: I like playing games with the community around here because the typical
: "screaming at the TV" mind set is usually absent, as well as the
: serious need to win. Playing is fun, but winning or losing, I don't care
: very much. Maybe the occasional joking rivalry can be fun, but trash
: talking past that and I'm not down.

Pretty sure this night was supposed to be competitive. Maybe I missed the memo that said "this is totally just to have a good time win or lose let's just hug it out and let Schooly buy the first round."

: I'm not sure how that worked out on the TSD side last night, but being on the
: HBO team I had to take my head set off, and turn my TV down to super low
: to keep myself from getting a migraine from all of the yelling.

My irritation was the lack of communication in the first place, so, that really didn't help.

: By the end, I just wasn't really playing anymore, not because of the getting
: beat, you guys have some great moves, but because of the screaming and
: hollering on the HBO side. I haven't played with Malagate in I don't
: know...years...since I was under the DanteThePoet gamertag, but there
: wasn't enough quiet time for me to say a passing "Hi how've you
: been?".

Again, I guess I missed the memo that this was tea party night.

: I'm going to go ahead and say that last night was definitely not a very good
: representation of HBO.

Considering that we had to pull in friends and randoms (non-HBOers) to even complete the team (and then continued playing even when we had 7 against TSD's six - my fault, I admit... forgot to close the party), no, I'd say it wasn't a good representation.

: Thanks for setting it up though Schools. Maybe next time Team HBO can aspire
: to being a little less loud and unruly? Might help our gameplay skills
: too, communication is totally useless when people are just screaming out
: orders.

I'm guessing this was aimed at me. Again, I got irritated with the complete lack of communication. There were a few things said (hard to tell who was saying what in-game without any sort of on-screen indicator, so I'm not trying to point fingers in any specific direction or away from any specific person here), but my point is that it's really hard to even put up a fair fight when hardly anyone is saying anything at all. I mean, I'm all for having a good time - it's a social event, sure. But there are a half dozen other nights during the week that are more geared towards a "hey how have you been" sort of thing. The one time there is something more competitive, that really doesn't help too much...

Sorry if I was short with people on Wednesday night (I certainly was). It's just that it's a little (okay, really) irritating that HBO couldn't even muster up more than a team of a couple of HBO members plus their non-HBO member friends. I mean, heck, even that showed that people treated this more like a social event than as something semi-competitive for once. And let's not even talk about having to pull Nart over to our team for the first game. Good thing he was such a good sport about it. And, well, let's be honest - he's a good portion of the reason why we tied that first game (YES SCHOOLY IT WAS A TIE).