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The World of Competitive Gaming
cphilo wrote to mention an article in the AP about the world of competitive gaming. From the article: "Welcome to the basement lair of the 24-year-old Wendel, the man known and feared by aficionados of multiplayer games across the globe as 'Fatal1ty.' If you deign to think of video games as simply a childish pastime, consider this professional game player. He collects a six-figure salary, has his own brand of gaming merchandise and travels the world to compete - regarded by those in the know as one of the most gifted players of his kind."
"If you deign to think of video games as simply a childish pastime, consider this professional game player."
At least the Baseball players who learn to cash in on a child's game aren't Coke-swilling computer nerds. There are all sorts of professions that are traditionally for kids who don't grow up, and it doesn't mean we have to respect them for doing nothing productive for society other than to provide the workers with something to gossip about.
-/trolling done.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
He is a freaking CAMPER!!!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
...he still lives in his *mom's* basement
And the girls... you can't imagine the girls these professional game players get in addition to that six figure salary.
... western society takes one more step toward the grave.
You do know that this site is a news aggregator , don't you? News are not governed by the laws of quantum dynamics, they do not collapse when first observed. No one's forcing you to read it again. Lastly; if you do not like slashdot; don't let the door hit you on your way out.
Sincerely
Anti Troll
Not to take away from the guys accomplishments but will a time come when we all but do away with the need to press the flesh?
Why do we need to gather and mingle in the face of the web, the very essence of which is near instantaneous communication at a distance. This reminds me of those who need to print out hard copies of material in order to study it properly.
Do we gain or lose signal to noise when we gather to celebrate our heroes?
I keep a few fundamental books at hand's reach but other than those and the turn over of new material taken out from a library, I'm much more comfortable and able to take from an e format than from dead tree material, and, I can learn more from another at a distance than when merged in a touchy feely mind meld.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
How does this further the OSTG agenda? Let's get some more anti-MS and pro-Google going. Oh wait, you already did post about Google today. Ok, move along.
But still a nerd with no sex life. (presumably)
"Gaming is so much fun and so relaxing," he said. "I don't see why anyone would want to stop playing."
Yep, no sex life is confirmed..
Yes I am still very jealous ;)
I very much doubt he's the best gamer ever as they try to make out. "Pro gaming" is based on abusing bugs, short cuts and general lamer tactics. The type of people who bunny hop around maps using the rocket launcher to frag you as you spawn, collecting all the weapons before anyone else can get to them.
I don't care how much people get paid, I refuse to play with people who abuse these bugs (and trust me, they all do. It's become socially acceptable) and I outright refuse to call any of these people "pro".
I like muppets.
...its not a sport, and you're not an athelete.
Just saying.
Another professional gamer, this one only 7 years old, is LiL Poison.
Now this is a child prodigy. Pbbbt...that other kid only got to college by 8.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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A real-life Player of games (no, it's not an affiliate link...). Of course we're missing some of the Culture yet...
I recommend the book, btw, but then most of the 'M' banks (the sci-fi stuff) is pretty damn good...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Not another "pro gaming is on the rise"-article. Just because a handful of people can live of pro gaming doesn't mean this is something that is even close to big yet. More money is being diverted into pro dart an pro bowling than pro "eSport". "eSport" suffer from the great disadvantage of not having a set of fixed rules (what game is popular this week?), not having any real arenas to fill to have "real social mass appeal" (you can't cram a few thousand nerds into an arena and actually watch a real game). Sitting in your bedroom watching a replay of a game on your monitor does not cut the cake.
/lars
"eSports" today is just marketing from game companies and CPU/GPU-manufacturers. Keeping the dream of teenagers around the world alive that "one day they can make cash from what they like to do best".
You want to make money? Computer gaming is probably the single most stupid thing you could waste your time on!
Ok, theres a user here on slashdot called Fatal1ty
What are the chances now that this guy is the real one, or its just a troll using his name?
How much respect does a name get you, and how would an online site decide who was the real Fatal1ty?
(I only ask this after taco's recent ponderment about WoW banning his account)
liqbase
Everyone is going to attack him so I'll add some perspective
1. How many people on earth can do this successfully? [hint: think of a dream career in the NBA]
2. Think about WHY they are paying him?
3. If gaming is so successful why does he have a clothing line?
4. What does he produce that we need in say a recession?
My point is careers like this are not sustainable. While the getting is good it's probably a dream. But once people stop buying the games in droves or someone 1% better shows up he's done for.
