Much has been made of the seeming lack of future here in this little game of ours. I suppose I can't really argue with that any more. This blog has failed to garner the attention I was hoping it would, and most of the projects referred to within are pretty much dead.
But that doesn't mean the game is altogether bleak. While I don't think we're headed for an imminent demise, I suppose it's time to admit that we might be nearing our twilight years. If these are our twilight years, however, I think it's a great time to turn an eye backwards and reflect.
I'm quite pleased with what I've accomplished in this game. I remain hopelessly ambitious with ridiculously lofty goals, but I can't complain about where I've been. And while, with GCW doing so well these days, I don't have many moments of waning enthusiasm, those few I do are easily remedied with a quick glance through my extensive archives.
One of my fondest memories is my first; the day I joined my first fed and wrote the RP in the post below this one. Caldera was actually just my create-a-player on No Mercy on the N64, but I absolutely fantasized about being a wrestler. This was 1999 and wrestling was still hot, and I wanted to be a part of it.
The ACWF was great. Sure, it sucked, it was an email fed, but it was great. Roster of maybe fifteen, pretty sharp fedhead, it was a blast. I can honestly say that there were exactly two moments when my heart rate actually rose on account of this game: one was the PPV where I won my first World Title, the other was scrolling down the PTC website for the results of the Kimbusa/Violence Jack match in GTT3.
(I will never forget the judge who wrote that I had "outwritten, outclassed, and basically made a fool out of Violence Jack." If you are that judge, please step forward and admit the ludicrousness of that statement.)
Hell, I've still got the finish from that ACWF PPV where I beat Big Daddy Dero in a tournament final:
Jim Ross: I CANT BELIEVE THIS MAN!!!!! Big Daddy Dero somehow, kicked out right before the three and Caldera is pissed!!!! And uh-oh!!! Mr. Danger sees the chair in the ring still, and there is blood on that chair, as well as on Dero's head!
[ Mr. Danger picks up the chair. He sees that blood is on the chair as well as on Dero's head. He is shouting something at Caldera who is just looking innocent. ]
Jim Ross: Danger is putting two and two together, and he knows Caldera used that chair! He and Caldera are arguing about it!!!
Jerry Lawler: Look out! Dero is very slowly getting up, blood dripping from his face! He is a bloody mess!!!!
[ As Dero gets up, Danger and Caldera are arguing. Mr. Danger then winds up the chair, and goes to hit Caldera.. Just at the last second he stops in mid air, turns around.. and smashes the chair over Big Daddy Dero's head. The crowd gives a "uuuu" then is silent ]
Jim Ross: (pauses) WHAT THE HELL IS THIS????
Jerry Lawler: Did I just see what I think I saw?????
Jim Ross: MR. DANGER!!!!!! JUST SMASHED THE CHAIR OVER DERO'S HEAD!!!!!! Mr. Danger throws the chair to the outside, and points down at Dero and is laughing!
Jerry Lawler: What is going on JR? I can't believe this!!!!
Jim Ross: Caldera picks up Dero, and hooks both arms! He lifts him up in the air, CALDERA DROP!!!! Danger for the count. One, two, three!!!!!
[ The Sickness by Disturbed begins to play. The fans are totally disgusted as they boo and start throwing trash at the ring. Mr. Danger runs to the outside and grabs the belt. He comes back into the ring, and he and Caldera embrace with a big hug. Mr. Danger then gives Caldera the belt, and raises his hand. They hug again. ]
The Fink: Here is your winner, and the NEEEEWWWWWW ACWF World Heavyweight Champion, STEVEN CALDERA!!!!
Jim Ross: I can't believe it!!! THEY SCREWED US ALL!!!! Mr. Danger and Steve Caldera were together all along, and this makes me SICK!!!! Big Daddy Dero is bloody and beaten at the hands of Steve Caldera and Mr. Danger!! Caldera is the new champion of the world, but at what cost?
Jerry Lawler: Danger and Caldera are both walking up the ramp laughing!!! What fools everyone here is!!! They never saw this coming! What a fool you are JR!!
