Gamers Who Play for Money

Ventriloquizt

I was listening to a radio show about 7 or 8 months ago, and the topic was about professional gamers who play for money. Has anyone heard of this before? I believe it was the Kim Commando (sp?) show on talk radio, Saturday afternoons. It's a Tech talk show. Anyhow, they were talking about gamers who travel around and attend competitions and play for a money jackpot. Does anyone have any leads on where I can find an article or something about this? I would like to do some research on the idea and how life as a gamer might turn into more of a profession as time progresses. I'm basically looking for material so I can write a paper on this. Thanks ALL.

tracertong

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Gaming

Dhalphir

Move to Korea. Outside of that, you haven't got many options :P

Wonder_Hippie

Every time I hear about MLG, I hear about basically everybody in it is a giant flaming prick douchebag. The major personalities, anyway. Real conceited, take their "sport" too seriously.

Anyways, yeah, either get obscenely good at Starcraft real quickly and move to Korea, or find a team and play Halo with people that routinely type say, out loud, "lol newbs."

Randall_Flagg

fatal1ty is perhaps the most egregious example of american style professional gaming

korean style professional gaming, however, is awesome
it is basically the same as being a super good football/basketball player in the US, but with less physical exertion

YodaTuna

Wonder_Hippie wrote: »

Real conceited, take their "sport" too seriously.

To be fair, it's their job. That's what they do for work. To eat. We do it for fun, yea. But seriously, how fun do you think it is playing Halo 8 hours a day every day and working on tactics? Boring... I wouldn't want to play a game every again.

Fatal1ty is kind of a douche though. I mean they got him to write the blurb for Shigeru Miyamoto on the Time top 100 person list and all he did was talk about himself. No one cares what a professional FPS player has to say about Shiggy.

Ventriloquizt

Thanks for the lead to the wikipedia link and the MLG reference. That is exactly what I was looking for. Does anyone know if there are any other "groups" or "clubs" that are trying to form a copycat of the MLG? Thanks again informative friends!

Ventriloquizt

P.S. Thanks for the other lead/reference to "Fatal1ty". There are a lot of self centered pricks in this world. Someone has to fill the roll, then we can step back and say..."like hell am I ever going to be like that!" Cheers all. Game on

Demicore

I'm a (inactive) WC3L admin. That's the highest level Warcraft 3 league and usually the top 5-8 teams are made only of players who play games for a living.

Western progamers are quite the drama queens at times but most of the time they're fine, while asian progamers are pretty much always very mannered. The biggest douches usually are "semi pros", they try very hard to make it to the pro level and somehow think the best way to get there is by taking the most disc-wins possible and overall being as big a dick as they can. They rarely achieve their goal. (and I'm saying most douchebags in the competitive community are semi pros, not that all semi pros are douchebags, far from it)

Just my 2c.

NickTheNewbie

Games aren't fun to play anymore when it becomes that competitive.

bonerjones

I kinda play games for money: gtamissions.com & bonersgames.com

made over a grand so far, and the thousands of comments make for good readin' when I'm bored at work!

Greeper

NickTheNewbie wrote: »

Games aren't fun to play anymore when it becomes that competitive.

I'm sure they are, but in a rather different way. The sports-like fun of competition rather than the video game fun of... playing video games.

stigweard

Absolutely it's fun. There is an immense satisfaction to outmaneuvering and out thinking your opponent, especially when they completely outclassed you just days before.

Kalkino

I like the idea of progaming - I haven't played a sport properly for years, but I do play games, so I just find it more interesting to watch really good gamers do their thing. That is part of the attraction of a LAN, and games with spectator mode.

I would have loved to watch some of the pro BG/Arena/Raid teams do their thing in real time, if that had been possible on WOW.

bearsuit

YodaTuna wrote: »

Wonder_Hippie wrote: »

Real conceited, take their "sport" too seriously.

To be fair, it's their job. That's what they do for work. To eat. We do it for fun, yea. But seriously, how fun do you think it is playing Halo 8 hours a day every day and working on tactics? Boring... I wouldn't want to play a game every again.

Fatal1ty is kind of a douche though. I mean they got him to write the blurb for Shigeru Miyamoto on the Time top 100 person list and all he did was talk about himself. No one cares what a professional FPS player has to say about Shiggy.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/time100/article/0,28804,1595326_1615737_1615521,00.html

Yeah, what a faggot. :roll:

I'm surprised that most of the talk in this thread has been about Halo and not about Counter-Strike / the Quake series, games that have had "pro" teams and players since the beginning.