So hey congrats, if you can sucker people into paying you for playing video games, then all the power to ya. But I wouldn't say it's a good career choice if you don't want to worry about what you'll be doing in 10 years [hint: 43 yr old gamer == teh lame]
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I mean, come on! Who else doesn't want a 6 figure salary playing games? I'm shoot for a 5 figure salary playing games is possible. :D
Ok I admit it is a bit sad making a living from playing games, but if you could do it im sure you would, i know i would! it must beat working in IT support...
I want to see a face-off between him and fps_doug and teh_ownerer from http://www.purepwnage.com/.
Remember the vast majority of people will do nothing but ruin there lives trying to make a professional career out of playing video games at this stage in time. Only a handful of reflex freaks are going to be living it up and there livelihood will depend on maintaining those skills. The vast vast vast majority of computer geeks are better off getting a programming job or something. You have more chance of making a career in the NBA, at least then a few thousand people make huge money as opposed to a handful making good money as is the case with this "career option".
To him I am like an unimportant background character. The one which looks impressive, but actually never manages to hit anything with the level 1 weapon he managed to gather.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
I mean, if he stepped into a pot of gold...Hey great for him. I've been playing videogames since my folks brought home an Atari 2600 back in the day. (Yow....That's like 20 years ago) Now, I'm more ancient than this fellow and I certainly can't make a living at gaming even with 20 years under me.
I can see it now...Sitting in the Guidance Office, looking the counselors in the eye, and stating that college is not need because I am leet at CounterStrike.
Thank God the kid's investing instead of Viper-crashing.
Scott
Sewer maintenance versus nude centerfold makeup artist for instance. This still doesn't beat the latter and given my lack of interest in playing games anymore doesn't even beat my day job of doing telecom support. Your milage may of course vary. It's just sad that there's going to be ten thousand boobs out there who point at this and say, "see? I'm not wasting my time!" Yes, you and that kid who couldn't sink a shot if he were dunked holding the ball are both wasting your time. Banking on the longshot and oddball is not where success is at. Nevertheless, I have no ill will towards this oddball so I hope for his sake and happiness that his success continues.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
I am extremely envious that this person is capable of doing this for a living, and making a good amount of money for it also. I am aware that professional gaming is no walk in the virtual park, but still it's something that I would absolutely love to do.
And for all the people who complain about it not being a sport, or it not being fair, you're all just as jealous as myself that you can't play computer games for a living...
I'm just saying.
C17H21NO4
Yeah, okay. Whatever happened to Thresh, who preceeded this kid by years? Pioneer? Please.
This fellow is far too full of himself, in part because there's so many fanboys lurking in the online community that just envy everything about him. But realistically, anyone could win these tournaments. He is nothing special -- he just happened to dedicate more time than most to become exceptionally good. So what does it require to win? An insane amount of time spent in front of the computer, and a little bit of insanity for good measure.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
why he chose Fatal1ty over W3ndell.
For those interested, the CPL World Tour Finals are currently taking place in New York City at the Web2Zone Cyber Center. $500,000 is being handed out, $150,000 going to first place.
MTV is following the event and you can watch the matches take place over the Internet live via MTV Overdrive.
MTV will be showing a segment featuring Fatal1ty on Wednesday (11/16) entitled "15 Minutes With... Fatal1ty" @ noon. Then on Saturday (11/26) at 8PM (EST?), the CPL World Tour Finals' match will be rebroadcasted on MTV in which he is expected to be a part of.
To anyone curious as to what professional gaming is about, I highly recommend watching a match or two.
I found this very funny.
I remember reading about this in a magazine with a bunch of other computer-y type articles on an airplane about 6 months ago. I think it was in Time. I also distinctly remember the magazine saying "The '1' in his name gives him extra 'street cred' in cyber space". Yes, they said that.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
I was a competitive quake3 player, in the clan stickmen, and used to play with fatal1ty before he won his first major tournament. I would travel to Kansas City and LAN with him for a few days, and what most people don't realize is that he is truly obsessive about playing. He would put in 15 hour days 7 days a week, exericise to keep in good physical shape, and study the game, and more importantly, it's players, incessantly. Any time I had an advantage over him in a 1v1 map, we would play it over and over and over again untill he had learned all of my patterns.
