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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."
He is a freaking CAMPER!!!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
And the girls... you can't imagine the girls these professional game players get in addition to that six figure salary.
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
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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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
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".
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
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
This is nothing more than an electronic version of any extreme sports or x-games type of star, no big deal, nothing really unique.
Everything you touch on can be answered by looking at people like Tony Hawk.
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.
>At least the Baseball players who learn to cash in on a child's game aren't Coke-swilling computer nerds
Insert Daryl Strawberry joke here
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
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.
I agree that sports are not meant to be careers but thats humanity for you.
And having played all manner of video games since the beginning of them all, I can assure you there's more to button mashing to beating a skilled opponent. Many tradition sports have great mental aspects to them. Baseball pitchers and batters are a good example. There's more there than thowing and hitting.
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.
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.
Which doesn't matter at all to anyone
And gaming is bound by the very dynamics of the game.
And the best gamers are those who can best take advantage of their abilities and knowledge withing the boundaries and limitations of the game (cheats aside).
But you can use steroids or other body-enhancing drugs. Your point?
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
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..."
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.
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.
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
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
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.