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."

Comments

He's not pro!

[toupsie]

He is a freaking CAMPER!!!

The Girls...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the girls... you can't imagine the girls these professional game players get in addition to that six figure salary.

Out of Touch with an Old Reality

[Quirk]

... travels the world to compete

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.

Re:Out of Touch with an Old Reality

[PDXNerd]

Humans are physical creatures. We touch, smell, feel, and love. I participate in teleconferences all the time, even some with video. Something is lost when you can't reach over and whisper a snide remark in someone's ear.

I am a book collector, and have many old books. Something about the fact that many people have touched them and loved them makes them all the more special. I have about 10 copies of the Rubiyat of Omar Kayyan - none any less than 80 years old. Something about the different artwork, leather covers, hand-written notes that conveys a continuity, a chain of humanity to them.

Shaking the hand of the world's best gamer is really no less.

Is this gamer real? Is he a person or a bot that a marketing exec thought up to encourage the Future Gamers of the World to play more games in the hope that they too can make money by sitting on their arse? Never underestimate the phyiscal world and our need to *physically understand* something.

Re:Out of Touch with an Old Reality

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I question the need to remove physical interaction. Big example: given the choice, would anyone here really chose cybersex over sex in person?

Or brought down several notches, I suspect that most people would prefer to be in person for basic conversations whenever reasonably possible. Telephones, VoIP, video conferencing are all simply second-rate substitutes that come on for convenience's sake when the expense of being in person isn't possible or justiable.

Conferences and trade shows are great if you can go, they are great ways to build a social network, great ways to actually try things out in person rather than trusting text descriptions and photos on the web.

Re:Out of Touch with an Old Reality

[ToxicBanjo]

...will a time come when we all but do away with the need to press the flesh?

Likely not until fibre is everywhere.

Travel for professional gamers is a requirement. The internet has this nasty thing that ALL gamers hate called "lag" (varied and fluctuating ping that causes noticable hiccups in the game). The problem for the pro is that lag can be the difference between 1st place and last place. When money is on the line it's LAN play all the way for any serious gamer.

Re:Out of Touch with an Old Reality

[seagis]

Big example: given the choice, would anyone here really chose cybersex over sex in person?

You realize, don't you, that it's a bit of a stretch to think that most of the people here will have the opportunity to make such a choice?

;-)

But still..

[slashmojo]

regarded by those in the know as one of the most gifted players of his kind.

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 ;)

sure "the best"

[Turn-X Alphonse]

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".

Re:sure "the best"

[PDXNerd]

I agree. Knowing and using the limitations of a system is the mark of someone who wants to win, not necessarily an abuser.

Hiding in a wall hack is cheating. Bouncing around a map using rockets on rocket arena requires talent.

Each game has it's own limitations, and each fight has it's own strategy. Many British generals decried the foul tactics of the American Revolutionary army as they used guerilla tactics. Come out and fight us face to face! Line up in bright colors! Don't attack during tea time!

Do you want to win or have a long set of rules? If it's the rules, go play D&D, not FPS. You (and the rest of us who won't have to listen to Yet Another Whiner) will be happier.

Re:sure "the best"

[Anonymous Coward]

From someone who takes part in competitive gaming and is very knowledged on the subject, it is very hard to deny him of being the best gamer (in terms of FPSs). He has an unparalleled track record in past competitions, and has continued to prove his place at the top. The only rival that Fatal1ty currently has is "Vo0", a Norwegian player that has traded many matches with him. Fatal1ty is definately is above the rest.

"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'm failing to see how this is considered an "exploit" or "lamer tactic". It is a very viable strategy that, when attempted versus other players of high calibre, CAN be countered.

Keep in mind that the higher level players do not fall into the holes that average players would. Actual strategy is employed to avoid being spawn fragged, locked out of weapons, etc, whereas the average player would throw up his hands in frustration.

Your claim that pro-gaming is based on abusing bugs and shortcuts is ridiculously unqualified and shortsighted.