Few people appreciate how much passion he has for winning.
Maybe that someday, you will fall in love with someone.
From one of those pictures it certainly looks like a CRT. Is it still accepted that for the absolute best gaming display you still need a CRT?
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For every guy like him that makes tons of money as a gamer there are plenty that waste their entire lives on games. I think Slashdot tends to have rather one sided articles that glorify gaming. I mean, I play games for fun, and I'm certainly no Jack Thompson, but gamers tend to just shrug off problems with gaming, mainly addiction as stupid crap and glorify the uses of gaming beyond proportion so in comparison their arguments sound just as stupid as Jack's.
Is there a FPS game out there that has done a good job of keeping hacks out? I play Return to Castle Wolfenstein, based on the Quake 3 engine, and there are plenty of players who can see through walls, and others that seem to have a supernatural sense of aim. I hear even the punkbuster enabled retail version has been hacked.
It seems trusted computing may help this some in the long term, but I find it hard to trust that I'm not wasting my time fighting an impossible opponent at times.
If you've ever seen the movie about the Tour de France, Stars and Water Carriers, you'd know they drink alot during the Tour. In fact, Tommy Simpson had a water bottle full of gin and tonic when he keeled over during the tour.
Merckx, the greatest racer ever, smoked supposedly to get his lungs ready for the indoor track season.
the term athlete, quite literally, is from the greek meaning "one who competes". I suppose you could go with the most narrow of definitions, and say that athletics is only track and field events... but really, anything can be a competition, and sport is supposedly a noble form of competition -- it is organized and to be played fairly. So really, you could have organized staple competitions where atheletes come together to enjoy the sport of competitively assembling documents... which would be about as exciting as watching some guy play with his joystick.
If I want to watch a sport where the athletes can smoke and drink while participating, I'll stick to curling. Now that's a sport! There's nothing like listening to Women's Curling on tv... just a bunch of girls moaning and yelling "harder! harder!".
Wierdly, that Johnathan Wendel looks alot like the American showboat in that Curling movie, Men with Brooms... and somehow, that sort of seems like the kind of sport competitive gaming would be like -- guys in flashy outfits, stobelights, smoke machines, loud disco and a lot of atitude duking it out at a big event in a mall. Yeah, I'll stick to watching other sports.
http://www.purepwnage.com/ I don't know if other people know about it, but this is pretty good stuff, and fairly relavent to the topic. It's a web distributed show (but they only put a new one out about once every 3 months) that follows the misadventures of "The Ownerer", a l33t gamer who pwns n00bs. It's worth a look, if nothing else for a good laugh.
I grew up best friends with a guy who is now a 'pro gamer.' He was always a very social and quite popular guy (moreso than I ever was). He was also a computer geek, and he would join us at LAN parties for many years. At one point, he simply decided he wanted to get better at gaming (after losing constantly to other friends of mine who would compete at the national level on occasion). And that's it. It isn't some inherent ability he had; he just practiced every night for hours and hours. After graduating from high school, he moved in with another friend and played games like Quake 3, UT, and so on, drinking 6-12 cans of his favorite soft drink every day. Oh, and he also dropped out of college after two weeks so he could focus on gaming.
Now, more than five years after graduating from high school, he's becoming a Microsoft certified something-or-other and is having a tough time getting a job, but he's still hanging onto the dream.
eSports also suffers from the stigma of being crushingly boring for any non-gamer to watch for the most part.
I agree that this is currently the case; however, I also think that much of that can be remedied.
For example, take football. I don't play football. Unlike a lot of people, I don't follow football. This makes a typical football game on TV completely boring to me. To help deal with this, the sport's presentation has been highly tuned. There are rapid transitions, never focussing on one thing for too long. There are sportscasters that act excited, to help get you in the mood. There is a running stream of patter and anecdotes going on, interesting factoids, and an explanation of what's going on. I have no idea what, beyond the basic rules of football, someone should do. The sportscasters explain this.
As a result, while watching football may not be my favorite thing in the world to do, it's certainly a viable form of entertainment if there's nothing else on.
