60 Minutes Featured Piece on Fatal1ty

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Zenny

I'm gonna steal your girlfriend.
Mar 14, 2003
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Washington DC
amped eSports has posted an interesting article recapping a recent piece on competitive gaming done by the news tv show, 60 Minutes. The feature is centered around the lovable Fatal1ty, but not just limited to him. In fact, the piece does a pretty good job informing the non-competitive gamer of what is going on in the pro scene.
It’s time to wake up, America. eSports has hit the spotlight and with it comes the realization of a dream that has existed in the mind of every child since Fred Savage took his brother to California for a Nintendo tournament in The Wizard. Professional Gamer is now a valid career path.
You can read the full article, but I have to say from reading this that I think the fine people at amped eSports are getting a tad-ahead of themselves; much in the same way as people keep claiming that Linux is 'ready for the desktop', I think that there exists certain permenant limitations in our culture that prevent video gaming from really matching the giants of baseball and football in the minds of little children.
 

GRAF1K

****** Kamikaze
Oct 16, 2003
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Funny, the purpose of the piece seem to be to generate the very awareness that it proclaims already here.
 

tool

BuFs #1 mom
Oct 31, 2001
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Up my ass
MTV did a documentary on pro-gaming that was a lot better then the 60 minutes piece and a lot more indepth. Both were good though. Pro-gaming is really growing in North America, and has exploded in South Korea and Japan. I don't know where it stands though in Europe. No doubt that it would be an awsome career choice to get into. It doesn't make that much money right now, I really don't think you could live off of it because you have to constantly win matchs. But I think that in 10-15 years it will be on the same level as the NFL, where players will be making $10,000,000 a year just for playing.
 

elmuerte

Master of Science
Jan 25, 2000
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tool said:
But I think that in 10-15 years it will be on the same level as the NFL, where players will be making $10,000,000 a year just for playing.

They should fix that. $100,000/yr is more than enough to live from. Ok, so maybe the top players should get $150,000/yr. Because it isn't for the money, right?
 

JaFO

bugs are features too ...
Nov 5, 2000
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I don't know where it stands though in Europe.
practically at the same place as any other american 'sport' ...
Even darts is more popular.

All too often, spectators wander into the halls of a CPL event, unaware of what they’ve stepped into, .... To counter this point, Castronova cited an argument that places eSports at the helm of a new millennium of entertainment, explaining, "Well, baseball's not exciting to somebody from France, either. ...
Perhaps it isn't "exciting" but at least one can understand what is going on because everything can be seen at once (and everyone sees the same ...).
They might want to spent a lot more research into that part before claiming 'e-sports' are something that can be done 'for money'.

That 'combat'-show could be used as a base for a televised report of the average CS-game ...
 
A

_Alex_

Guest
So you'll have to excuse me If I think paying gamers the sort of Salaries that NFL players or sports superstars might see is ridiculous.

1. Gaming does not put your health or physics well being on the line in a way that some sports do. I always saw the natural risks of the game as part of the reason to justify a massive salary.

2. Gaming is just that. a form of entertainment. Now im sure that there are people who take it VERY seriously, but at the end of the day, It's something that the majority of us do to de-stress after a long day, as opposed to a career.

3. What happens to the guys making the games? Last time I checked, the real Rockstars in this scenario are (and should be) the developers of the hit titles that HAVE these nerds pouring their entire lifes into these virtual experiences. Excuse me if I find the art of game development to be a much more compelling reason for rewarding someone with a high salary than I do people with obsessive compulsive tendencies toward throttling a single game for months on end. If it ended up being the case that Joe X Game developer was making like 60 000 a year, living a normal life, supporting a family while John X "Pro Gamer" was making 10 000 000 a year form his mommies basement, I think we'd have a really pathetic situation on our hands.


---

Just to clarify. I play games a TON, and im a huge nerd. But im also interested in what makes games WORK, and WHY they hold such widespread appeal to people. I'm looking at the game development industry. Maybe that's where people who truly love video games should start looking , rather than trying to capitalize on addictive tendencies.

Just my two cents. I hate to sound totally anti-pro gaming, cuz I think that it has its' place as a sort of sub culture. But let's face it, the day it rumps physical sports will not come.
 

Persefone

Ms God!
Jun 2, 2005
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If anyone has hopes of a career playing videogames he can think again. Without spectators there is no money, and no one is going to watch the retarded s*** that most videogames and players are today.
 

Selerox

COR AD COR LOQVITVR
Nov 12, 1999
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Don't get me started on Painkiller...

Sports need consistancy. This the thing that games lack the most. Games, and gaming (internet gaming especially) simply aren't condusive to a stable, consistant community. Games don't last, clans don't last, players don't last.