UncleSporky

A guy I know has lived off of WoW for months farming rare items and gold and selling it to the bigger gold distribution sites. He only recently got a real job. He said it really did turn into a job to where he couldn't play it for fun anymore, he just sat for hours grinding. At one point he actually had guys working under him. Note that all of this is against the TOS so I wouldn't recommend it, but he got along well for a while there.

There are also a lot of people who legally have jobs in Second Life. Benefits, pensions, everything. Some of it is good craftsmanship and programming, making products that look good and work well (not just the sex stuff, for example one guy does realistic gun reproductions). There are also those who are land barons, buying and selling property just like you would in real life. I assume it'd be really hard to break into that, though.

Speed Racer

I've played with a few "pro" smash bros. players before.

They tended to have me dead the second my invincibility wore off.

Inzigna

YodaTuna wrote: »

To be fair, it's their job. That's what they do for work. To eat. We do it for fun, yea. But seriously, how fun do you think it is playing Halo 8 hours a day every day and working on tactics? Boring... I wouldn't want to play a game every again.

Fatal1ty is kind of a douche though. I mean they got him to write the blurb for Shigeru Miyamoto on the Time top 100 person list and all he did was talk about himself. No one cares what a professional FPS player has to say about Shiggy.

I used to be one of the better players in Gears of War in the country [granted, Singapore doesn't have epic gamers, but still], and my team and I used to play the game for 12 straight hours over and over again [it was during my school break, about a month long, so I could really blow time on what I thought was fun], and it simply got tiring, not even fun, just tiring.

Eggplant Wizard

Where exactly does the money come from?

Malkor

Eggplant Wizard wrote: »

Where exactly does the money come from?

Sponsors.

edit: And it's not quite 'professional', but I watch replays of Company of Heroes and listen to shoutcasts of good games. I've played against top players featured on replays and on the shows, it's kind of fun to try and pick apart their strategies and styles after watching them.

Jinx

The big circuits:

Championship Gaming Series
Major League Gaming (console only)
Cyberathlete Professional League
World Series of Video Games
Electronic Sports World Cup

The best known individual players in the world are mostly FPS PC players--Fatal1ty (he's actually nicer than you think), Stermy^, Fojji, Toxjq, Birger, etc. There are some big names in the RTS world too, but I don't really follow that scene so I only know of Tossgirl. After that you get into teams--Pandemic, Complexity, Team3D, 4Kings, and so on.

The tournaments are mostly funded by sponsors. Nvidia, Intel, Dell, and others are really good about supporting professional gaming and put a lot of money into providing prizes for these professional events. Some players have sponsors as well, who pay to send them to the big tournaments.

...that's about the best nutshell summary I can give. I'm sure I'm missing a circuit or two, especially European ones, and player names. But it's a weekend so I don't care. My brain doesn't have to be working right now.

edit: oh, and it's interesting to note that CGS players are actually salaried at $30K/year, plus bonuses for performance.

Cyrixd

Eastern progamers make a very good living off games. I don't know exact figures, but the team MYM salaries it's players at 100k or more, and depending on performance they've been known to rake in up to 300k (I think it was Moon who did this).

subedii

I think I'd quickly tire of gaming if I had to do it for a living and start taking it really seriously. Plus gaming is heavily reflex dependant, something which you lose your competitive edge at quite fast. I remember one of the South Korean pro-gamers mentioning that once you hit 25 it's all downhill from there so you need to make the most of it while you can.

This was for Counter-Strike IIRC. I'm not sure whether it applies as much to games like Starcraft but I recall hearing that the pro's average some ridiculous number of mouse clicks per second, like 5 or 6.

stigweard

The bit about reaction time isn't exactly true. It does slowly peter off after the mid twenties into the mid 50s where it starts to drop significantly, but there are more factors than the twitch to take into consideration. The more options a person has when they have to make a choice reaction increases the amount of time it takes for them to react. Mental preparation, experience, and physical training can help you keep an edge for longer. Mental domination of your opponent can make up for slight deficiencies in reaction time. The better training you have, the less you have to think about the best course of action when you are faced with a split second decision. Physical training will help keep your body in its peak performance range.

notagame

I have a friend who got paid to make 3D models of S&M stuff for Second Life.... Yeah...

Even more disturbing is that I think he would actually enjoy making them.

InfestedGnome

A couple of years ago I was really into WC3 and TFT so I hung out with the people at WCreplays.com on vent alot and talked to some professional gamers like Grubby, theyre all really cool people it seems