Another problem is that it takes people a while to appreciate the higher levels of play. You can't do this with the current video-gaming world, because each new game that comes out changes the rules. You have to have a basic game created, one that keeps being playable for many, many, many years. Sure, you can change the graphics and whatnot, but the rules cannot change aside from minor tweaks (such as those that are occasionally made to football). I don't see any reason that someone couldn't create such a game.
Next, the rules have to be fairly simple. Football is already, IMHO, too complicated for someone to just drop into, and it is still much more straightforward than most of the video games out there. Chess is an immortal game because it's easy to learn. Age of Empires is just not going to work for televised viewing. Also, simple rules make it easier to ensure that your game has no "easy" loopholes or ways to win. Complex rules, sets of fixes upon fixes for loopholes in a game, mean that "cheap" ways to win probably exist.
Next, the game has to be visually pretty (and probably improve each year). Note that visually pretty does not mean technically impressive. It just has to be attractive to watch. Perhaps really good art and design work is important. You have a large number of people watching who have to be entertained not by *playing* the game, but by merely watching it and appreciating the strategy -- they aren't experiencing the actual gameplay component.
Next, I think that team-based play is probably important. In the world of lucrative professional sports, everything is team-based. Football, basketball, soccer, hockey, baseball...fans like being able to speak with knowledge about how well a team is doing, what the trades of various players mean, and so forth. Watching one random guy play doesn't provide that. Also, people can empathize with a team ("I live in New York, and so I want the New York Mets to win!"), but if there's only a single player, the side becomes a hard-to-empathize-with-player. If my *town* had a clan, I might be able to get interested in what they're doing.
Next is the biggest one. Almost all games these days have a twitch component. In FPSes, reaction time is crucial. My first reaction was that this wouldn't work. I've changed my mind. You can have twitch games, but there has to be more-slowly-changing state (other than the score, which changes too slowly). That state has to favor one side or the other, and should be able to completely change within a minute, and at least sometimes stay in one position for several minutes. In most sports, this is handled by the field position of the ball or puck. Why is this important? It's too hard to watch a really good FPS player unless you're equally good and can anticipate to some degree what they're doing. There's too much rapid movement. A kill is in the blink of an eye -- that doesn't build tension. Capture the flag might be more reasonable -- I could see watching a capture the flag game bec
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I've played against him before, he co-founded a LAN party I helped organize in my city (Lee's Summit, MO). It's amazing how good he is at the games he plays. About the income, think about it. The first year he won the CPL, he won 50,000 dollars, a contract with the original Razor mouse company, and then went on to make money in other various tournaments around the world. Hell, he drives a Ford Focus around town that he won by being the best. Now he's got the (arguably) most gamer-oriented hardware company in the world (Abit) with his name on their premier line of products. It's not any wonder.
Have you ever seen serious deathmatch players? There is definatley no time for drinking, and while possibly you could smoke I'm pretty sure it would be a detriment from the smoke blurring your vision even slightly.
You really do not understand how serious players are. It is definatley a sport.
Personally, my own defintiion of sport is "someone is willing to pay to watch you play". Professional gaming fits that quite well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Coming from the guy who fake'nicks as 'irc.goatse.cx troll' on slashdot.
;) Fakenick THAT beotch!
Doesn't matter what your nick is, if inside, you're still a dirty little kid who likes to look at pr0n and play with goats.
-E
I think by saying he is a pioneer he's referring to the fact that he's the first to make a steady living off of competitive gaming. Thresh was probably equally dominant, but there just wasn't the corporate interest in gaming that there is now.
Also, there are plenty of people who dedicate huge amounts of time to these games, and very few are anywhere near his league. You can't discount his talent by writing it off as just time spent playing. That would be like claiming that Tiger Woods is just good at golf because he practices more than anyone. There is definitely an element of talent involved in playing these games.
All the things you talk about (spawn camping, etc) are things that can be frusterating. Nobody wants to have frusterating things done to them.
There are two classes of these kinds of things:
1) Unfixed problems in the game. If there *really is* a single, simple strategy, using knowledge of the game's rules that lets you easily beat anyone using any other strategy, then the game is simply broken. On the other hand, very, very few people play games like this.
