“Once the dream into action, will become scared.”
FREE TO PLAY, a long documentary, is talking about three professional e-sports players’ fight for a $one million prize in the first Dota2 international invitational. It records the challenges and the sacrifice in the process of the competition.
By:Mingying Guo 134101136 Class1
“The film takes a critical look at the lives of Benedict “Hyhy” Lim, Danil “Dendi” Ishutin and Clinton “Fear” Loomis, three professional electronic sports players who participated in The International 2011, the most lucrative video game tournament to date at the time. The central focus of the film is how their commitment to Defense of the Ancients (Dota) had affected their lives and how this debut tournament for the sequel, Dota 2, would bring more meaning to their struggles.”
The movie is quite generally received by critics. Many people hold the belief that it’s a great documentary. It was truly a fantastic film with a strong story, great pacing, and fun, likeable characters. This was the movie you would want to show your family and friends that did not understand why you play competitive online games. But some people hold a different idea. A net friend dgrmouse commented “One thumbs down for the movie, two big thumbs down for watching movies through Steam.” When people asked why, he said “It was like watching Rudy, but without the football or the good acting.” “Rudy was dramatic, this was dramatized. He asked why the film didn’t appeal to me and I answered; as for whether or not the film deserves praise as “one of the best documentaries?” No, just no. For the unbiased viewer, you’re likely to find something better than this cliched piece on your cable TV right now.”
As we all know, traditional sports can loose loose bones and muscles and keep us fit. Many people love watching sports game on TV even stay up late. But what about the e-sports? Compared with traditional sports, e-sports players always sit in front of the computer. They often sit for hours without stop, which does harm to the eyes and causes an aggravated neck or shoulder. What’s more, the internet is the main medium for e-sports coverage. Because the amount of the e-sports’ audiences is quite few. There are only few news organizations dedicated to the e-sports. As a result, many people don’t agree e-sport is a sport.
The heated debate around e-sports in the internet is never stopped. Some say that e-sports are still in infancy, It’s too early to be defined as a sport. In the long run, developing into an entertainment would be right and proper. They do not support the e-sports to be so serious and became far from the purpose of relax, just like children wear adults’ clothes. Some regard e-sports as chess games. The chess game is playing on the chair and needs players’ high attention. It also requires players’ physical qualities, or players ’attention will decline and fail the competition. Like chess game can be recognized as a sport game. Why e-sports can’t?
FREE TO PLAY did not avoid the pain of the players. Through the cruelty of the e-sports mechanism itself, the things like what players suffered, the very short career, no fixed income and so on had been showed. People can see the present situation of e-sports industry is not perfect. In the eyes of the mainstream media, competitive game is just a game. Although in recent years the saying like “electronic heroin” with the game market scare expanding gradually, but game is still defined as the entertainment. Only the large market shares attract a glance from the well-heeled who hold the social speaking rights.
Whatever, the movie show the shout from the e-sports players who are pursuing their dreams. And I guess time will tell.
