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US Companies Sponsor Pro Gamers
Baddox writes "Professional gaming, which has for some time now been a popular venture in Asia, is finally starting to get some attention from big US companies. Teams for competitive shooters like Counter Strike are getting sponsored by large corporations like Johnson and Johnson. The article poses the question, "Is 'frags per round' going to be the batting average of the 21st century?" "
That kid from Wizard rules over all of you.
stuff
Of course companies like Johnson and Johnson are sponsoring video game tournaments. Video game players are in the perfect demographic for most marketing efforts.
Bradley Holt
Is 'frags per round' going to be the batting average of the 21st century?
No. Our generation might be geeks but I think, for myself at least, the beauty of online gaming is not quantity but quality. That is pretty much the same for football for me too... it's the big plays that matter and make a game worth watching. It's awesome to watch a game where some professional gamer goes on a crazy rampage, doing all kinds of freaky/impossible moves and stuff, and that is the main draw to those events (as well as the celebrity factor), not the stats. With baseball, stats have to be the draw because the game is very slow.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I'm not trying to troll here, but this sort of thing has been going on for years. Intel and other big names have been sponsoring top clans and individual gamers for a while now. A lot of people have small computer businesses in their towns sponsoring their clans and stuff too. It's very common for internet cafe's to sponsor teams as well. I'm not sure why this is being reported as a "new thing" because it's most definately not.
So now we'll see Unreal skins with "BUDWEISER" and "MARLBORO" all over them.
And just think of the TV commercials. "Red Bull, the official drink of the 2006 Counterstrike World Championship". Or "KY Brand Lubricant - The official masturbatory lubricant of the 2006 Counterstrike World Championship".
The world of Slashdot readers is populated with a high percentage of people who are actually interested in a professional gamer's KTD. The rest of the world is not.
And it's not just because the rest of the world is still populated primarily by the sort of middle aged and old folks who still don't understand computers. Go to any high school, any college campus in the modern world and most of the students care about rugby, or football, or what have you. They will grow old continuing to care about such things, and it will not be a generational change. This will always be fringe.
Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
They are testing a new pill that treats epileptic seizures.
They are hoping that enough people start watching the games they sponsor so they are start going into convulsions, then BOOYAH! J&J to the rescue!
Profit!
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
The word sponsorship itself can mean an array of different things.
Right now, pro gamers only get sponsored for things like travel, clothes, computer parts, food, etc. They may even get a salary, but this salary more often than not is not enough to live on.
This of course is much better that nothing, but still, computer gaming has a ways to go before it catches up to "real" sports in terms of sponsorship money and recognition.
FTA: "Manufacturers keep putting out new games and game consoles, obsoleting the old."
Someone's editor forgot to grammarize the article.
I don't think anyone's marketing budget for traditional sports is going to be cut. Sports like basketball and football are not declining in popularity among the demographic they are trying to reach.
Gamer sponsorship is a drop in the bucket for these companies (like Johnson & Johnson). I don't think televised gaming is going to be big in the US for a very, very long time. South Korea, however, as well as China in the near future, is a market where sponsorship could pay off quite well, especially for companies thathave low brand recognition there.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Kind of off topic but nonetheless...
I've been playing first person shooters for years now, and I have convinced myself that I'm pretty damned good at them. I read all about these gaming leagues and such, but the question is, how do I join in one to see if my skills are as good as I think they are?
There has to be a way to 'work up the ranks' and I've found myself amazingly good (yes, I'm gloating) at games like Quake3 or Unreal Tournament 2004 -- twitch based games. I want to get online and compete in deathmatches to see how well I do, but I know a *lot* of people out there are hackers and such, so I want an arena in which I can have an even playing field.
That said, so I don't get modded OT, J&J is just getting money into the realm of gaming -- it doesn't really matter whether or not it's online gaming now. It's just something people watch, and something J&J can use to market itself. It's business, and it always is. Intel doesn't sponsor the gaming clans out of the good of their hearts. Well, Intel does it because they know they suck compared to AMD in gaming. Oh well... money talks!