2) Strategies that you are not willing to counter. Most people don't mind rocket-jumping in Quake -- it's part of the *game*, a strategy (and one that allows interesting tradeoffs made in real-time -- do I trade some health for an item or a potentially less-guarded route?) On the other hand, I never learned to rocket-jump -- as a result, games where one had to rocket-jump to counter rocket-jumping were frusterating to me. However, most players didn't mind learning to rocket jump. I just wasn't willing to learn how to counter in. I think that what you're thinking of are simple strategies that a newbie may not know how to counter -- and this lack of knowledge means that he will always lose to them. Nobody wants to *lose* all the time, so they call the game stupid and stop playing. People that really immerse themselves in heavy playing often *like* multiple layers of strategy.
I do think that there are some games that do a better job of dealing with this than others. One of my favorite games from this standpoint is Soul Calibur II. A first-time player can sit down, whack buttons rapidly, and probably beat some not-first-time-but-still-newbie players some decent percentage of the time. Plus, their character will do neat things on the screen. Each time someone learns a new feat, the new feat doesn't make them unbeatable -- it just improves their play by some percent. Say you learn your character's throws really well, and can hurl people out of the ring based on where each throw sends them -- that may be a disadvantage to another player, but it isn't going to result in you winning every match. All game designers should keep this sort of thing in mind -- have a learning curve that stretches off into infinity (or something like it) so that the players are always learning something new to get better. On the other hand, make each degree of improvement only help the character sometimes -- it can work splendidly sometimes, but that new strategy can't be simply applied over and over.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I've always wondered why the US, which has got to be king when it comes to successful ways of marketing personalities and products (Elvis, pop music groups, etc), doesn't have the degree of idol culture that Japan does, where being a celebrity is a *really* big deal.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Maybe he could get his story into a bood and movie deal too! :)
The last starfighter is a fun movie too.
The key to making this a successful sport that supports lots of professionals is viewers- if you can't fill a stadium or arena or have millions watching on tv then there isn't going to be a lot of money in it. Watching someone sitting in front of a computer doesn't make for a good viewing experience (millions of shitty webcam photos to prove that, even when there is cleavage involved), and the games themselves aren't yet so visually stimulating that watching but not playing is all that worthwhile for extended periods of time.
It will be sort of interesting to watch where this goes, but it's hard to imagine the benefit to the casual gamers from having more professional players out there. At best there will just be a pro-gaming world perhaps living in a separate bubble adjacent to the normal gaming market- there will be mods and maps made specifically for tournament play, or even entire games, where single player and internet play would be afterthoughts or not included at all. At worst the pro gaming would distort or damage the normal games market and the types of games that are released because everything would be oriented to making the big money off of pro gaming.
It is funny and informative. FPS style games have two types of players: noobie campers and uber-skilled, run and gun, hyper fraggers. A true FPS master knows how to move and aim (with a very high hit accuracy) at the same time. Campers hide in a corner and only aim (probably even with the keyboard) which is even funnier.
Having never seen fatality play, nor even heard of him, we (the 3r33t) assume he sux h4rdc0r3.
In todays news, One of the worlds best gamers goes out and kills 40 people in a strip mall. He said he 'Thought he was in a game'. Naturally this outraged idiotic parents all over the world, And Jack Thompson has been assigned to lead up the investigation.
Coming up next: Diane's Weight.
I guess the salaries in this Far Side weren't too far off after all!
Some pro-gamer fat' is. During the Pain Killer world tour he hid in the rafters of a map for the remainder of a match because he was afraid of losing. Competitive gamer my ass.
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
At least this time the famous gamer won't be getting implants and posing for Playboy...or so I very very very sincerely hope.
Please post some videos of him playing, I couldnt find anything in game, just some shaky camera pictures where you cant really appreciate any skill.
I went to high school with some very talented professional atheletes. One guy was a pro-snowboarder and skater. The guy was good at every single sport he tried. At the local cafe/video game parlor he got the highest score anyone had ever seen on 720 and he didn't even play that often. I spent a lot of time at this particular cafe and had never seen anyone even get close to matching his performance.
Another example, the wife of a friend of mine who's a native born Czech went target shooting and on her first try she had almost perfect aim.
So the moral of the story is, stop being envious, look for your natural talents, and develop them.
