vVv GamingWhy Values Live Here
Why Values Live Here
When I came back to vVv, I thought I knew what the mission was: get the games going again, rally the old guard, and rebuild what we had. Gaming was the thing that brought us together in 2007, and I believed if we just returned to that, everything else would follow.
I was wrong, not about gaming mattering, but about what actually held us together in the first place.
Here's the truth I had to sit with: vVv was never just about the games. The games were the occasion. What kept people here, what made someone stay up until 3 AM in a voice channel, what made someone drive across the country to meet people they'd only known through a headset, was the feeling of being met. Of showing up somewhere and being recognized as a full human being, not just a gamertag. The games gave us a reason to be in the same room. But what happened in that room was always bigger than the games.
So when I tried to draw a clean line, gaming over here, personal stuff over there, and politics nowhere at all, I learned something that should have been obvious: you cannot ask people to bring their whole selves into a community and then tell them which parts of themselves are welcome. That's not community. That's curation.
I understand the impulse. I had it myself. "Keep politics out of it" sounds reasonable. It sounds like peace. But here's what I've come to understand: when someone tells you their name, their pronouns, whom they love, or where they come from, that is not a political act. It becomes "political" only because someone, somewhere, decided those people's existence was up for debate. We didn't make it political. We're just refusing to pretend people don't exist for the sake of comfort.
The idea that we can build a community around self-improvement while asking people to hide the parts of themselves that the world already tells them to hide, that's a contradiction I'm not willing to live inside. You can't elevate someone while asking them to shrink.
Trans people deserve to be here fully, without apology. Immigrants deserve to be here fully, without justification. Not because it's a stance or a position, but because a community that cannot hold space for the people most often told they don't belong is not actually a community at all. It's a club with a velvet rope. And velvet ropes have never been what vVv was about.
I know the place looks different from the way it used to. I know some people came back expecting 2012 and found something they didn't recognize. I know Discord doesn't always buzz the way it once did with LFG posts and scrim schedules. I hear that, and I'm not dismissing it. Gaming is still part of what we do, and I want to grow that. But I refuse to treat gaming as the only legitimate way to participate here. If someone shows up to a Town Hall, shares something vulnerable in a daily thread, or helps another member think through a hard moment in their life, that person is contributing. That is participation. That is the community's work.
There's a difference between a space that is quiet and a space that is dead. A place where twenty people genuinely know each other is more alive than a server of a thousand strangers pinging each other for ranked games. I'm not interested in vanity metrics. I'm interested in whether the people here feel like they matter to each other. Some of you do. That's not nothing. That's the foundation.
I also want to be honest about something else. Some people left because the community changed. Some people left because the community started asking them to treat other members with a kind of respect they weren't used to being asked for. Those are not the same thing, and I'm not going to collapse them into one narrative. If someone left because we made space for people they didn't want to share space with, I wish them well, but I'm not going to architect this community around their comfort. Not when that comfort comes at the cost of someone else's dignity.
This is also why the words themselves had to change.
We used to say "Entertain. Educate. Dominate." That was the language of a competitive esports organization, and it fit the era. Domination is the logic of the arena: you win by making someone else lose. But we outgrew that word, because domination has no place in a community built on mutual respect. You don't dominate the people you're trying to walk alongside. So we changed it to "Entertain. Educate. Elevate." Elevation is what happens when you use your energy to lift someone up rather than to stand on top of them. That single word, the shift from dominate to elevate, tells you everything about where we've been and where we're going.
The name changed too. We were Vision, Valor, Victory. Three strong words, but victory carries the same weight as domination. It frames everything as a competition with a winner and a loser, and community doesn't work that way. The people here aren't opponents. They're neighbors.
So we became Virtue, Valor, Vision, and the order matters.
Virtue comes first because values are the foundation. Moral character. Integrity. Treating people well not as some aspirational bonus, but as the baseline requirement for being here. If you don't start with virtue, nothing else you build will hold. It's the ground floor.
Valor comes second because it takes courage to actually live by your values. It's easy to say you believe in kindness and dignity when it costs you nothing. Valor is what it takes when someone pushes back, when the culture shifts, when standing beside someone makes your own life less comfortable. Virtue without courage is just a nice idea you never act on.
Vision comes last because it's what becomes possible when the first two are in place. When a community is grounded in character and held together by courage, then you can see what it might become. Vision isn't where you start. It's where virtue and valor take you.
We didn't abandon the old words because they were wrong. We outgrew them. They described a community that measured itself by wins and losses, by rosters and rankings. The new words describe a community that measures itself by how it treats people, how it shows up when things are hard, and what it dares to imagine for the people inside it.
vVv started as the first LGBTQ+-founded esports organization. The idea that identity is somehow a departure from our roots is a misreading of our history. It's not a new direction. It's the original one.
This place isn't for everyone. It never was. But for the people it's for, the ones willing to show up, be honest, and treat each other like human beings worthy of genuine encounter, this is home.
And we're just getting started.
Jerry
8 Comments
vVv billI agree with everything you said here.
When I think about vVv, the games are what brought us into the same lobby… but they were never the reason we stayed. The reason we stayed was each other. The late night voice chats that had nothing to do with the match. The random life talks after a community game night. The inside jokes that somehow lasted years. The meetups that felt surreal because you were hugging someone you’d only ever heard through a headset, but it didn’t feel strange at all. I still think about some of the folks I met back in Columbus many years ago that I haven't had the chance to reconnect with.
That doesn’t happen in a space built on domination. It happens in a space built on recognition.
What you said about the shift from Dominate to Elevate really hit me. Winning is fun. Competing is fun. But being part of something where people actively lift each other up? That’s what sticks. That’s what creates memories that last 10+ years.
