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Hire a Game Coach Online
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Expert videogame players, many of them teens, are forging professional careers as coaches, finding clients — many of them in their 20s or 30s — online, the Wall Street Journal reports. Some gigs pay $65 an hour. From the article: 'Gaming-lessons.com says its youngest "Halo 2" instructor is 8-year-old New Yorker Victor De Leon III — better known by his online gamer name, Lil Poison — who has given several lessons a month since late last year, fitting the classes in after he has done his homework. His father, also named Victor, says his son has used some of the money he earns from lessons (hourly rate: $25) to buy a hamster, named Cortana after a character in the game.'"
I've heard of life coaches. But get-a-life coaches; that's something new!
Where were you when the voynix came?
While 1-1 coaching will always have its place, there is more and more help getting available to on-line gamers in form of communities (gaming help websites) and some automated tools. If you are looking at making this your profession watch out for these help options as your competitors!
I bet his hamster could beat you though...
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
Back in the era of the NES and SNES Nintendo Power used to advertise official game company 1-900 numbers where you could get rad tips for some crazy per-minute charge. I never called one, but I imagine a lot of children drove their parent's phone bills through the roof.
That's really quite interesting. Too bad they only offer classes for first-person-shooter games. I've gotten good enough at City of Heroes/Villains that I could probably earn out some great rates giving hourly instruction in that game. I wonder if there are any other sites where a game guru could offer their teaching skills for hire. (It would certainly be a better value for the money than those "pay-for-PL" sites.)
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'd laugh at how huge a waste of life this is, were I not actually guilty of calling a Nintendo "game counselor" once during my childhood. Still, this would have been my dream job at that age, and a friend of mine in 8th grade actually made a few dollars selling VHS videos of him beating whatever NES game in his collection the customer wanted to see. Screw selling lemonade or delivering newspapers...
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"What's next, degrees and certifications?!"
For the degrees, you don't need coaches. You just buy them from grade-farmers in China.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Halo2 Clan Leader: "Sorry dude, you need H+ certification and a degree in Frag Mastering to join." Applicant: "But I've been playing first-person shooters for years! I have more experience than any idiot with those junk pieces of paper!!"
Why's this pathetic? Is being a PGA instructor pathetic? After all, knowing the optimum golf club for a shot, or how to correctly use a 3-wood is useless away from golf.
Some people enjoy their leisure activities more if they're good at them (especially when the activity is competitive). Stands to reason the market would provide facilities to help people improve. I wouldn't spend my money on something like this, but I'm not going to disparage the people that do.
Not if I have a microwave.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Top Starcraft players would offer lessons either on a hourly level or a per game level at some ludricous rate too. Of course, given the free flow of information of the Net, you'll find that none of these experts actually had any secret worth paying for because if they did, everyone would've known about it already. Although the secret to being good at games and almost anything else in general is just talent + practice, people are quite willing to pretend this isn't the case and if you just get 'the secret from the experts', you too can be a world class Starcraft or Halo 2 player even if you possess neither the talent nor the endurance to learn the game.
This is hardly new, people have been paying for their hobbies for a very long time, either skill improvements (chess coaching, for example) to having to play for supplies and material for other leisure activities, like model airplane flying. I'm not sure what the big deal is here...
that is the gheyest thing I've ever heard. Paying a kid $25 to get good at Halo is pathetic to say the least.
For the past two decades the second highest market behind selling the games themselves has been the selling of magazines with cheatcodes, screens, etc. All of which may not actually make you a better player. Having someone to actually point out the things you do which are wrong and better ways to achieve results is nothing less than Big Business spends tonnes of money on every year, so why not avid gamers? Just because it doesn't work for you, don't dis everyone else.
One method I learned, years ago, was to play games at their hardest levels or accept the highest degree of difficulty missions. I'd get slaughtered, but at that pace I picked up better sends of timing, anticipation and reaction. Then returned to the easier levels/missions and I learned enough from them to actually beat/complete all levels/missions.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I think "Kicked by console" must be some sort of certification or something, because I'm pretty good at CS and I get that all the time when I play and do well. Also people call me a "wallhack" and "aimbot", I don't know exactly what this means but I figure it's analogous to the title "Doctor" IRL.
Jolt Cola, Mountain Dew, Coffee.
Hamburgers, Tacos, Pizza - lot's of pepperoni and sausage - need that protein!
Skittles, Gummi Bears, etc... - sugars for the brain.
Cross training across platforms: alternating days of: PS/2, PCGames, Nintendo, etc...
I know NOTHING, I know NOTHING
The people who are paying for these lessons are getting schooled.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Is the minute I quit. I have a rule when playing video games. As soon as I am frustrated, I put the mouse/controller down and go do something else. I used to play UT a lot and would find that I started to get frustrated when I died and flip out at the computer. I still play UT, but not quite as much and I find that I have a lot more fun in doing so. Games are meant to be FUN, not a chore. I refuse to ever "practice" in a video game, I just play it and have fun, if I get better as a side effect, oh well.