That if you go to this guys site http://www.fatal1ty.com/players/?players=f and click on his picture, and click on his record this is what you see for 2005:
--------2005-------
(1v1)
2nd - CPL Turkey Qualifier for Spain (PainkilleR) - Instanbul, Turkey
4th - CPL Turkey World Tour Stop (PainkilleR) - Instanbul, Turkey
6th - CPL Spain World Tour Stop (PainkilleR) - Barcelona, Spain
2nd - CPL Brazil World Tour Stop (PainkilleR) - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2nd - CPL Sweden World Tour Stop (PainkilleR) - Jonkoping, Sweden
Certainly better than I would do, but he is losing to people. Good, but I don't know how much of the talk about 'the best in the world' isn't just marketing and PR. Most stories like this that you see on AP newswire and the like are there because of PR firms. My bet is that we are seeing him now becuase Abit wants to make sure they are getting thier moneys worth from their deals with him.
But he's nothing compared to teh_pwnerer ;-)
Kind of reminds me of this guy. If you are into gaming, those videos are classic!
You obviously aren't that into gaming then ;P Fatal1ty is a genuinely scary opponent, on his tours, you can usually challenge him to a 1-on-1 in some fast FPS, such as UT, Q3, Painkiller or the like. Lots of people do challenge him. I haven't heard of someone winning over him yet. A few ones actually frag (kill) him, but they're few ;)
He's been to Denmark, and played at the Boomtown cafe, where you could also challenge him, and win some stuff (his Abit motherboard etc).
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Daryl Musashi could kick his ass! Man, did you see him r0x0r in that X-Files episode? His strategies:
http://www.failmath.com/archives/0104.htm
Are there video clips of this? I am sure they exist.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I'm a big FPS fan, at one time I was extremely good at a little gem called Team Fortress Classic. I have played games such as Quake and Unreal Tournament, and so I can respect players who are skilled in those games. I have been a HUGE fan of Warcraft III. Mr. Wendel isn't the only prodigy in gaming. There are a number of players in Warcraft who are exceptionally good and are very well-off. Most of them are either Asian or European, where progaming is much much bigger than it is here. As much as I love playing games, I can only play for about 1 hour at a time before my eyes get kind off weird... It's very difficult to remain focused on a game, whatever type it is, for hours on end EVERY single day.
I think this is the link to the video:
s _daler_map1-2.zip
.nsv (VP6), my PowerBook with mplayer and VLC can't play this.. :(
http://files.cyberfight.ru/21219/FINAL_fatal1ty_v
But the video is a
"lining the exits of the spawn with mines in enemy territory - no way around that but wait for a team player to step on them and get killed."
Engineers can defuse mines.
"Hiding in places where the player has to walk past but turn around to see you with a rocket launcher"
Either turn around quickly and frag him first or shoot at the ground near the enemy with a splash-damage weapon.
"Being shot with the missile launcher as you spawn in doom3 (no delay before you can be damaged)"
Being spawnkilled is not a skill, but spawnkilling can be, in 1on1 games in Quake or Unreal Tournament. It requires knowledge of spawn areas and fast movement and reflexes to cover as many possible spawnplaces as possible.
"Camping in a single convenient location to frag"
If you are being fragged from the same location over and over again, you are doing something really wrong. Just try to approach the enemy form another angle.
"Throwing non stop granades while re-supplying yourself with more (being a field ops)"
You cannot do both at the same time. You have to stop at a certain point, skilled players will wait for that and frag you. That, or the attackee will just take another route.
"Using anti tank weapons while hiding in a different place each time to blow up an enemy engineer from the back"
What is wrong with that?
"haha, and lets not forget superweapons and suicides."
Superweapons are often disabled, and in good maps (maps suitable for competitive play), are situated in risky locations. That way, people have fair chances against superweapons.
And suicides are (almost?) always punished in game scoring systems.
"oh and during temporary invincibility and super damage like the berserk mode, etc.. There are so many!"
Same as "superweapons": often disabled, and in good maps (maps suitable for competitive play), are situated in risky locations.
Further more; good players will run around maps picking up these special items as soon as they spawn, which requires timing and great skill, especially when your opponent tries to do the same.
And of course one can defend himself from players with invincibility by running away.
Further more, you seem only to have based your opinions around Tribes and Enemy Territory, games which are played as mayor competitive games for a reason. Take a look at some skilled 1on1 matches of Painkiller, Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament 2004, and you will come to different conclusions.
P.S. Vo0 is DUTCH (Sander Kaasjager), his last name translated to english means Cheese Hunter for crying out loud.
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
It's easy; All you have to do is try to die and fail.
