EPT
What makes a match a great match?
Be it soccer, tennis, Starcraft or Dota 2, why some matches have this power of rendering us mesmerized in front of the monitors, controlling our heartbeats and making us cry of happiness or scream in pain? From where comes this power of irresistibly drawing our gaze towards them and keep hold of it so long that we forget time?
People usually measure the quality of a match by taking the teams participating and the production value into consideration. Our particular expectations also usually play a big role when determining which matches we want to watch and which we don't. I'm going to suggest that, while production value and our expectations plays a central role, the sensation of watching a great match doesn't come from outside of the match and the tension isn't produced by the expectation of a shocking event or a decisive turn in the history of what's happening. A classic tragedy like Antigona is interesting for spectators and compells them to watch, even though they know exactly how the play will end. The tension is created not by the questions of what is going to happen next, but by a balanced buildup.
The tension of a great match is determined more by the structures of the match itself than by the perspectives of what is going to happen next. That means the present and the presence are more important than the future in the buildup of a decisive match. The more equal the competitors are, the more stringent and rigorous are the rules to which the players must adhere. A common and trivialized thing like a mistake becomes a tragedy that makes the fans run the distance between Heaven and Hell in a second. The more equal the teams are, the more the forces keep each other in equilibrium, making a surprise result unlikely. A great match has the power of tying the spectator to the present. We live in a world that's obsessed with the past and the future: we're always trying to fix the past, always thinking on the future, and rarely we can stay only on the present.
The tension of a great match consists in the repose of the decision, the absence of the decision.
When we're captured by a great match, we stop thinking about ourselves. We think about something that's too large to place in words and to think in detail. Our thoughts stand still in wonder of something we can't fully understand. At the same time, a great match bring us close to things like omnipresence, eternal returning, recovery of balance, irreplaceability, concreteness, all together and at the same time. A great match carries endless symbolism.
Finally, a great match has the power of bringing people together. Suddenly, because of a great match, you have thousands of new brothers and sisters in a packed stadium, everyone singing with one voice. A great match always remind people of some words written in book 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics: "Friendship is most necessary with a view to living. For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods."
It's worth to notice how easy is to destroy the tension and no longer be part of a great match. It's really easy to dismiss all the story and the happening. Take The Play as an example: the match wasn't even finished and people were already dismissing it's story as a mistake by iG. Nelson Rodrigues, a great brazillian playwright, journalist and novelist call these people "Idiots of the objectivity," as they're incapable of taking part of the moment and are always trying to measure everything with alien notions.
So, in your opinion, what makes a match a great match?
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