Gaming as a 'sport' week 2 Reportage.

Last post, I said I was going to treat Friday night as 'Scavenger night' and play Left 4 Dead 2 Scavenger mode with the mindset that it was my 'weekly sport'. Well I played last night with that mindset...

Does it work?

Um, well sort of... Firstly there's the issue of getting client disconnects at inappropriate times. Which is sort of annoying, and I don't really know what the 'sporting' equivalent of this would be - maybe a sudden downpour whilst playing 5 a side football? Maybe your squash racket snapping in two and not having a spare? I suppose it would have to be seen as something like that.

Secondly I didn't really have what I perceived as being as successful a night, the previous week I was storming - I felt unstoppable. You get those moments in sport of course - you're good days. I recall years and years ago competing in a boxing ring fight taekwondo match and on one occasion really trouncing someone who was actually much better than me - I just had a night when everything went right... I felt unstoppable then too!

The thing is - I also drank 3 cans of Abbot Ale last night - the previous week I only had two, the questions is did poor game performance encourage me to drink 3 cans of strong ale, or did drinking 3 cans of strong ale impede my game performance? Maybe a mixture of both?

The sporting equivalent for this scenario is hard to pin down, I've rarely got drunk then tried to compete at sport. I remember a night years ago when I was going training in Buxton, Taekwondo, and because of time-constraints instead of the usual 'after training pint' my friend Joe and I decided we would go for a 'pre-training pint' of Guiness.... It was actually squad training that night and involved a fitness test... Not fun...

Then I recall gatting heroically drunk and wandering off to the park to play football in the middle of summers evening... Again, sort of fun, but hmmm.... Alcohol and sport don't seem to mix.

The trouble is, Left 4 Dead 2 is a game which sort of feels right with pint in your hand - more so than say, Forza Motorsport or somethign serious...

I think my next experiment should be to try and treat it as a more serious competitive event and abstain from drinking alcohol pre and during playing and see how effects the experience...