In part, it is a combination of all of this...well minus the part I mentioned that I'm good at it. I'm still bad on my own. When I first played Grifball back in 2008 (I think that's when it was) I was hooked almost instantly. I had my reservations about it at first; the fact I was constantly getting betrayed by my teammates was rather annoying and I always wanted to score, so when I didn't score I got annoyed at that as well. As the first few years of playing it went by I started to realize that scoring wasn't everything and betrayals were going to happen. Betrayals still frustrated me, but only for the reason that they happened when we needed a carrier kill at our plant...and I easily would have had the kill.
Outside of these small things it was a blast to play, especially if you had some friends to play with who knew how to play. Which back then I only had a few and when we would lose a game they'd want to play something else. At this time in my "Halo life" I was still really only wanting to play CTF and SWAT. Yeah I know, SWAT who plays that? I just couldn't "let go" of regular shooty Halo until Grifball came along in one of the double XP weekends and it was the only thing I played that weekend. After some amazing games during that time, I was hooked from there on out. I still played other gametypes after the double XP weekends had ended but I was really looking forward to when Grifball would come back.
Shortly after the release of Reach I discovered this place called GrifballHub which was a community revolving around this strangely addicting gametype. They also hosted their own league for teams to sign up and compete against each other. When I had first found out about the GGL I was instantly thinking "I must sign up for this!!!!" I decided against signing up as I was just unsure if I would have the time to dedicate to a team. Skip ahead to last year and I try to form my own team...that didn't go too well so I figured I was not meant to play in the league. But alas my stubbornness continued and I thought this past Spring I would try to look for a team for that season. After a quick conversation with some good friends over Twitter....I somehow landed myself on the Aces. Currently I am in my third season on the Aces and I really have no plans of leaving anytime soon.
Enough about my history with Grifball though, the community that surrounds this sport (yes I called it a sport) is by far what has kept my interest in the multiplayer side of Halo. I've tried to be a part of other Halo communities focused on multiplayer aspects of the game and quite frankly, since I lack a super competitive personality I never exactly "fit in" at these other sites. Sure they were friendly and had "recreational" goals, but I never really felt that it was a truly laid back environment. In my three seasons of playing in the GGL I have never had as much fun in other communities.
Since I have enjoyed being in this community so much it got me to thinking "hey it would be cool to help out a little in this community". I still would like to do that...somehow, but quite frankly I still know very little about Grifball in general. Plus my time is starting to dwindle as the rest of my life carries on and I don't know how much I could dedicate myself to do anything extra. Perhaps at some point I'll step up and see how helpful of a community member I can become; but for now, I am happy just being a player on a team.
On a quick closing note, I'd like to drop a mention to the old GrifballHUB Highlight Frenzy. Remember those? Where you'd see league players pulling crazy awesome moves on a group of randomly matched matchmaking players. I remember when I thought it would be cool to do stuff like that and eventually make my way into one of those Frenzies. I bet you can tell where this is going can't you?
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