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Pro Gamers Can't Scrape By?
An anonymous reader points to a Wired News article discussing the harsh nature of professional gaming. According to the piece, "Professional gaming is in its infancy, providing few players with the means to live without any other job. Still, the competition for those sponsorships is cutthroat." Even for the elite team covered in the article, there are issues: "Game Point lost in QuakeCon's Wolfenstein finals, which cut their prize money down to $12,000. It was disheartening for the team, particularly since five members said the time constraints necessary to maintain this high level would most likely force them to retire." So, is pro gaming really semi-pro gaming? A player points out: "If you work for eight months and you divide up your hours, the amount of money that you make is minimal."
It was never ment to be made money on playing games, so don't whine when it doesn't.
an oxymoron.
What about the Olympic GAMES, or the X-Games, etc. Besides, what makes computer games any different than chess. There are professional chess players who live off it, its only inevitable that computer game players eventually will. The only problem is that there is only one game of chess, while there are a myriad of computer games. Therefore while one can be the best chess player in the world, a computer gamer can only be say, the best Quake , UT, or Warcraft III player in the world.
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Is gaming such an interesting spectator sport? It's more interesting to play than watch someone else. And if you want to watch someone else play well you can do that using your own screen and some server on the net. If someone gets promotional dollars out of games it's going to be the game makers not the players.
And what about the players themselves. Can you see yourself (or anyone) worshiping someone for their their ability to click really fast for endless hours in front of a screen? It's all about personalities and their ability to promote products.
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Games are suppose to be fun to play, a way of exscaping reality.
Not a way of providing yourself an income. I thought this sort of thing when away when the so called dotcom boom fizzled.
Time for people to relise that there's more jobs out there than ones that involve sitting at a computer, and guess what, they do pay enough to live on.
Easy... it's not an spectator game. It's fun for the players and that's it. You can't fill an amphitheater of people paying $15 bucks to see five or ten guys duke it out in a Quake deathmatch. You can't sell pay-per-view rights for the same reason.
Why not? Maybe it's because people somehow admire the performers at some level, and a computer game screams neither physical fitness/skill (sports) nor brain power (chess, etc).
It will always have it's admirers, but so will horseshoe tossing.
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Going to some bigger named lan parties, the guys who win are mostly the local clans who practice and play together. When youre a lone player going to the lan, its wise to join up with a good team. Most games are squad/team based, so normally only local teams can all afford to go.
BTW, for all those posts about "Professional Players" are a joke, dont understand what it takes to become a professional player. Learning the maps, tactics, weapon techniques, positions, roles of each player, timing, etc. Large amounts of time. Thats the problem with some new multiplayer games, by the time you buy it, there are people with months of experience that knows all the tricks. This drives off lots of new people.
Remember the tank rush in c&c, that made many people give up on the game.
Seriously, I would love to get paid for playing paintball with my friends too. Just as for quake players, there are paintball torunaments on which you can win some money, but not more than petty cash once divided up among your team members.
The key, if you want to get paid more, is to make your sport fun to watch for ordinary people. If the general public thought it was as cool to watch paintball as to watch football, they would pay admission etc to come and see it, and some of that money would surely find its way to the players. But until someone figures out a way to attract the people to come watch, noone playing paintball will get paid much more than what all competing teams throw in as admission fees to the competitons themselves.
And the same goes for Quake:ing. Except for that atleast the computergame tournaments gets some money from hw-manufacturers atleast.
Sorry to break anyones bubble, but Joe Bob and his brother will never even consider going to see, even less pay to see, a couple of quakers gib each other.
Last I heard, virtually every MMORPG had a thriving black market for auctions of characters, items, and whatever else required effort to produce in-game.
