The Martlet

Game-play commences, Matt Guze’s focus sharpens, rivaling that of any athlete. The thumbs and forefingers of his hands move with fervent intent across the buttons, executing elaborate sequences to produce deadly combos. Guze conducts his character with precision as he stomps his opponent and cinches the match.

“Yes we’re nerds,” he said. “We play video games, we play in tournaments.”

Among astronomy and math textbooks, energy drinks, store bought sushi, Japanese ice coffees and organic carrots sit the boys from South-Island Smash, UVic’s competitive gaming group. They are locked in an all-out battle with one another at the consoles set up around the room, playing their game of choice, Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros Melee.

Guze and the club’s other founders have been playing video games competitively since 2006. Created in Febuary 2007, South-Island Smash membership has increased to over 20 regular players and their numbers continue to rise. Every Wednesday evening the members swarm room A104 in the Social Sciences and Mathematics building. The sessions are for having fun and socializing, but for some gamers, they are also practice. Twice a month the group holds tournaments where the prizes are a percentage of collected enrollment fees and bragging rights.

The majority of members agree their ideal would be to reach a skill level on par with Ken Hoang, a professional gamer and contestant on Survivor Gabon, who is the current international champion for Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Melee. The mention of his name drives the group members into frenzy. Francis Travers, in-particular, expresses his admiration.

“Ken is a total nerd,” he said. “He’s one of the best Smash players in the world. Last year he earned hundreds of thousands by just playing tournaments.”

In competitive gaming, ability isn’t envied, it’s revered.

“If someone is good, everyone would be fighting to play that person,” said Travers. “It’s like if you’re playing basketball and Michael Jordan comes along, you’re not going to not want to play him.”

Guze, however, professes to greater ambitions.

“I always tell myself I’d like to do something useful with my life,” he said.

Guze is the epitome of video game nerd. He’s even had a four month co-op job Electronic Arts (EA), working on the coding for an off-shoot of an NHL series video game (a confidentiality clause prevents elaboration on the project). But the software engineering student aims still higher. He wants to do something that makes a difference and changes the world, “something that not just people who play video games can benefit from.”

Within the realm of Smash Bros., players may be classified into two categories. One group plays casually with friends at parties and get-togethers, while competitive players adhere to a fixed set of rules. The latter aim at improving the game, so they can perform better in tournaments. Guze likens this to the difference between people playing street-hockey with their neighbours and people who play in any sort of league. All of the members of South-Island Smash proudly play as competitive players.

Travers notes that there’s a fine line between being a competitive player and having a video game addiction, however. The other group members remain skeptical, saying that they may or may not have fallen victim to addiction.

“Then you’ve never been addicted,” said Travers. “If you were addicted, then you’d know. I was addicted to Ragnarok Online for months. It sucked, but I’m good now.”

Guze acknowledges that the addiction exists, but says that people who become addicted to games “because they have no life” are not the type of people who show up regularly to play against one another with South-Island Smash.

“Since Smash Bros is not an online game, if you want to play other people, you have to find them,” said Guze. “I know that people look down at the fact that we play video games at a deeper level than most, but you can take that to sports as well — people who play for fun and people who step it up and play for the NHL. My pet peeve is when people say that people playing video games have no life.”