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Shall we also send the phone sanitizers?
What possible ill could come of that?
I've recently had my eyes opened, by this article, to the hidden costs of advertising.
My own executive summary: Advertising makes products more expensive, because corporations that advertise their products sure as hell don't pay for the ads out of their own pockets.
Meaning: Any money going into gaming (and advertising therein) is going to jack up the price of the advertised products. So if I buy those products, I have to pay a few elite whoring twitch wizards whether I want to or not.
My personal conclusion: I'm buying even fewer games than before. (Gives the finger to (a small subset of) Corporate scum)
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
Perhaps I am in a minority, but I actually enjoy watching a well played frag fest.
:D
Seriously, sometimes I've made myself a nice, warm bowl of soup and maybe a muffin or a crepe and I can't be bothered to actually play the game. So I'll just log into a large server and spectate the match.
I've actually often wished that there was a fragcaster who would fly the free-cam around to catch the better action from above.
I know it's common amoungst my friends for more people to be watching the computer screen than the Television. I mean, these online games are the only thing that I can throw around jargon with the boys about. American Football I like occasionally, basketball a bit less and baseball and I had a serious falling-out after the strikes.
This is wunderbar! I see these future "cyberatheletes" as something of a fusion between athelete and actor - maybe the better word is "performer". After all, what's more fun that watching someone get pwned (that means "owned")? I'll tell you, watching someone whine whilst recieving the pwnage - that's what
I'll have you know that Johnson and Johnson's baby rash powder is required equipment when you're sitting on your backside for an 10 hour gaming tournament.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
... too many CounterStrike jokes ...
"[Microsoft]BillG (Terrorist): HAX! We can't handle that."
"[Halliburton]VPCheney (Counter Terroris): Why are the Ts killing hostages? Admin kick them!"
"Hey [Warner]EltonJohn is camping again!"
"[USA]Dubya has been kicked for having a high ping."
(he's slow)
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
Simply from the fact that our society praises the biggest, strongest, and most beautiful. Just because bowling is popular doesn't mean we recognise the best. I think gaming will be the same where it will have a following but never such fame as football, baseball, basketball, or hockey. I highly doubt computer gaming will ever have a Brett Favre, Michael Jordon, and Barry Bonds that commentators talk about 24/7.
What many people don't realize is that the internet effectively allows a small group of people that are worldwide to be effectively communicated to by an advertizer.
So...even though the world of multiplayer gaming may be a niche population, the net effectively increases it's value to advertizers because it's easier to reach them through common connections between consumers...in this case the common connection the game they all play.
The same population in the 80's playing a game would not be viable because of how spread out the players are over the world and how disconnected they are from each other.
Here's my theory as to why the idea of "pro gamers" will never catch on. In today's society, sports stars are pretty much celebrities. Technical skill helps, sure, but nowadays the average joe watches sports usually because of either team/city loyalty (sports have a leg up of about a century in this respect) or they enjoy watching a certain athlete perform. One of the biggest reasons that people are drawn to elite athletes are their ability to perform at a level that is pretty much untouchable. No one sitting at home ever seriously thinks they could have gotten a couple more yards than Vick did on a scramble, for instance. This is really not the case with "pro-gaming." Being a semi-competitive CS player for a couple of years, you really get the sense that if you were still in high school or did not have a fruitful real life job (as is the case with the vast majority of "pro gamers") and could afford to spend 8+ hours in front of a monitor playing games you could do just as well as the "elite" players. Having seen players rise to the absolute cream of the crop of gaming in a matter of months justifies this. Another thing is the personality, maturity, and charisma these "pro gamers" exhibit, which is pretty much none. Real sports are a great way to build social skills at an early age, and most elite athletes have a personality (for better or worse) that is at least interesting, can make conversation and feed the media, are athletically fit, and in general project an image that is marketable, above all else. The environment of the pro-gamer seems to work against all of these qualities. All in all, sports succeed because they are marketable, and they are marketable because people can either relate to or are impressed by them. I think any sort of professional gaming has severe defecits in these areas and will not be seeing any sort of mainstream penetrance anytime soon.
