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America's Gaming Elite

Posted by Zonk on from the for-citizenry-and-country dept.

Next Generation is reporting on the World Cyber games, which enter their final leg between the 16th and 20th of September. The U.S. teams have been finalized after the last round of national competitions in New York over the weekend. From the article: "The spectator excitement combined with a high level of competition this past weekend here in New York signals that the era of e-Sports is beginning to mature here in the US, as it already has elsewhere in the world. We have always been the biggest tournament in the world, and it is here that pro-gamers get their start. We are now seeing the kinds of corporate sponsorships necessary to back these players so they can train and compete at the highest level worldwide." Five bucks OGRE 1 and OGRE 2 for the Halo 2 win.

2 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And who sees this sponsorship? by Idealius · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's not hard to imagine future online gaming tournaments which are televised or streamed and the participants have sponsor logos on their game character's skin.

    And I know many a gaming clan who was sponsored by a local business. I'm not sure WHY, but I know of them within my online circles.

  2. Re:And who sees this sponsorship? by fwice · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At least in the counter-strike, the sponsorship is seen pretty prominently.

    When watching the game over HLTV (which lets you pretty much watch the game as its being played, through player pov and omniscient views), you see player names. If the clan/team is sponsored, they try to make this pretty known through their clan tag. IE, in one tournament in the past, Team 3D (sponsored by NVidia) used the ingame tag "3D.NVidia Kim", making it known that NVidia played a prominent role.

    Additionally, I haven't been on gamesnet/gamesurge lately, but in the past, teams with a sponsorship would readily display that info through their IRC channel. "TEAM 123, Sponsored by JOERANDOM(www.joerandom.com)." With 40,000 people on the network, if your team was large enough, you could definately have sizeable traffic just coming from people double-clicking the url.

    Finally, let's not doubt the traffic of fanboys. Take a look at Team3D's website here. There are tons of kids posting / viewing the site who are young & maleable. No doubt, they want to be like their 'idols' and use the same equipment, which is no doubt NVidia / Intel (Team 3D's sponsors).

    Hope that clears things up. It is a lucrative market, and one that's just starting to be addressed.