22 West esports division

22 WEST ESPORTS DIVISION

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Written by Caroline Smith

Here at 22 West, we try to support each other in all our ventures. We are that kind of closeknit, supportive, collaborative friends. And as a video producer, I really do try to support my friends here, even when their ventures and ideas are truly worthy of ridicule. So very worthy.

You see, one day I walked into the office, ready to do some very complex, grueling video producing. Who do I see but my coworker and occasional friend, Duy Mai, saying that there’s big things happening in the office today, which could mean everything from there’s a bug in the office to Dwayne Johnson came in and suplexed someone.

It was then revealed to me that the big thing was a new branch here at 22 West, 22 West E-Sports. Now this was involving all the biggest nerds in the office, so of course my immediate response was to point and go “HAHAHA.” But I have learned recently that pointing and laughing can come off as mean and rude and hurt my friends’ little feelings. Or so I have been told by my boss. So instead I decided to be polite and hear about their little team.

First Duy told me about the game he plays. He said, “Caroline it’s very complex. You might not get it, but it’s beautiful and layered and makes you really think.” I sat behind him as he booted up his computer. On the screen, Minecraft. I tried to tell him that I have at least heard of Minecraft before, but he kept insisting it was a super underground indie game that I had not heard of. While playing, he started singing Minecraft parodies that I’m pretty sure he made up himself. He sang “Marvin’s Room” by Drake but it was about dying and losing all of his inventory in a cave. It kind of made me wanna grab his skull and scramble his brains around, but I had to refrain. I had to try to be nice.

Then, News Director and little creature Reyn Ou informed me that they are also on the team. I assumed that they would also be playing one of these competitive games, like a first-person shooter or whatever, but then they revealed that they speedrun Animal Crossing, just Animal Crossing. I didn’t believe them at first, but then I watched them furiously trade bells for five hours and collect all the fish in the aquarium. I had never seen them so stressed or hyper-focused on what they were working on–which is saying a lot because that is often their natural state.

Magazine Art Director Caroline Bae had also gonegamer. I sat behind her at her desk to observe, but I think I was in over my head. She had a complex set up on her screen, furiously clicking and highlighting boxes in front of her. I saw the title of the level was “Class Schedule Fall 2023.” She kept switching to different tabs while also writing stuff down in a notebook. Honestly, this seemed like the most complex one and I really couldn’t wrap my head around it.

At this point, I was starting to see their side. That maybe gamers did have something going here. I decided it was time for me to see their side of things. To play one of their games. Now Duy, Reyn, and Caroline were very excited by this and sat me down in front of the brand new gaming setup in the office. It was very high end, full flatscreen, like all the consoles, and a big pc that sounded like it was taking off. I don’t really know where they got the budget for this, especially since I was struggling to get an SD card for weeks, but you know, I’m trying to stay open. Now what game to play… I had many options avail able to me. I was being told to try a shooter like Call of Duty, or a team based game like Fortnite or Spla toon, but none of them spoke to me. I wanted to play something that I could connect with.

That’s when I saw, the one. Piglet’s Big Game for the Nintendo GameCube, based on the 2003 film Piglet’s Big Movie, soundtrack famously by Carly Simon. I used to play the game as a child, but also would never get very far because the premise of the game used to scare me. In the game, you play as Piglet, the loveable little coward of the Hundred Acre Wood. Little Piglet has a big task ahead of him: to enter his friends’ dreams and expel the demonic heffalumps and woozles terrorizing them.

To hold the GameCube controller in my hands again, hear the whimsical rumblings of the woods, and to see the fiends that once terrorized me and meet them in a hellscape. They had their control over my mind for far too long and it was time for me to rise up against them. Now I was the bane of their existence. I was their destroyer. The heffalumps and woozles had their time, and they had to now tremble in fear of me!

I beat the game finally, and it felt great. I finally saw what these silly little gamers saw. Maybe they weren’t as strange and off-putting, but understandable and potentially normal. Who knew that gamers are people too.