Look, I've probably fired more rounds than many people, having qual'd as a sharpshooter on three weapons in the Army, but I think IMHO that frags-per-round is just a temporary thing, in that gaming is already showing signs of getting bored with the preponderance of FPS.
My guess is pets per hour, or here-boys-per-hour, in Nintendogs is likely to be a more useful stat over the next few years, as gaming - again, as it always does - moves on to the next best thing.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Simply put, for a competitive activity to catch on as a spectator sport, it must be physical and have a good deal of action. There are orgainsed competitions for all sorts of things, from chess to tiddlywinks to rock-paper-scissors, but people won't tune in unless there's action. Even golf and bowling have more action than watching someone peck at a keyboard or twiddle a joystick.
There's also the issue of charisma and looks. Athletes are successful only partly because of a certain celebrity appeal caused by physical good looks. Most of the "pro" gamers I've seen photos of have ranged from totally disgusting-looking to drab and average... I've yet to see one who could give, say, Anna Kournikova a run for her money. It could be because the practice involved with being a pro gamer prevents them from paying attention to their looks, or it could be that hardcore gaming just attracts a certain "type". I won't speculate because I genuinely don't know, but let's just say that I won't expect a "Girls of Pro Gaming Swimsuit Edition" at the newsstand anytime soon.
Finally, (and please note that I'm a moderate-to-hardcore gamer myself), competitive/pro gaming just isn't something that most gamers care about. I get most of the mainstream gaming mags (EGM, Game Informer, PSM, etc.) and gaming tournaments and such aren't given much coverage. Most gamers would rather read about hot new games coming out than some dude in Peoria getting such a high score in Pac-Man that the motherboard melted. Pro gaming attracts a certain crowd, and probably won't go away anytime soon, but will never find an audience as a mainstream spectator sport.
Andrew Lenahan http://www.starblind.com/
Screaming from the highest Mountain Top: "Look at me now! I am the Champion of the UNIVERSE! I've got my own gamer clothing line, (No need for washing, play 24 hours a day and smell fresh as a rose!) my Own Cologne and Perfume, (No need for showering, smell fresh as a rose all hours of the day)" and my own line of shoes! (Nike and Reebook are still trying to work on the fresh as a rose thing here! First one there gets to have me sponsor it!)
I can't wait until I can get my next pair of cross trainer shoes sponsored by little Tommy Frag Master of the Online World 2006!
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
"I use Q-Tip brand cotton swabs by Johnson and Johnson because they dig out 34% more earwax* than store brand swabs. My game has improved since switching to Q-Tips as I can now more clearly hear the CTs sneaking up to rescue the hosties."
"Ever since we equipped our BF2 Medics with Band-aid brand bandages from Johnson and Johnson, our team recovers more quickly compared to when he would just lick the wounds."
* - Q-tips should only be used in the outer ear to prevent impaction of wax or damage to the eardrum.
In researching this post I learned that Q-tips were originally called "Baby Gays". It's true! Check for yourself...
They need to change a few things and I will be interested:
1. Have new maps that players are not familure with, it goes from running a pattern to "thinking on your feet". Now that's exciting.
2. Have the players feel pain. Hell yeah, hook up a few electrodes and when they get shot/bashed they feel some pain. This is what made paintball exciting to me; knowing that bad play leads to more then just "Oh shucks, I got hit".
3. Overhead map views for the spectator. It makes it less confussing as to the tactics of a well balanced team.
4. Base some stats on the real life player. Have them run and see how fast they go, make the online player do the same. Test for accuracy and how accurate a guy is with a glock when doing a full out run away from a target or better yet see how well they aim their 15 pound H&K G-3 after running a quarter mile while wearing full gear including a vest.
5. This applies more twords all FPS games and not just tourney play; have weapons fail. Granted it doesn't happen too often IRL with decently maintained firearms but it's adds an element of surprise as your brand new P90 stovepipes in the middle of a 3 on 1 firefight.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.