Without consistancy, you won't get a stable market that companies want to invest in. that mean's no money, that means no publicity, that means no true pro-gaming. The community right now is so small, and the mass-media and the public so small-minded, that you won't get acceptance as anything other than an "underground sub-culture". Forget Fatal1ty, forget South Korea, forget Counter-Strike. It won't happen yet.

Give it 10 years and you'll see "eSports" on ESPN or Grandstand (for the UKers ;)). Not any time remotely soon.

Once gaming gets mature, then it'll happen. For now it's all hype.
 
D

Duiveltje

Guest
Indeed i cant imagine a program, where ppl would watch to see players play vs eachother with a videogame
 

JaFO

bugs are features too ...
Nov 5, 2000
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In 'real' sports the players don't last that long either, but their clubs usually do.
CS is pretty much proof that games *can* last for a long time.

I think that another 'problem' is that players don't use their own name & likeness in the games themselves. That also makes it harder for the public to identify with the people out there.

And in 10 years already ?
I'd figure it'll take a century at least ... and at that time it'll simply be more like soldiers with MILES-gear playing war-games in a highly detailed virtual reality-setting and less like freaks in front of a screen.

Until that happens I'd expect console-games to be the first to breach the barrier as both games and hardware are a lot more consistent and reliable compared to the average pc-game & hardware.

I'd even say that airsoft and paintball have a better chance of becoming 'professional' before playing games does.
 
no hype, no hype at all, its already happening, I read this article (in a magazine in a library so no links) about some country, (think it was korea) where gamer IS a profession. the journalists went to some starcraft tournament, where people would pay to watch those gamers play. It was really insane.

And I'm tired so I cant write properly.
 

nthexwn

New Member
May 9, 2005
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I'd pay to watch a professionally done, organized, and knowledgable program on pro gaming. I already watch several of the replays of matches after they're posted to websites. It really takes a gamer to appreciate the sport of FPS dueling. There will be a trickle of mainstream people that show interest and support the culture but the driving force for pro gaming is all the kids that will grow up with this being more and more accepted. Eventually (say, 20 years from now) this will reach a critical mass where a large enough chunk of the population appreciates gaming enough to make it BIGGER than some physical sports are today. This will happen from the inside. This isn't a fad. This isn't as simple as poker, or bowling, or darts. This is the future! Naysay all you want but I'm convinced that it's gonna blow the doors off of this century!
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Persefone said:
If anyone has hopes of a career playing videogames he can think again. Without spectators there is no money, and no one is going to watch the retarded s*** that most videogames and players are today.

Your wrong. Video game spectating is here. Infact, companies like the Team Sportscast Network that I am a part of have jumped onto video games as a spectator sport and are creating a huge fan base. Every year the CPL offers spectator tickets at $80 a ticket for thier summer and winter events in Dallas, TX and they sell out every time. In Korea, there are three channels on TV dedicated to professional video games, and the World Cyber Game finals that are usually held in South Korea are attended by at least a 100,000 people. Please, before you make such statements as the one above, do a little research. Just because you would not pay to spectate does not mean that you speak for everyone.
 

Harlock

Married And Always Nagged
Dec 11, 1999
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maanclan.com
Persefone said:
If anyone has hopes of a career playing videogames he can think again. Without spectators there is no money, and no one is going to watch the retarded s*** that most videogames and players are today.

Your wrong. Video game spectating is here. Infact, companies like the Team Sportscast Network that I am a part of have jumped onto video games as a spectator sport and are creating a huge fan base. Every year the CPL offers spectator tickets at $80 a ticket for thier summer and winter events in Dallas, TX and they sell out every time. In Korea, there are three channels on TV dedicated to professional video games, and the World Cyber Game finals that are usually held in South Korea are attended by at least a 100,000 people. Please, before you make such statements as the one above, do a little research. Just because you would not pay to spectate does not mean that you speak for everyone.
 

Selerox

COR AD COR LOQVITVR
Nov 12, 1999
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TheUKofGBandNI
selerox.deviantart.com
Not going to happen yet.

As for the WCG, it's in South Korea, so it's always going to get a huge audience. If they held it in Europe or the US, it simply wouldn't be that big of a deal.

I think the idea of massed spectator stuff for games is a result of people getting way ahead of themselves. The fact is that most people watch/listen to game coverage only of games they play. Right now, "mass" broadcasting for games only appeals to the communities that play the games. I don't watch, or really care about non-UT games at all when it comes down to shoutcasting or live video. I'm sure most people are the same. Until that changes, game broadcasting has an iron-hard ceiling on it's watching/listening figures, which is the size of the communities that play the games being covered.

Harlock said:
Your wrong. Video game spectating is here. Infact, companies like the Team Sportscast Network that I am a part of have jumped onto video games as a spectator sport and are creating a huge fan base.

Until you got the rug pulled out from under you by Radio iTG...