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A Lot of Money for Playing Games
knowhow writes "Tom Taylor took the risk of dropping out from high school just to play video games. The guy who is just 18 years old, was prompted to take this step; because of the reason that emerged from his love for gaming. After playing for six months on a full time basis the guy signed a contract for a staggering $250,000."
From the Article:"Now Tom taylor is known as Tsquared on the gaming circuit. He's earning six figures and has product endorsements and a video game tutoring business. He's one of about 100 professional gamers associated with Major League Gaming, a video gaming league founded in 2002. When they're playing well, pros might bring home a few grand a month."
Yes I'm sure someone handling their own expensive sponsership deals, complex contracts and his own business would have no marketable skills outside of playing quake.
I was actually listening on the radio, about this guy that had retired at 34, because he had invested in Crest®, or maybe it was Colgate®.. Anyways, he was making 3 grand a month just from dividends apparently, which is quite a bit for (correct me if I'm wrong) tax-free money. Anybody that chooses not to invest is probably going to regret it, nomatter what their line of work is.
It's never just a game when you're winning. - George Carlin
Assuming he didn't tell his high school teachers to kiss his shiny rich ass on the way out, he should go knocking on Harvard's door for an education. He can afford it and money talks at that school. Although I'm not sure if the blue bloods will want a prize-winning video game player in their midst. MIT or Stanford might take him. And then write a book.
Obviously the youngun's have the advantage when it comes to twitch style video gaming, but this seems very reminscent of poker, where you can make aliving playing if you're good enough, but not many people are that good.
As for the people who say "what's his backup skill going to be?" Assuming he can talk & isn't butt ugly, I imagine he'll be a commentator or spokesperson someday.
Hell, if there's enough drama in the industry, he can write a book too.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It would take me seven years to make that much money. Maybe I should worry about what to do since my money dries up before each month ends. You make it sound like he won't have a job after the $250,000. With the current trend of video games I might say his job is more secure than a lot of people I know.
We may as well talk about the guys who drop out of school to play basketball...
Everyone always talks about wanting to get a job where they get paid to do what they enjoy, but I tend to wonder if maybe you'd get burned out of doing something that you enjoy as a pastime, if you had to start doing it for 8, 10 or 12 hours a day. (Okay, admittedly there are WoW players who seem to have no problems there.)
There are lots of things that I enjoy in moderation that I don't think I'd like anymore, if I started doing them as my day job. Maybe it's just me...but I just think that playing games for a living might take the fun out of it.
I guess maybe this is because I enjoy playing games as a way to relax, and I guess I wouldn't want to play them more than a few hours a day, regardless of the other constraints on my time.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Seven years? Man you need a better job ...
Anyways, the problem with a competition of this nature is that you can make a lot of money as long as you're at the top of your game. For every person in this league there is (probably) 100 people who are nearly as good and (if they so choose) could easily start challenging you for your spot in the league. In other words you always are at risk of not being good enough to keep your 'job'.
Growing up, I knew a few guys who ended up becomming professional snowboarders; they lasted about 18 months before their sponsership and were 'forced' out. I imagine that, if gaming continues as a 'sport', professional-gamers will have to 'train' for 8 hours a day to stay competitive.
IT may be an insecure field, but I doubt all the jobs will dry up all of a sudden. Much like the gamer in the article, if you feel that your job isn't that secure you should train some skills that are useful both inside and outside of IT (say public speaking) and save up your money in case you suddenly find yourself without a job; this is easily said, and can be accomplished, but rarely will an 18 year old recognize how good he has it until it is gone.
I cant even count the number of people I knew when I was in college who threw away the chance to become succesfull engineers (I went to an engineering school) to play WoW/Everquest/Counterstrike 15 hours a day. For every guy like this who makes a career out of gaming there are hundreds of thousands who give up their careers because they spend too much time playing video games.
Spending the enourmous amount of time required to be good at video games is a worse investment than a lottery ticket. Lottery tickets have had more winners, require less time investment, and the payoff is a lot bigger than 250 grand.
Yes, I realize that a lot of people play video games for fun and moderate their time spent well. But dont we all know people who play endlessly because they want to be the best on their server or be in a clan that wins a lot of tournaments?
There are a lot of QA testers that play just as much as him if not not more and probably can woop the crap out of him in any game. It really doesn't take that much talent to play video games, you just got to spend time figuring out what the developers where thinking.
"When they're playing well, pros might bring home a few grand a month."
Hell yea, where's the Enemy Territory tourneys with the money? C'mon guys, don't neglect good and free for everyone games! Let's see who rocks the free-world for the most cash!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It seems a shame to take a recreational activity that you love and make it your sole source of income.
Yes, I do believe you can love your work. But this guy took a thing that he truly loved that *wasn't* work and *made it* his work. Playing games for a living sounds great, but anything loses its luster once you are chained to it if you want to eat and have a place to live.
For all you gamers, think of how excited you are when a new blockbuster game comes out and you can't wait to get your hands on it. Now take that feeling and completely invert it, and I think that that about approximates what this guy must feel when that happens. "Oh man, a new game... guess I better start getting good at this one too. Back to ten hours of practice a day."