I have absolutely no doubt that gaming on a "professional" scale is incredibly difficult, takes hours on days on weeks on months on years of practice... Is far beyond %99.999 of the populace's capabilities... But COME ON... Anyone who honestly believes that they "should" be able to earn a full living playing video games is completely fooling themselves. There are two parts to any business transaction - there has to be someone receiving the money, and there has to be someone willing to PROVIDE the money. Exactly who are they expecting to provide the money? Spectators? As people have already pointed out, nobody wants to buy a ticket to watch people play Quake. Game companies? Why should they? The company made the game to sell it to you, not to give you thousands of dollars to play it for a living. And no, it's not good "advertising" or "promotion" or whatever. The only people who really care to watch "professional" gamers playing game XYZ is people who already own game XYZ and are already really into it. Maybe it's a harsh realization for some, but yes, if you want to earn a living, you have to work for it. Meaning an actual job that someone is willing to pay you to do. Stop acting so surprised that you "professional gaming" isn't making you rich or famous, no matter how good you are.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
That probably kills people. What sport didn't start out paying people peanuts? Baseball, basketball, football players in the 20s-50s all had to take a summer job and a second job and maybe a third job. Granted, these are different times, but shouldn't be that different in terms of a sport whose popularity isn't topped out yet...
People should do it because they like it, not because they can make money off it, and it'll ended up alright in the end.. the Pro Skateboarders aren't doing so bad anymore..
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
whenever my friends are over, we get the BIGGEST laughs out of "arena" on G4... its really a terribly funny show... it has two teams competing at 3 different games.... usually mechwarrior, unreal tournament, and some random console game.... but it cracks us up, because they get the biggest bunch of lamers to play on there! i've seen people walking into walls in these games.... its just sad.. and the player's personalities? its a sliding scale, they can be boring and decent players, or flamboyant llamas. if this is the kind of gamer that qualifies to be broadcast on tv, then its truly a sad state of affairs. for the record, though: if it were presented in the right way, i would DEFINITELY tune in to watch professional gamers on tv.
The first is a game you can download and train with. It is an okay animated slighly odd to use fight game. The second is lot less clear but the ads for it make it looks a bit like the total war series. Lots of formations of soldiers fighting it out. (nice animation)
But yeah I think that current games make extremly poor TV entertainment. But then again quake? That is like a drunk punchup compared to a thightly regulated boxing match. Just try to make a running commentary on a quake match
Player [34_the()_[t53]] just picked up the gun. oh and got fragged. and he is back and he frags that guy and he gets fragged.
So though luck guys but it looks like you have the following options
So in short I find this article to be in the trend of "Hey we made millions in the dotcom days. But now people seem to expect us to make real products". Yeah cry me a river. Oh well at least they are not aimbot cheaters.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What could help turn them in to real spectator sports (if its not been done already - I haven't seriously played any games for a while so might have missed it) is to add special "camera man" players, who unlike in the physical world can be invisible, indestructable and able to move, fly and/or see through walls - with a competent commentator and good production crew an exciting spectacle for the crowds can then be put on in real time (rather than just in the after-game playback/review mode, which have been in games for a considerable time)
Obviously there are problems in doing this in a way which doesn't clash with cheat-prevention when players are distributed across the internet - but in an organised event the players screens will be being closely monitored anyway, so they cannot use that kind of cheat, or be fed information from spectators in the crowd who can see the other teams positions.
Golfers made very little money playing pro at the turn of the century. So did baseball players. Pro gamers are just going to have to do it for the love of the game for now. When (or if) more people start watching, then the purses will get bigger.
And when it happens, I'm sure people will complain about how it's all about the money now, and pro gamers should be thankful that they get to play video games for a living and stop whining about how thier agent could only get them $20 mil.
that govts support their greatest athletes in order to win for the olympics, therefore once they're on the team they don't need a job.
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Making $5.50/hr flipping burgers is still better than spending 200 hours leveling up a ultima online character to find an ultra-rare piece of furniture and sell it for $25.34 on eBay. Not to mention the social cost. And no, teaming up with your clan to kill Foozle the Magic Dragon in the Caves of Whogivzacrap does not count as being social or contributing to society in any way.
The truth is, all games were once like this. And I don't mean checkers and badminton. I mean hockey and basketball. What changed? Marketing through TV and merchandice. This could very well happen to gaming, and in fact it already has in other countries like Korea. Check out this interesting article that mentions a dedicated channel for video gaming from Wired.
Some of the problems:
1. Game turnover is huge. Imagine if football looked and played completely different every 2 years. Nobody's playing Quake II tournaments anymore. New sports always take time to spark interest and gain acceptance, and moving from game to game essentially leaves the competition stuck in "new sport" mode.
2. Games just aren't that great to look at. As a spectator, everything just kinda looks the same. Until things get to the point where character animations are fluid and never the same twice, it will always look very mechanical to the spectator. No move ever looks truly special.
