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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.
Photos.
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.
No sig
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.
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.
Gee, that sounds an awful lot like my time working in game development.
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
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.