To Juice or Not to Juice

Just recently it has been revealed that superstar baseball player Alex Rodriquez (A-Rod) tested positive in 2003 for steriod use. It was at a time, in baseball, that there was no penalty for failing such a test. Clearly steroid use will not make a poor player into a good one, but with improved strength it can enhance his ability to run, hit and defend. Steroid use is deemed to give a unfair advantage and have since been banned from baseball.

My teammates and I are facing a similar moral dilemma. To 'juice or not to juice'. Recently, with a great deal of pride and excitement, we created a new franchise called 'The Blackout Kings'. Things started okay for the most part as we maintained a .500 record. This past weekend, however, things took a very bad turn for our young franchise. "KCBoyd" and I went on a 10 game losing streak. Losing one or two is fine and is somewhat expected, losing 3 or 4 in a row gets annoying, and when we got to the 5 or 6 game losing streak it became a matter of: we aren't quitting until we win a game. Well, guess what, we shut it down before we won and after we lost 10 straight.

The problem is not that we suck. Quite the contrary, we are quite good. In fact, at one time we were in Division 9 (with our old team) and were about 40 games above .500. That was until the "99 glitch" came to surface.

The '99 glitch' is a way to exploit the game which allows you to boost all of your attribute points to capacity--99 points. With your shot accuracy and speed at 99 and your foot speed equally as high it is nearly impossible for 'non-juicers' to catch you and it once you blow past the mere mortals, it is rare that you would ever miss the net or not be able to deke out the goalie.

One can spot a 'juicer' often on the rate at which he can skate both with and without the puck and your inability to check him off the puck. We are to the point with our club team that if we suspect juicers we will quit within the first 5 minutes so as to not incur the loss. The juicers, however, are now playing 'normal' through the first 5 minutes of the game so the opposition doesn't quit and then they light you up after that.

All four team members were online last night and the slaughter-fest continued. It has now gotten to the point where it isn't even fun anymore. A game which the four of us really enjoyed playing both alone and together has been spoiled. In the past it seemed that 1 out of every 4 game were juicers, but now it seems that 1 in every 10 games are clean players.

A suggestion to 'juice' last night was initially scoffed by me, but I am having second thoughts. Afterall, it is just a video game and the point is to enjoy it, right? It isn't enjoyable in the state that it is in at this point, so in order to level the playing field and possibly enjoy the game again, one must juice to keep up, right?

Fortunately there is no random drug testing performed by EA Sports, and it seems as though more and more people are 'juicing' so why not right? Is it a moral issue when it pertains to a video game?

I would imagine KC Boyd, Thresher559, and Gasmask18 and I, themaker03, will be having a closed door team meeting to discuss this matter.