3. No athletic ability involved. Don't expect video gaming to ever get beyond the bowling/darts/pool/poker level of interest - basically, late night ESPN fodder.
=profit!!!
bwahahaha ahahahahaha I've got you now pesky kids!
Many Thanks,
Luke
Gee, that sounds an awful lot like my time working in game development.
Getting paid for playing is one of the realities I'm having a hard time reconciling these days. I work a full-time job, study to improve myself and earn technical certifications, and am contemplating getting an MBA to try to get my job level above the "available for off-shoring". These guys are complaining that risking the loss of their job to play RTCW isn't balanced by the amount of money they're making.
...i'm gonna get Troll-ed for this, but frankly I'm tired of people expecting huge returns without having made any kind of societal contribution
Do what we're all doing, quit yer bitchin', and get (or keep) a real job. There are lots of gamers who complain that succeeding at their games doesn't have as great a return as athletes playing basketball or baseball or football. Well....of course not - nobody's buying tickets to see you do your best one-shot-one-kill from across a map....try North Korea if that's what you want...
It's entirely possible that a charismatic individual - intelligent, charming, photogenic - is going to turn that around and make the PGL a viable cash cow. If so, I take my hat off to you, sir/ma'am.
Your claim that your choice of leisure is entertaining is self-validating - of course you think it is! It's when you can convince a sufficiently large enough audience that it's entertaining to watch you play computer games - that's when you can start whining about money.
"The prize money is $3,300 dollars a person if you win," said Tahir Zafar, England's representative. "If you work for eight months and you divide up your hours, the amount of money that you make is minimal."
Sounds like you need a JOB!
If you manage to find some way in : )
Our players have had salaries for over a year. We have also had great success in selling access to special futures on our web site (called SK Insider). Last but not least we have a merchandise concept which also works great.
Pro gaming is more than here.
Andreas "bds" Thorstensson
Schroet Kommando - Winners of the $200,000 CPL Pentium 4 Summer 2003 Championships.
http://www.schroet.com
Boo freakin' hoo. Get a real job.
I play golf and I play Battlefield 1942. Desert Combat mostly, but still. :)
I bought my golf clubs at uBid for about $100. I've spent maybe 30 more dollars on cheap golf balls over the past 2 years, and my local City course (Which is well kept up, mind you) charges me less than $20 for 18 holes.
So, 130 bucks to get started and 20 bucks to get out for quite a few hours. I figure in about 4 years (70 rounds or so) I'll start getting near 1500, and that's including the 130 I spent on the offset.
As for my computer, I spent about $500 on it (And did NOT build it myself) with an additional $70 for a 512 memory stick and got a GEforce2 from a friend for free. But really, what does a GEforce 2 cost these days? So we'll say $600 bucks. Now, I pay $20 a month for my internet connection (Soon 35, yay to DSL!) and any new games I want are usualy 30-50 bucks, depending on the discounts and how long I want to wait. So, saying I buy 2 games a year, that's about 3 years before I reach 1500, or, considering I've "already" spent the 600 on the rig, about 2 years for the total to come to 1500.
So, where did this number come from?
Oh, and FYI my machine runs every game I've bought, up to and including Battlefield and GTA3, and I assume, when I get my DSL going, I will be able to play them all online (Well, not GTA3
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
There's nothing worse in multiplayer than an opponent that knows the game through and through and studies it like a Buddhist monk in training. The kind that lives and breathes a game and can't accept defeat at the hands of anyone. The kind of person, in short, for whom a game is much more than a mere game. Those are the people who take all of the fun out of it.
Okay, cheaters are pretty bad too... but what is cheating a reaction against?
Computer games are recreation. People play them to have fun, to kill time, and to make friends. People shouldn't take them so seriously. The minute a game becomes more than a game, to the point where you become so sincerely delusioned that you believe you can win millions playing it, is the point you need to step away and re-evaluate your so-called life.
I don't see computer games becoming an ESPN-caliber spectactor sport anytime soon. For me and many others, it's rather boring to watch other people play games. I could see if it were your map, your mod, or whatnot - but for a bunch of random people, it's not very interesting. Hollywood faces this same problem in the design of video game-based movies (though that ain't the only problem). The truth of the matter is, video games are active entertainment. The player is engaged, mouse in hand, and trying to outwit his opponents, paying attention to his surroundings and sound effects. That experience is what sets video games apart from other forms of entertainment. Compare against sporting events or movies, which are passive experiences, you watch the action unfold before you with no control over what happens.