I have a wonderful idea. Instead of hiring someone to try to make you a good player, you can hire me and I'll play for you as an excellent player! You specify game, weapon of choice, handle and taunts and I'll supply the a**-kicking.
IANA*
Doesn't anyone find it a little odd that an eight-year-old is making money playing an M-rated game?
Oh, I don't know about that. I've found it useful to chuck a few grenades into a room before I enter. Other than the janitor at work getting royally pissed it has served me well.
Seriously. I used this technique when I first jumpped into jedi outcast online (1.2 patch). I was losing left and right and had no clue. I speced the guy who was number one for a long while. He was running up to people and kicking them, then doing a heavy overhead swing on their prone bodies. It was working pretty well.
I started doing it. I noticed immediate results. I kept doing it until I got proficient at the technique. I later learned a whole bunch of varients on it through expriemntation, but always had that same trick there to use in a pinch.
That's how you get good at games, find a way to "win" (in my case kill), get good at it, then learn another way to win. Then another. Until you have a huge bag of winning tricks to pull out against someone else.
Pretty soon the game will come down to who runs out of tricks first, and who can execute them better, or more creativly. That is about when most online games are the most fun to play.
Very simple concept, just takes a little bit of time to get there.
Ya that was me. For LoZ, I racked up over $200 in charges. The phone company ended up taking over 3/4 of it away and I lost my allowance for a bunch of months :(
Not if you have a groundhog digging up your yard and you can't seem to chase it off. It doesn't see the golf ball coming. The surprise shot usually sends it off for days.
There are other cross sport uses, too. For instance, baseball helped improve my bowling skills. Ever since I started bowling overhand, I'm not wasting frames trying to adjust to the lane conditions.
> People actually pay for lessons for skills that are useless away from video games?
So it's mostly just like college, then.
Oh please. How is this different than:
1) Coaches in every sport imaginable
2) Exercise consultants in the gym of your choice
3) Music teachers
I mean, to learn piano, all you need is to buy a piano and then just plunk away at it until you're playing Chopin, right?
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Though I'd really like to condemn paying for video-game lessons as modern-day insanity, I'd probably just as soon turn around and be accepting of someone paying money for lessons from a chess coach. And though I'd like to think of chess as a much more noble cause for tutoring than Counter-Strike [It is.], I can't help but cringe at my double standard a little while doing so.
But, ah, this is ridiculous, in its own right.
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.
I mean, to learn piano, all you need is to buy a piano and then just plunk away at it until you're playing Chopin, right?
You seem to be implying that learning to play a video game well is equal in difficulty to learning to become a skilled pianist. For that matter, do you think that becoming a skilled basketball player or swimmer is no more difficult than becoming skilled at Halo 2?
I don't think all activities are equal in difficulty, particularly given that video games are created specifically to be playable. The piano wasn't created to be easy to learn. Video games are.
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How? Easy... ... those skills you mentioned are usually for life, while coaching for a specific video game lasts at most a couple of years.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
I think that the idea of having a coach for gaming is pretty pathetic, not to mention useless. With the internet, and sites like Gamefaqs and IGN, most strategies and tips are all available free. If there are any special "secret" strategies for a game, they can usually be found for free on the internet. Another thing that is I find useless about coaches is that, if you are already good at a game, you aren't going to be needing a whole lot of help. People that already suck probably aren't going to get a whole lot of help by going to these coaches that just practicing isn't going to get them. I highly doubt an 8 year old is going to be able to actually analyze what it is that make him good, and see how he can improve other peoples skills Also, other sports, like tennis and basketball, often have coaches because they are professional sports, and have athletes competing in prestigeous tournaments, and the athletes are looking for any edge they can to get up on the competition. Video games haven't quite gained that amount of attention(and hopefully, IMO, they never do). Yes, there are tournaments for lots of games like SSBM and Halo, but they usually don't get a lot of attention outside of the inner gameing circles. Slightly off-topic, but it goes along with the above paragraph, I doubt that video game tournaments will ever have much success because in my experience, its not very much fun to watch people play video games. How many times has your little brother or sister bugged you for an hour asking if they can play.
Most people who are good enough to even consider coaching have been playing steadily for more years than that kid has been alive. He's eight. How many years can be reasonably have been playing? Three? Maybe four? He was put on the controller at the age of TWO. According to his website, he's been doing this since he was SIX and won a championship at the age of just FIVE. Does this kid have any activities (I'm not buying it if anyone says he actually goes out) aside from video games, or is he being set up for a miserable life of obesity and notknowing how to make friends and connect with people? Good gods, his parents should be ashamed.
It's a girl!