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
I'm sure that the world of professional gaming has its perks, but is DVT one of them? I give him three years.
Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel started professional gaming in 1999 by entering the CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League) tournament in Dallas and won $4,000 for placing third. Emerging as one of the top players in the United States, he then flew to Sweden where he competed in a tournament against the top 12 players in the world. By winning 18 straight games and losing none he took first place, becoming the number one ranked Quake III player in the world. Two months later he followed that success in Dallas by successfully defending his title as the world's best Quake III player and winning the $40,000 grand prize.
Since then Fatal1ty has traveled the globe to compete against the best in the world, winning prizes and acclaim, including the first DOOM 3 Inaugural Deathmatch Championship at QuakeCon 2004 for a $25,000 grand prize. He presently reigns as the only 3 time CPL Champion of the Year, winning each, annual title in a different game, a feat never before accomplished.
Now, products of the highest quality are being introduced under the Fatal1ty brand. The same dedication that drives Fatal1ty to be the world's best gamer is being translated to offer innovative products intended to enhance the gaming lifestyle and experience. At the same time, Fatal1ty is dedicated to expanding the popularity and opportunities for cyber athletes.
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It is possible to view recordings of matches in most FPS games today. Websites like cyberfight.org and esreality.com has quite an archive.
However, most of these replays requires the respective game and any additional mods and maps installed in order to view the replay, in order to save size. I would recommend watching a video compilation. own-age.com is a site with many videos in the most popular games, and this is the link to the top downloaded video. it features mostly highlights in Quake 3. http://own-age.com/vids/video.aspx?id=660
If you arent familiar with Quake3, it will be very hard to spot anything but fancy moves and aim when you're spectating "pro" players, but keep in mind that there is a high level of tactics involved. Pay attention to item timing.
I would recommend watching this video as a starter. It requires Quake3 with newest pointrelease and the mod "OSP". It is played on the custom map ztn3tourney1, so you will have to get that too. It features two swedish top players at ESWC2005.
It is recommended to use "DemoShowCreator" (DSC) or similar to view the replay as it may be tricky doing it manually if you havent done it before. Here are some step by step instructions http://esreality.com/?a=longpost&id=35018&page=3
or football or baseball. I mean, who would have thought anybody would even care about that jock shit. Like I really want to watch a hardees add circle a track for hours or watch several hours of chevy commercials punctuated by some retarded announcer that gets excited over anything.
Face it, regular sports are stupid too - they don't dominate the TV because of demand the demand comes from having it stuffed down our throats by the networks. Ppl need to be told what they want to see. Put quake tournaments on TV everyday and everyone will rationalize buying quake shirts, goinf to quake bars, picking up quake bitches, etc.
Oh, and p.s - you can break a fucking 2x4 over my my torso (is that what 'abs' are, well whatever), and with a bit of practice I can kick all kinds of ass at whatever anybody wants to compete at. Traditional sports fans are mostly pussies.
He's not speaking about being a dominant player. Thresh, as you said, preceeded him by several years. This kid realizes he can't be on top forever, just as Thresh isn't the dominant force anymore. So he's trying to establish himself as a brand while he's at the top of his game, and that's how he's a pioneer. He's got a mouse and mousepads named after him, and is trying to branch out from there.
...is whether or not he leads a fulfilling life. I guess for him it works, and for a lot of /.ers it would be a wetdream come true. But something about that just doesn't appeal to me. Just my $0.02
-ZMorek
There are better games around. http://tinyurl.com/7hfl9
...is he happy?
He is? Awww F**K!
I saw him playing people at this year's E3. He was ok, but I was bored watching him. It was clear some of the people he was playing had no talent with the games and he'd just annhilate them like 31-0 in a 2 minutes match. It would of been more fun if he was handicapped in some way, like 50% health or only a few weapons. Blowing the bejesus out of n00bs playing on unfamiliar hardware was hardly awe-inspiring.
.agrippa.
Of course maybe that's fun for some people to watch. I never got into 1v1 very much, I always thought teamwork execution was so much more exciting and took much more skill than running around a small map killing someone repeatedly before they could grab a weapon.
Guillaume Patry is another professional gamer who was a StarCraft champ in South Korea. We did an interview with him last year and his view was particularly interesting as someone who was nearing the end of his gaming career.
