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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."
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.
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.
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.
Lots of people watch football. I'm not one of them - as I'm probably with you in "I'd rather play than watch" but examine the reasons why millions do watch football: it's to see players with bags more skill than they have playing a game they know, really well. This applies equally well to games like Quake/RTCW etc. I'm sure you realise that it isn't really about "[clicking] really fast for endless hours in front of a screen" I've played Q2 4v4 in 'amateur' leagues in it's heyday and I found seeing better teams, and better players than me play the game is actually watchable and quite entertaining.
:-/ yes - I for one quite like watching the demos of really good players, and hell, if rendering technology continues to advance as it has, soon movie producers wanting a CGI action film, can just tart up a demo of RTCW IV and add some voices :))
The amount of skill and level of commitment necessary to play with the big boys in these games is immense. We had, for example a pretty handy Q2 team, but we knew we would never be on a par with the best teams becuase non of us had the time necessary to perfect the map strategies, communication drills and other choreography necessary to take control of a game and win at that level. We had a plan for each map, and we practised once a week for a few hours (usually just the map that we were due to play next in the league). We'd play friendly games on that map gainst teams we knew, to try out the strategy, and practice any set pieces we'd come up with. This activity, however, was nothing compared to the amount of practice a top level team would need to be putting in: hours of practice every day, until every trick jump was 100%, every set piece was timed down to the last millisecond and so on. It's bloomin time consuming! (Not to mention the cost - you can't play competitively at in these competitions with a pile of junk for a PC. These days this isn't such a problem for Q3 based games as pretty much any new PC can run it OK but it used to be a bit of a hardware race.
I think some games lend themselves to the spectatot thing more than others. QuakeIII for example - has no "plot" as such - the game is the game and exists for it's own sake - this sort of thing makes good spectator material. RTCW on the other hand, is more like a war movie. UT2K3 goes all out to appear to be a "sport" complete with excitable commentator!
To get back to the plot though