Why nerds shouldn't shy away from Sports Bars, nor Jocks the Internet Cafe

The jock-nerd relationship is one fraught with violence, resentment, and mockery. They are seen as the two opposite ends of the traditionally held, high school-mindset spectrum of cool, as socially distant as possible without a language barrier. However, it should come as no surprise to anyone that 80s high school dramas are not an accurate representation of reality. Cultural overlap frequently exists. On the one hand, you have an increasingly massive chunk of the videogame market, once exclusively held by nerds, dedicated to sating the Halo and Madden lusts of "jocks" or "bros." On the other, there are the Nerds who Like Sports. In the course of my transformation into one such person I began to realize just how many similarities these hobbies bear, how unsurprising it is that they should overlap, and how artificial the barriers which keep nerds and jocks apart really are. What follows may seem obvious to some, but was non-apparent to me when I was being shoved in a locker (Ed. note: I have never actually been shoved in a locker, but you get the idea). As an aside--I will be ignoring baseball, as its overabundance of statistics make it beloved by nerds in their own right and a wierd crossover example that muddies the waters of my argument.

"Sports," I might have been found proclaiming loudly but a few years ago, "are boring. Nothing ever happens. Futbawl (for those of you just tuning in, soccer = futbol, NFL = futbawl) is the worst; some guys crash into each other, then they wait around and do it again." In hindsight, I can't believe how I didn't empathize more with those watching the game that I pronounced "boring." How many times had I been engrossed in a video game, be it Starcraft or an RPG, only to have my mother walk in the room and wonder aloud how I could be so interested in and waste so much time on something so "boring." The way I see it, just about anything is boring if you don't know what's going on. The most riveting piece of public speaking is a snoozefest if you don't know the language that's being spoken, the most beautiful futbol play looks like a bunch of guys with bad hair running around with a ball to the uninitiated, and a perfectly executed 6-pool in Starcraft seems like just so many weird lookin' computer aliens and pulsating buildings to my mother, who doesn't understand why the garbage is not yet at the curb. This, of course, is not to say that things become interesting by virtue of expertise--no amount of study will make drying paint into good television. (This is the argument my friends would surely make if I tried to propose this to them: Starcraft is boring no matter what. Its status as a sport (which it is (in Korea anyway)) was a topic of frequent discussion in our apartment. For the sake of brevity, for this post I will take as a given that if not a sport, it is at least entertaining to some to watch competitive matches (for evidence, check the number of subscribers of esportscasters such as HDHusky)).

My point is simply that interesting things--things that a given person might very well enjoy--are often written off by that person out of prejudice, reinforced by the negative, boring experience of the few times they've tried watching it. Further, there's more similarity between futbawl and Starcraft, hockey and DoTA, or baseball and halo than most people realize (or most partisans of either camp will admit). The basic principles of competition run through all of them. "Two men enter, one man leaves" touches something deep within us. It's just that most modern sports-entertainment subsumes this primal desire beneath layers of rules, teams, and strategy that cloak it from view without the right decoding tools. Hell, even a race, a competition at its purest, is pretty boring unless you know the guys involved, what typical splits for that distance are, and that sort of thing. The thing is, though, that while the competitive drive is dressed up beyond casual recognition, many of the world's disparate games' clothing is fairly similar.



The similarities are obvious

Both starcraft and Futbawl involve extensive preparation. In the language of Starcraft, there are two general terms for a player's skill: Macro and Micro, similar to economics. Macro is a player's ability to control the flow of the game: establish bases and resource production, produce more troops, that kind of thing. Micro is the skill that comes into play in a battle: individually selecting units and having them attack this enemy or that, dodging moves by your opponent, and the like. Neither is necessarily more important; a player far superior at macro who can't micro for crap might simply overrun an opponent with the opposite skills, but might also see his massive army kited around and destroyed by the skillful use of a small number of units' movements and abilities. Before a match, pro starcraft players will watch replays of their opponent, hoping to find a weakness and exploit it. Which general tactics on the macro front a player will use are variable, but micro happens so quickly and within the muscle memory of the players' hands that they can get a feel for what macro approach will work best. Good choice of strategy can win, but only if it is supported with the technical micro skill to pull it off.

This is comparable to the strategy and skills found in a football game. Coaches and quarterbacks will decide what plays to run and when, the "macro" of the game; the actual skill of the players in doing a particular play or series of plays, the "micro," determine whether or not the overall strategy is successful. A starcraft player might note that his opponent is very adept at manipulating a unit with a wide-area attack, such as a templar's psionic storm, which can destroy large numbers of weaker units very quickly. Responding to this, he will plan to use a smaller number of more dispersed, more powerful units to negate this strength--this, of course, will only work if he himself is capable of the micro to handle an army of that kind. Similarly, a coach might note that the defense of his opponent has a powerful line, capable of blocking running plays with regularity, and thus instruct his quarterback to rely more heavily on throwing the ball. Again, though, this relies on the players' skills to carry out such a plan. It is this duality of plan and action, the moment when it all comes together, that I think is the most exciting moment in either kind of game (second only to the suprise moment of brilliance--the 80 yard kickoff return for a touchdown, or the clutch drop of a nuke on someone's army in starcraft).

To return to my original assertion, though, both of those moments are only exciting if you have the context to recognize the perfect confluence of plan and action shown in a 6-play touchdown drive or the sudden breakout performance of Slayers_Boxer using 3 marines to kill a lurker by dodging its spines. Watching either is a moment of engaged, stand-up-and-knock-over-your-chips excitement--if you enjoy it. If not, it's just another bunch of burly, armored guys hittin each other or.. well, in the case of the marines, just another bunch of burly, armored, pixellated guys shooting an underground killer space bug.

Obviously this isn't some kind of a shame-on-you to anyone who doesn't watch, much less enjoy, every single sport or e-sport. I would, though, like it to be a call for understanding. It may seem like the most exciting thing happening in that golf tournament your uncle is watching is the growth of the green's grass--but he's just as pumped about that putt just as you were about the Blackhawk's shorthanded goal last night (speaking of, YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS). Moreover, he's pumped for pretty much the same reasons--you've just learned different games. Besides, you never know. Ask him what's going on; it might turn out that you find as much enjoyment watching golf as I have found watching the sport of those guys that once threatened me with swirlies (Ed. note: I haven't even been threatened with a swirlie, either).