The thing that I find interesting is that like Wendel/Fatal1ty, Patry/Grrrr was also an athlete before he got into gaming. In Patry's case, he was a competitive skiier.
"fatal1ty (914374) is all alone in the world." http://slashdot.org/~fatal1ty/friends LOL yep he's got no sex life.
never got into 1v1 very much, I always thought teamwork execution was so much more exciting and took much more skill than running around a small map killing someone repeatedly before they could grab a weapon.
As far as I know, the whole point of Team Deathmatch is weapon and spawn point control. Deny the other team the access to key weapons, to the quad damage (in Quake-based games), etc...
So actually, Team Deathmatch is very much like Team Camping. But it does require a lot of skill and a great amount of team coordination.
The reply might not had been very informative, but it had the effect intended : Parent went from 0 (Troll) to (+5 Funny).
Sorry, but I do think of videogames as a childish pastime. Along with football, baseball, basketball, auto racing, ice hockey, poker, billiards...
Asia Carrera http://www.asiacarrera.com/ is easily one of the hottest, if not one of the best Unreal Players around :)
*howls* *pants* *drools*
The Hoosierbilly!
Jay Dale "If you're not living on the edge then you're taking up too much space!"
Here is a link directly to an interview with Asia about Unreal Tournament and online playing. http://www.asiacarrera.com/me2/xsreality/
Jay Dale "If you're not living on the edge then you're taking up too much space!"
If you deign to think of video games as simply a childish pastime, consider this professional game player.
He calls himself 'Fatal1ty'? Yup, gamers are childish.
Here's some more info on Thresh (Dennis Fong):
http://www.links.net/vita/gx/dennis/
I watched his Q2 demos back in the day, and they were friggin' unbelievable.
"I love deadlines - I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by..." -Douglas Adams
He'll be a Tech support specialist with the obligatory phone-headset by day.
By night, a stone-cold highly sk1ll3d crack space commando who rules the deathmatch wastelands...
i read thru most of the comments left about gaming not being a sport... i dont think it was ever meant to be a sport in the original terms.. sports to me include football, soccer, etc.. where you get up and move around... baseball as more of a past-time and finally, gaming...
well gaming is something that people do in their spare time... pro gaming is what someone does when they have good skills, but cant get laid and dont have a wife around...
now im not going to bash fatal1ty here.. im a 21 year old gamer who loves FPS games... unreal, painkiller, CoD, etc... but you have to give this guy SOME credit, if only for the sake of the FACT that he can frag the hell outta ya before you even get out of your spawn point...
gaming is for everyone, pro-gaming is for a select few and for the rest of us to watch in awe and hope we can do that someday!!!
The show "Real Life: I'm a gamer" featured the player mentioned in the article.
The last scene was him surrounded by swooning women.
I think you're all just jealous because he's been chatting online with babes all day. Sweet.
its ironic that about 20 days ago i told a person who was a staff member on a irc network i've since left that there are people playing games competitively that make six figure salaries. he kicked me from #staff, this guy was suppost to be mature... seemed more fundamentalist than anything
That's why I only like playing Deathmatch on Soldier of Fortune 2. There are health and ammo drops that jerks could camp, but I don't care since I spawn with my weapons of choice and can destroy the jerks with ease. Since I usually carry an M60, I don't even care about the ammo drops too much. Once you take away the 'skill' of ensuring lack of weapon balance, things change quite a bit.
Granted SoF2 can also be played in a 'pick up' mode, but the handguns are quite lethal anyway, so its a bit more fair than the usual Quake 3, etc.
In any case, the point of team deathmatch is not weapon and spawn point control, its coordination as a group, flushing out and killing targets without risking your team, and skill. Only a poorly designed game lets you play by camping control points (unless you're purposefully playing a domination style game, as in UT, but in those cases the control points are not the points the enemy needs just to fight fairly). This applies to games like Quake 3 as well (I played tons of Quake 3 before I got into SoF2), you can kill a surprising number of otherwise decent players with the gauntlet if you have good team members distracting and wounding them with fire from another direction.
One of my favorite non-team multiplayer games was in SoF1, a game mode where everyone spawned with the same random gun, and as soon as someone got a kill, everyone's gun would change to something else. It was hectic, and interesting since you could have an advantage with your current gun, but then the weapons would change and the tables would turn. Can't remember what that was called though.