Jim Ross: Ah shut UP! Mr. Danger, shocks the world here tonight in Kansas City!! What a DEADLY DECISION he has just made!!! Right here in his hometown!!!!! They played each and every one of us!! Fans, our time is up. For Jerry Lawler, I'm Jim Ross saying goodnight from KC...... This is just sickening!!!!!!
[ We see a shot of Caldera holding up the belt at the entrance to the back. We then see a shot of referees helping Dero up who is laying in a pool of his own blood in the ring. Camera fades out and the show ends. ]
Gotta love that Disturbed entrance music!
That was the last time I was solely a handler. I suppose I handled Kimbusa a bit in OSW, and I did a stint in FSW. I also handled in the AWA for a while and won three world titles from '01 to '02, but GCW always dominated my e-career. So I look back to that first fed, the only time I was a true handler, and kinda appreciate the simplicity of it all. Not that I don't love being a fedhead, because I'd never be able to be a handler again. But there was something about the atmosphere, where everyone was more or less equal in their suckitude, that made the whole thing special.
Maybe that's where this blog needs to go from here. Maybe the entire game is getting to that point. Not that we all suck, but that we're all pretty darn good. And that first fed experience, those lower expectations where the only goal was to enjoy oneself, that's something special that's somehow been lost on this game.
With all the politicking and positioning, rivalries and divisive personal issues, and grand ambitions to pursue some massive WO-type organizational system, the simplicity in this game is somewhat lost. I admit that I scan the "lesser" feds on Geocities and Freewebs, look at the images made with WWE wrestlers, and wonder if maybe they've got it right and we've got it wrong.
So I suppose you can consider this a shift in intent. I'm not really concerned with creating some grand new entity to unite the e-wrestling world, because the time for such things is past. There are larger communities out there than ours, but ours undeniably has the best talent. Perhaps we need to shrink things down a bit, lower our expectations and take the game at face value. Get back to the basics where we take sheer joy out of the posting of an event, the winning of a match, and the execution of a hot angle more than the single-minded intent of getting oneself noticed.
I've always carried the spirit of the ACWF with me. GCW has undeniably surpassed it, and did so long ago. I always remembered where I came from. But in my zeal to step up as a leader for this community I might have lost sight of that heart-pumping joy I once got from this game. I think we all have, to varying degrees.
Some are, perhaps, beyond reclamation. But for those of us who still have a passion for the game, however dormant, I think we should buckle down and focus in on what we're doing and why. Perhaps it's time to forget about PTC as an interfed and focus on our own feds, and simply use PTC as a gathering place for like-minded individuals to congregate. There's still passion out there, and that's what should be targeted; this game won't be saved by some new interfed or fancy website, but rather by a rekindling of the sheer, unrestrained joy of playing the game.
I'm still a tremendous wrestling fan, but I've got nowhere to get my fix. Part of the problem with this game is that a large percentage of the people around here just grew out of wrestling. I, myself, did not. But I'd wager that there's still some hidden love of wrestling buried in anyone who would chance to read this blog. WWE certainly doesn't offer an outlet. So maybe we should stop being so cerebral, so damn talented, and get back to the basics of wrestling and have some simple fun with it.
The game can continue to innovate and our talent can continue to thrive. But now I want to look at the heart of the game rather than the structure, because that's where its soul lies.
4 comments:
Couldn't have said it any better myself. This should be about fun, PERIOD. I wish things were just about fun and not taken so seriously where the most miniscule loss makes the person feel as if they lost the magic touch and get depressed. I'd rather just take the loss and have some fun with it than start politicing, bullshitting, etc. but that's just my opinion on it. The fun needs to be brought back to e-wrestling and that's why it's been dying out. I've been saying that for two years and it's the truth. That's why I've always handled such insane characters. Not because they are stupid, lame, retarded, and outrageous but because they are fun. They're fun to play and not some guy who just goes out there to do some poruresu moves and do hot angles to get over every week. I'd rather just have fun and job like the jobber I am. And FUN is what the game needs. Say it with me now: FUN! Come on, say it again...FUN! There you go! Once it's fun again, then it will thrive. Until then, it's just gonna be an overblown, too seriously taken writing contest where most characters have some life changing dilemma that has nothing to do with their match or the show happen with all the dramatics of a soap opera that you see on daytime television. Now if you'll excuse me I have to write a promo about a giant pig man trying to eat a pirate and work on the inevitable Save-us.with.FUN VARGA angle (which I just thought up while typing this, lol) that you all know will happen eventually anyway. :P
All of us have those memories, winning big matches, watching as we put out a product back then that we thought was great, but now we look back at it and go What The Fuck?
