a year to make sure they keep getting 100fps in CS year after year. Even though a computer from three years ago would get 100 just fine, they think a quad core, dual SLI, 8 gigs of ram will get them to frag harder in 1.6 lol….
Now I’m not saying gaming as a whole is tanking, but OUR part of gaming is. eSports is not doing so well right now. All of the major companies who sponsor the top squads are either pulling funds or ditching eSports all together. ATi, Nvidia, Intel, Dell
, and even SteelSeries are not in the mood to just toss out cash to anyone. Their current teams are damn lucky in my mind, because I can say as a fact it’s been hard as hell to find cash for compLexity. Jason is always on the phone trying to find that extra buck for the team. Anyone that watches SpongeBob will get why I put that picture there.
Console gaming and the average man’s pc games are still doing ok in this economy mainly because when people are broke, they need some form of entertainment to get them thru each day. Same shit happened in the great depression. Moving pictures basically got their chance to take off because of the depression. People would pay 10 cents to sit in the theatre all day watching movies, news reels, and random performers. It was a way to keep their mind off of the shit storm that lies just outside the theatre doors. Now a days I guess some people see it fit to spend $50 of their small paycheck on a new game in order to keep them busy when they are not working. That sort of mentality is keeping eSports from getting a lot of benefit. Kids would rather play the Sims or WoW because of the unlimited playability instead of spend a lot more money to get good at cs. Plus if you want to compete you have to be able to travel, spend money on entry fees, and if your JaX you gotta be able to pay the hooker at the end of the night. LoL I had to Alex. eSports is not cheap. Ask Mr. Lake. He is THE model of what eSports can do to a guy. His case is sort of blown out of proportion but is still what goes on. If a team or player wants to be good, it aint cheap.
Now, do I think this shit will get better? Of course. It already is in my opinion. Yeah Obama is spending money faster than Jake ever could, but you gotta spend money to make money. This shit with AIG and some other dumb fucks is just side talk to keep the media happy and keep the publ
ic’s minds off what’s really going down. Sure we are pissing away billions of dollars to try and “save” them, but it might help. And if not, welcome to the USSA lol. The media has done a knock up job of really fucking this all up. They are using Bush’s old scare tactics to ensure that people will not go out and stimulate the economy. In turn, gaming suffers because of the fact that video games are a want not a need. People won’t get shit they want unless they are doing ok money wise, or are just dumb and blow their money all day long.
Lastly, I just want to say that I hope no one suffers too greatly from this disaster ‘W’ put us in. Gaming along with the economy will come back stronger than ever. Once the media stfu about it all, watch how fast things get better. If you have some extra cash, spend it. If not save it and then spend it. eSports may not see much profit from you buying your Street Fighter 4 game, but when that game goes pro in WCG (if it’s still around after all of this) and your having to pay to go to qualifiers and shit, eSports wins 
PEACE