Re:sure "the best"

[ToxicBanjo]

Seeing how abusing bugs, short cuts and general lamer tactics will get you booted and/or banned from most organized gaming I can't agree with your statement.

There is a HUGE difference between knowing and using a map to it's full potential and exploiting bugs.

Bunny hopping is something I personally don't like but I don't see anything "cheat" worthy about it. Neither is spawn camping with a rocket launcher. It's just part of the game.

I'm sorry but when I read your collecting all the weapons before anyone else can get to them I actually laughed out load... quite hard too. The whole point of the game where there are many weapons is to limit the amount your opponent can get thus maximizing you potential to frag the hell out of 'em.

I think you're confusing PRO with NOOB. I've been in many MP servers in all kinds of games and it's the same crap all the time. Get pro's playing against each other and you'll see some of the best game play you could imagine.

(and trust me, they all do. It's become socially acceptable)

I don't and no it has not. Exploits get you banned, simple.

Re:sure "the best"

[friedmud]

You have obviously not seen him play then...

I have, _several_ times at Quakecon and let me tell you it is unbelievable. He will play just hard enough to screw with his opponent... only whipping out the "tricks" when he needs them.

For Quakecon 2004 he was setup in the Abit booth and was playing people for spectacle... if you could even kill him _once_ you got a prize. If you could beat him then you got a whole new computer.... only a few people got a prize at all.

One of the memerable moments from watching him play was when he was taking on a beginner in Doom3... Fatal1ty ran into a room and knew the guy was coming behind him... he shot out all of the lights and crouched in a corner... while his opponent ran _right_ past him... the crowd HOWLED with laughter and his opponent swung around dumbfounded until he got a shotgun in the face.

Fatal1ty plays _so_ often that he is basically one with the game... he knows every nook and cranny of every map and knows exactly which weapon to use in every situtation... he also has an uncanny ability to predict the behaviour of his foe.

Go see him play sometime... then tell me he is some kind of "lamer".... I think you will be surprised.

Friedmud

If you can smoke and drink while doing it....

[st0rmshad0w]

...its not a sport, and you're not an athelete.

Just saying.

Re:If you can smoke and drink while doing it....

[st0rmshad0w]

Golf is a game.
Bowling is a game.
Darts is combat training/a great way to lose money.
Snooker is an art form.

A Child Prodigy

[nmb3000]

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.

Frausters

[LiquidCoooled]

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)

Big $$$ talk generally misleading.

[external400kdiskette]

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".

Envy.

[Xarius]

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.

This is riduculous

[AutopsyReport]

"I'm doing something no one else has ever done before. I'm kind of a pioneer."

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.

Re:Baseball anyone?

[rewinn]

>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

Passion for winning

[polv0]

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.

eSports might work, but change is needed first

[typical]

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

Re:eSports might work, but change is needed first

[LincolnQ]

Ooh, ooh. You made me think of something.

Mostly when you watch an FPS tournament, you are watching the same screen as one player or another (usually they mirror the monitors on a projector or something). I think this isn't really beneficial from the viewer's point of view -- most people don't know the map, so even if you look back and forth between the two screens, you're not going to get any sense of anticipation.

However, maybe what the game needs is an overhead or strategic view. That way the viewers can see things that the players don't -- if someone is hiding behind a corner, we would be able to see that and build the anticipation. Then the scene can cut to a player in order to show the fight better.

This would be even cooler for CTF -- if we can see both flags from above, and the locations of the players, that would be really cool.

The problem, of course, is that games don't generally have an overhead observer mode built in. But maybe that would be worth adding -- it is probably not really very difficult to implement. Then you could have several people manning machines as "cameramen" and then the director can cut between views similar to a real sports game in order to give the best experience. (Maybe have cameras on the players' faces as well. That would be sweet.)

Re:This is ridiculous

[kms1]

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.

Get over your envy some were just born with skills

[TheNarrator]

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.

Interesting to note...

[apederso]

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.

From his web page:

[deadlocked]

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