There have been times where I would be handling somewhere and it started to seem more like work than fun. Especially in some of my earliest feds, where I often had to create multiple characters and run with them just so other guys had people to feud with.
Part of the fun of ewrestling is something that we've grasped. The creativity of things. Characters like Seymour Almasy in FUSE, and Elijah Keeling in GCW are great examples. Characters that there really wouldn't be any way in hell that you'd see them in real life, because they just would not work.
Another great example is Varga, who like he said, created such a cornicopia of characters because he had fun with it. Me, I have fun with more serious characters, hence why up until recently, all my characters came from the same universe based around one of my first characters.
For the game to come back, there needs to be a reason for it. That reason is just like Varga mentioned, like you mentioned Ben. Fun. Plain and simple. That's why those lesser feds who's talent base combined is probably equal to what you will find in maybe one or two guys in any of the old PTC feds.
They did get something right. They decided to play for fun.
Ben, I don't like this post.
There's a simple reason why I don't like this post, and it can be summed up by the last few sentences you wrote.
"So maybe we should stop being so cerebral, so damn talented, and get back to the basics of wrestling and have some simple fun with it.
The game can continue to innovate and our talent can continue to thrive. But now I want to look at the heart of the game rather than the structure, because that's where its soul lies."
I'm an outlier, I'll admit it; it's pretty obvious from what I'm about to say, but I don't think it makes the following point invalid.
I think structure IS fun. If I were to get involved in e-wrestling again, I'd want to approach it from structural, cerebral and philosophical perspectives, because that's a lot of what I really enjoy. To endeavor to have more fun in the game is good, but the suggestion that fun has to be simple and cannot co-exist with cerebral or structural depth is a simplistic view.
Fun cannot be defined for the game as a whole by the particular sort of fun you have, and that's where this call to action doesn't resonate with me. Same thing goes for Varga's response. What he has fun doing is good for him, but if everyone was in it to have his kind of fun, I'd stay out of the hobby for good.
With all that said, I understand that it's not really a big deal what I think. I am an outlier, after all; my perspective is atypical at best, and irrelevant at worst. And I'm an outsider to boot, as I haven't been active within the game for years. E-wrestling could certainly do a lot worse than leaving me unsatisfied.
Ben,
I'm gonna have to go with you, though not completely without reservations.
What I honestly started to hate about playing the game was this constant pressure (at least in the PTC community) to be the next big thing. And if you didn't live up to those expectations, then you were worthless. I spent half a year questioning whether I had any writing talent whatsoever as a direct result of people who read and judged my work expecting me to be a writer other than myself.
What had always made the medium fun for me, and I realized this much later than I should have, was the open-endedness. THe ability to, whether or not it was philosophically sound, run whatever angle sounded good to you. To take joy in winning a title match without someone always coming along and either spoiling it beforehand by telling you it's angled (and therefore by implication not worth anything), or without someone bitching that you politicked to get it.
I'm a fed owner myself, and I feel what you're saying here. I wouldn't want to go back to just handling, but I try as hard as I possibly can to make my handlers understand that it's not about "prestige"... it's about working together to create amazing cards, and it's about having fun within out small community... and that's all that we really need to worry about.
Sometimes I think people lose sight of the fact that this is a game, not a job. It should relieve the pressure, not apply it. SO maybe that's where these Geocities feds have it over us- they remember that a game is just a game, that you don't really go bankrupt when you play Monopoly, that you can just put the pieces back in the box and close the lid, and go out and have a cheeseburger with the guy who just fleeced you on the real estate. Maybe you're onto something.
Post a Comment