I’ve been lucky enough to have so many genuinely fond memories in vVv — not just from games, but from conversations, support during hard seasons of life, and moments where someone showed up simply because they cared. Those are the things that matter. Those are the things you can’t measure with rankings or LFG pings.
A quiet space with real connection will always be more alive than a loud space full of strangers.
Community isn’t about comfort for the majority. It’s about dignity for everyone in the room. And if someone feels seen, respected, and valued here — that’s not politics. That’s virtue. That’s valor. And that’s the kind of vision worth building around.
Proud to be part of this chapter.
Thanks, Bill. Really enjoyed working with you on the website, and we're fortunate to have you join us as we move forward.
vVv Exodus100% agree with it all, its what you and I spoke about when I took over years ago. You came back and have executed it perfectly and I am proud to be a part of it. What's kept me here 19 years is being able to care for others and share a space with them. Gaming has always just been a tool we used to get together, now its just good conversation, being there for one another, good or bad times. Its an escape, I'm 44 now, will be 45 in September. Getting old does suck but it is a part of life. If I am able to help one person, its worth it to me to give then advice from being on this planet for 44 years. vVv forever
vVv movilusI 100% agree, at surface level restarting vVv to what it was before was just the basic idea that made sense to implement, but at full depth it was not. It takes me back to how I first got here and knew no one. I just wanted to get better at League of Legends when I saw a post on reddit about coaches and a community of gamers. What I found was exactly that, but that was just the start.
vVv was already established and had a long history of esports accomplishments by the time I had joined. The people here were very fun to hang out, were quick to invite me to games and didnt make me feel like I was some outsider. I met a lot of awesome people thru my time in vVv online and in person at events. Some of my most fun times in my younger years was in vVv, both online and in person. Overtime the community just kinda lost activity and became a husk of what it used to be. That's ok tho, all good things are not meant to last forever and sometimes leads into a sort of incubation period where it comes back even better in a different iteration.
Getting older sucks. Society has changed, and not in a good way. There is a lot of toxicity and counter culture pushes to marginalize minorities. There are many ways that people have been divided and we have lost places where we could all go together to have a good time. It has become hard to talk to strangers, and even harder to find those strangers to begin with. We're to the point where if someone disagrees with you on your values or beliefs, they will start calling you names, profanity and other new dog whistles to further foment division. This is the current state of online social spaces.
The direction that vVv is now taking is not for everyone, and that is ok. Because not everyone is worth being here, only those that are able to care for others will be able to share a space that cares about them. The glue that bound this community before was not what games we played or what we did in our MMO adventures. It's the relationships we built that run outside of the games. It's the bonds that were made when we met in person at events. It's the same friendship that we still have even after we all stopped talking to each other and quit playing games together. We now have a great direction and the baseline of this is simple, chill and talk to each other thru the day, audio if it makes sense and games if we have time.
Speaking of time, I'll say this again, getting old sucks. You have more and more responsibilities that create less and less free time. So its very important to know what is worth your time so you dont go wasting it, because you wont get that time back. So this is why I keep saying that if people don't like the new direction, its ok for them to leave so they don't waste their time and our time here. While the discord's activity does not reflect the amount of members in it, I believe that those people are still here because in their back of their mind they still think that this is a good place to be in. They just dont have a reason to engage, whether its because no one is playing games, they have other friends they would rather play with in their own discord, or because they just dont have the time anymore to have a quick chat thru the day. THIS IS OK TOO! If they didn't want to be here they could've left the discord a long time ago. A demotion to regular member is merited in this case, and yea, this is ok, too. If they feel V's are needed they can easily apply back to get them.
With all this said, I just want to find people to talk to thru the day when my immediate friends are busy or not available (which is often). If time and a game we all like align here and we get to play together thats cool, but its not necessary. If we all decide to go to an event or some kind of outing, thats cool, but not necessary. Chilling, making friends, discussing news events, tech or other interesting topics is all I need at the core of this. Everything else is a cherry on top.
So with all of this said. I am 100% in on this like I told you when I first came in as a designer and again on this new journey. I'm very excited to see vVv grow, see myself grow and see the community grow together.
I appreciate this. This is so true "only those that are able to care for others will be able to share a space that cares about them. The glue that bound this community before was not what games we played or what we did in our MMO adventures. It's the relationships we built that run outside of the games. It's the bonds that were made when we met in person at events. It's the same friendship that we still have even after we all stopped talking to each other and quit playing games together. We now have a great direction and the baseline of this is simple, chill and talk to each other thru the day, audio if it makes sense and games if we have time."
This right here
"We didn't abandon the old words because they were wrong. We outgrew them" and along with,
"Here's the truth I had to sit with: vVv was never just about the games. The games were the occasion. What kept people here, what made someone stay up until 3 AM in a voice channel, what made someone drive across the country to meet people they'd only known through a headset, was the feeling of being met. Of showing up somewhere and being recognized as a full human being, not just a gamertag. The games gave us a reason to be in the same room. But what happened in that room was always bigger than the games."
Both of those speak volumes about the individuals in the community and us as a whole. Games were what brought most of us into vVv back in the day, but after those games ended we stayed for the people, the community, the friends we made during those times.
I still think about MLG cbus, and the great time had with great people..so of those people are still my best friends to this day while others faded away which happens as life moves on, gets busier and evolves.
At the end of the day Imo, regardless of what the "hot" game is at the time, we are here for the people, the conversations and the supporting friendship.
I am excited to continue this journey with the great people we surround ourselves with. This is just the latest chapter for us in a long book that has many chapters to still write.
Well said, sir! Thanks for this.