Some people enjoy that. Personally, I'd be hard-pressed to watch a three-hour-long baseball game from beginning to end without falling asleep, and likewise to a Quake/Unreal/Warcraft/Starcraft/whatever match.
It will eventually happen, all over the world there are beginning to be shows dedicated to video gaming and this will in time spin off to online competitions/tournaments and sooner later broadcasted competitions.
The concept that is not "entertaining enough to watch" doesnt really apply I mean seriously have you ever watched a baseball, football, basketball game in which your favorite team is not playing?.
Watching any game is boring. What makes you interested is that YOU want someone to win you need a "hero" (sort of speak) then the game suddenly gains dramatical value.
Thats why pro gamers are hustling right now, no one knows who they are and no one actually cares (except other gamers) with the right promotion and the right skills to show off, a pro gamer could actually get very far (even today!)
ie. Ive never seen the guy but I know "F4tality" is probably one of the best quake 3 players in the world, he got a gold medal in last year cyberolimpycs, and he was in a tournament in gamespy a few years ago where everybody who could frag him, would make some hard cash. (and I think nobody did)
why do I know that guy? because someone cared to show me his impressive game stats/skills and over time Im now convinced the guy is extraordinarily good! (besides he has a "name" that is easy to remember) Thats exactly what pro gamers need: promotion! for them (not just for the games or graphics cards they use)
People tend to admire what they cant achieve and I can tell you this. If I gave people money for fragging me in an online game I would be broke and pretty deep in debt by now.
Would I pay to play against "F4tality"? Im not that fool. would I pay to see him play? I think I actually would.
Go ahead MOD my day!
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The olympic games, the x-games, and professional sports are SPECTATOR sports. People want to watch it because it's exciting. The money comes from the fans. Nobody wants to watch a batch of geeks staring at their monitor while twitching every so often. Nobody wants to watch others play the game when they could play just as easily. That's why there is little money. Make it viewable, make it exciting, and then the money will come.
Only if you don't live in America.
I do, and I doubt I'm the only one who does. People would want to watch for the same reason we watch professional athletes, we CAN'T do it ourselves. Sure most wouldn't care to watch people at the same level as ourselves play games but it is plenty cool seeing people pull l33t moves in games that we suck too much to pull off. So you to you saying we could play just as easily I say nay.
Trust Your Technolust
TV sponsorship for tournaments, etc. There's a slight hitch to that when you're envisioning it with online games...
Anyone can have a TV. I could have my TV on whilst playing in a Half-Life tourney and track my opponents.
Now, with a stadium and perhaps a closed arena (i.e. you can watch the game, and maybe the players by webcam, but they can't see the big screen) it would work... but that involves having a dedicated locale, among other things.
did nobody else find that amusing?
Look! Germans!! shoot!!!
this sig has been discontinued.
All of this stuff is just begging for someone to pick it up and market it to a spectator audience properly.
Once the installed player base of any given title/series of titles gets big enough, I think pro-competitions will start to snowball in size and value. I also believe that it will only get bigger with time.
The major problem (as I see it) is televising and distibuting the content in a rational way. If you are watching an 8-way deathmatch in progress, I think there is real skill (as well as a technical challenge) in finding a way to edit and broadcast the match in a digestible format. I don't think giving viewers the equivalent of an in-game "spectate" option would cut it.
For example, in professional sports, you have a huge amount of oragnisation in place to cover any given event. Cameras located in any number of locations, on-site editors, directors, etc. Also, the people putting the coverage together for the viewer have an understanding of what they are trying to depict, and how the flow of the game works so (to an extent) they can anticipate where the good shots will be and (hopefully) make the passive experience of watching the game as visceral as possible.
In other words, I think you need a dedicated games broadcasting outfit (perhaps as a spin-off of an existing broadcaster) to do this. I also think (if you do it right) it would be superb television for gamers. You would need informed commentary, good camerawork (even if virtual) and proper editing and direction. Packaged up correctly, I think it's completely saleable and an attractive sponsorship opportunity.