#prettyprime

The main question that this blog emphasizes is, what do video games do good for the world when it comes to entertainment and jobs? To help me answer this question, I watched a touching documentary by SpiffSinister on YouTube titled, From Out of Nowhere: The History of Obey SMITE. This documentary had us follow the complete history of a professional gaming team, Obey Alliance – SMITE.

To start, a little back story. First off, Obey Alliance is a gaming organization that hires professional gamers in certain games to play under their name, just like any other sport. Since Obey Alliance is a very popular brand, there are many different Obey teams in many different games, such as League of Legends, DOTA, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and pretty much any other game with a professional gaming league. However, for this post, I will not be focusing on any other games instead of the game SMITE, which the documentary is based around. SMITE is a MOBA, which is an acronym for “Multiplayer Online Battle Arena,” where you choose different Gods from real life mythology who all have different abilities. The goal of the game is to destroy the enemy’s titan, or basically what is known as their home base.

The reason I chose this documentary is mainly because SMITE is near and dear to my heart, and I have been playing the game for over four years now (see pic below). However, that is not the only reason. This documentary does an excellent job in explaining how this team evolved through the years, how they have trained to be the best, and how they grew to be the team they are today. It emphasizes the main theme of that any kid can become the best at what they do, whether it be video games, or any other job or hobby. The documentary also emphasized hope, because Obey Alliance were complete underdogs for the longest time and keeping that hope alive through failure made them become one of best in the future.

Caption: As you can see, looking at my top seven games played on Steam, SMITE is at the top of the list. It has engulfed a lot of my life, with me clocking in 1,201 hours playing the game to this date.

The documentary was very credible for a majority of reason. First off, who the video was created and posted by on YouTube. SpiffSinister was the account that posted and created the video, and funny enough, SpiffSinister was a major employee at Hi-Rez Studios, the company that created SMITE at the time of the video’s upload. So, because of this, SpiffSinister would have all the necessary inside information, like knowing the professional players and seeing the professional game’s first hand, so he is a great source to trust. Another great first-hand source in the documentary were the professional players interviewed. The main two players that SpiffSinister interviewed were Nathaniel “Ataraxia” Mark and Emil “PrettyPriMe” Edström, who have both been on the Obey Alliance roster since the very beginning. They both talked about the history of their team in great detail and explained how they developed throughout the years. Because of these two sources being the main sources used throughout the documentary, it makes the whole video extremely credible.

The documentary used a variety of different types of elements to suck you in. The main element that was used was pathos, because the documentary makes you feel for Obery Alliance’s struggle to gain a world championship win under their belts. It emphasizes the struggles brought to them in different ways, including explaining how they get destroyed in some games and lose horribly and team drama that forces new people to come and go from the team. It also emphasizes the word “hope”, by creating a symbol for Obery Alliance that the interviewees bring up multiple times.