An open letter (err.. video) to SportsNet about Fan Expo
On Friday, just as Fan Expo Canada was really kicking off for 2015, SportsNet.ca posted some coverage from the con. While at first I thought it was kinda cool that SportsNet was covering something a little outside of their normal realm, it also made sense, since they’re moving into the eSports field, a field dominated by folks pretty heavily entrenched in geek culture.
The content of the coverage was fairly lacklustre: a collection of pictures of people playing video games, some celebrity autograph booths and fans in cosplay. With each photo was a caption, the quality of which ranged from uninformed to condescending (a caption posted beneath a proud looking All-New, All Different Jessica Drew/Spider-woman cosplayer read, “I honestly don’t get this one”). As a geek and cosplayer myself I have a pretty thick skin; I’ve had my share of negative comments directed my way in my lifetime. I wasn’t personally offended by any of the captions (I can’t speak for those pictured), but what bothered me the most was how lazy this article came off as. For example, there was an image of a cosplayer in a bang-on costume of Caitlyn, a character from League of Legends who wears a Victorian-inspired outfit, complete with top-hat, and wields a huge steampunk sniper rifle. The caption read, “Did the Mad Hatter ever carry a sniper rifle?” Imagine how a passionate sports fan would respond if their hero were misidentified just as lackadaisically by a reporter who didn’t take the time to find out what they were writing about. I’m not calling this out as some sort of geek-cred contest; there are certainly many characters from all the thousands of things that fans are passionate about who I wouldn’t recognize, but League of Legends is one of the top eSports franchises. If SportsNet is going to put their foot in the eSports arena, they are going to need to up their game.
Geek culture and eSports go hand-in-hand, and while some sports fans are geeks, and vice versa, the sports fan and the geek each have their own communities, customs and even their own language. One thing sports fans and geeks definitely have in common though is that they are passionate, and I’m hoping if SportsNet is really serious about their eSports coverage, they’ll make the effort to be just as passionate and do it right. …and hey, if they need some help, they can reach out to geeks like us here at Geektropolis for a little guidance.
Update – After temporarily removing the article from their site, SportsNet.ca has re-posted the article Original SportsNet story and clarified a few of the lazier points and removed any condescending captions and replaced them with some fairly neutral (and some even positive) captions instead. We found some screen caps of the original Original post here.