What would TV coverage of this look like? You can't just have a shot of the screen, but if you cut back and forth you miss screen action. They probably have to edit together a lot of highlights. I can't imagine this would be very entertaining to watch on live TV... ok, some stuff like one-on-one fighting games might play well... it would be like boxing without the chance of actual injury. Yes, I guess this could be watchable if done right. The missing element is that you aren't watching your friends get beat, or beating your friends, or well... gaming. Robot wars was OK TV because most of us don't have the time, money or skill to make a decent fighting bot. Everyone can game. When I was a kid and was totally game crazy, the time I spent having to just *watch* was pure agony. Gimme the joystick!!! How many kids these days get their only daily exercise fighting their siblings for the controller? You're going to take gaming and make it totally passive? Those kids are going to explode, leaving nasty bits of fat all over the walls. Hey... that'd be a cool effect in a game.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
All right, so this kid got a contract for 250k; how long will he be able to get such contracts. Given the new nature of gaming, the amount of young competition, and the lack of training required, I would be surprised if he gets a follow up contract. Let's face it, to become an elite gamer requires good reflexes and an obsession with gaming; a lot more people fit this criteria as opposed to having the athletic prowess to be a professional soccer player. It also takes a lot less self-dicipline than getting into professional sports (where you also have to train outside of playing the actual game, watch your diet, etc.). In the end, professional gamers will always be more available than professional athletes; so they are going to have a very short money-generating life span. This isn't mentioning the fact that to be a professional gamer will require you staring at a screen for something like 15 hours a day. It's true many spend that much time gaming a day without getting paid; but for a professional, that's 15 hours of work. I don't know, 15 hours a day everyday for 250k a year doesn't seem like such a great deal to me. I'll take a lower salary and less time working, thanks. Maybe he will go back to school after his gaming career is over; frankly, he'll have few options if he doesn't. That being said, I have to wonder if he won't spend years gaming in futility trying to get another contract after his time has passed. Another point to consider is the affect media will have on such a profession. Let's say you've been gaming for years and have put on a few pounds or aren't the most attractive person to begin with, then someone comes along just as good as you but prettier, who's more likely to get the contract if a sponsor had to choose?
I've never met anyone who got into MIT on the basis of money. And even if they somehow did, they'd flunk out the first semester if they weren't really damned smart and already had an excellent high-school level education.
|>oug
More people won MORE money playing the lottery. This type of sensationalist stuff doesn't interest most people but it keeps making headlines on /. ?
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
But the problem is that this type of person generally is more interested in having the toys than the security. Some people can get away with it because they are content in a smaller house with a reasonable car that joe public can afford. Throw the big bucks at many others and they start thinking pimped Escalades and stuff from Cribs.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Another demonstration of why a little knowledge is dangerous.
The long term return on stocks, _including_ dividends, is roughly 7%. If he's going to follow your model, genius, that means he'd need about $600k in a Roth account. Here's a math problem for you: given the annual cap on Roth account contributions and a growth rate of 7%, how many years would he have to contribute in order to reach your goal? In the meantime, the income from the moneys outside that account is subject to tax.
But you want him to live off _dividends_, and not touch the capital appreciation. The dividend yield of the S&P 500 is around 1.4%. So now he needs $2.6m to hit your goal.
The BLS tells us that the average boomer has $50k +/- $175k saved for retirement. What does that tell you about what "senior citizens do after saving for 30 or 40 years"?
Here's the better news. I've neglected the role of inflation in my calcuations. And I'm not even going to deign to respond to your point that qualified dividends are tax free, besides pointing out that they're not.
Here's my free advice to you: I'm going to keep my mouth shut about "what rich people do" until I'm a rich person, and I'd advise you to do the same. In the meantime, I hope this kid goes out, gets famous, and gets laid like crazy, incidentally creating a big money professional gaming league that I can aspire to join someday.
See you in thirty years.
A few grand a month does not sound like something worth dropping out of school over. Also, in the case of Tom Taylor, if he was 18 and still in school it didn't sound like he had much time left before graduating. I never understood the point of spending 13 years of your life in school to walk out the door 2 or 6 months before graduation. The least he could have done is homeschooled the remainder of his diploma to avoid having to place G.E.D. on his future resume's.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Which is really ironic as I've yet to hire a MIT grad. Every one that I've interviewed (and yes a pool of 5 is statistically significant, even if it is a very small representation of a population) has an ego the size of a planet and actually seems to have got a very poor education with respect to usable, practical science. However, they seem to assume that I'll hire them based on the image the MIT research gets in the media. My guess this media image is generated by a very few select departments. - Mod this for flamenait and bring on the MIT flaming (actually it'll be interesting to see how 'clever' the flaming is).
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
It's true there's a lot more to life than money... but I hardly see how you can read that he doesn't understand that from his post.
There's a lot more to life than money, so when I have enough to retire comfortably, I can pay someone to clean and do yard work. That way I can spend more time with my family - because spending more time with my family is more important the money I'm spending to do it.
So this whole "money can't buy hapiness" is true only to the point that material possessions don't bring true happiness, but financial freedom gives you the ability to DO the things you might not otherwise be able to - travel, go back to school, pay others to do the menial tasks you've had to do in the past to free up more of your time, and if you've got enough you can be a philanthropist. If you're a computer geek, you can write or finance (or both) that useful application you've been thinking people would enjoy.
But regardless, you are always being a benefit to society - that guy you pay to cut your grass doesn't have to collect welfare, for example. You still buy food and the necessities of life and pay bills and so forth, all helping the next generation of people survive without being a drain on societies resources.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
"Unfortunately, a lot of kids just don't get it that there's more to life beyond today."
Even more of a pity that the majority of kids and adults can't appreciate how important 'life today' really is.