Ethics & Social Responsibility of an Empire

The idea of morals and social responsibility hardly ever use to apply to the world of professional gaming.
This leaves gaming's vast communities without their own ethical standards. Gaming culture since the 80's has now evolved into a very real sub-culture, as stated in my previous blog there are 2 types of gamers in the eyes of "business", but the spoken and unspoken codes of conduct apply to the entire community in the eyes of "business".  

How does this relate to Empire Arcadia and being a professional gamer? 
Let me start by giving you 2 very watered down examples of the of responsibilities of a professional gamer.

1. First and foremost you are a competitor, a sportsman and you are expected to conduct yourself as any other competitor would in any other sports.

2. You are the product that your sponsor (s) funds.

http://uk.creative.com/p/headphones-headsets/creative-fatal1ty-gamer-headset

Now, as I stated before Empire Arcadia helps develop players and they expand the gaming community, it is not a sponsorship.One of the ways Empire employs their methods is by channeling information about their brand and events through their players, use of social media sites, and most importantly live appearances at major events. Just as there are 2 types of "gamers", there are also two competitive communities, the underground and the leagues. The underground communities are more no holds bar then the leagues, the atmosphere is much less professional and you will often hear heavy use of profanity in this section of the community and less sponsors. The leagues have a completely professional atmosphere, you generally wont find any rowdy hype behavior here or any heavy use of profanity. Sponsors and other brand name companies are always present at these events. So now the burning question. Why am I mentioning the 2 different types of communities? Because as it stands now regardless of the community that you frequent, if you are a sponsored player or apart of a brand, you must conduct yourself as a professional at all events and even in your social media life regardless of the community that you are present in. Notice in this blog I do not mention Empire Arcadia often, the reason for this is because it is unnecessary, Empire itself actually has no control over their ethnic standards and codes of conduct, they have to conform to whatever the communities desires are. Now that I discussed and gave you a brief idea of how Empire is forced to operate in an ethnic sense, allow me to fill in the gaps by giving you some examples of consequences of failing to abide by just the 2 rules above.

1. In gaming the way people compete is in tournaments and sometimes 2 competitors are good friends and they make it to grand finals. So let's say they decide they will split the first and second place prize amongst themselves and not try as hard to play out their final matches. Splitting pots or intentionally throwing a match each have different but very similar consequences in each community. In the underground community, you will be immediately disqualified from the tournament and of course there are long term hindrances to your credibility as a competitor and your sponsors would also have to deal with you as well. If this was done in the leagues, you would be expelled from ever competing again in the league, which would ensure the loss of your sponsorship. At the very minimum you just might be suspended. The links I provided below will provide you with more details as to what I am referring to.

http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/the-collusion-of-money-drama-and-pride/1100-4709/

http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2013/aug/10/seth-killian-collusion-rule-has-been-used-biggest-tournament-world-years-without-issue-origin-collusion-guideline-explained/

http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/16436/article/fgc-agrees-in-enforcing-penalties-for-player-collusion/

2. Your image means everything to the sponsor or brand you work for. Again, you are a walking advertisement, what you do and say will can effect their sales and future partnerships. Streaming is now a natural process of the gaming world in both communities! You are always in the spot light and depending on your immediate audience you could accidentally offend someone, through use of profanity, how you conduct yourself before, during and after a match. This
generally is not good for your image, your sponsors and always, always somehow hinders future prospects for the accused. Word gets around very fast in both communities! After you view the video below, I would like you to see how you would as a sponsor who had money invested into these players.