10 Things About Pro Gaming
After spending a day at my first professional gaming event - the Cyberathlete Professional League World Tour Championship in Dallas this week - several things became immediately clear. Beyond the large sums of money that can be won, such as $150,000 at this week's CPL event alone, there are a few things that you may not know about professional gaming. Here are 10 revelations:
10. Pro Gamers Aren't Geeks - They're Jocks
It may come as a shock to some people, but it's true. If you're looking for Lewis Skolnick types with pocket protectors and thick-rimmed glasses, you've come to the wrong place. Gamers here at the CPL resemble jocks - albeit seriously smart and tech-savvy jocks - more than mild-mannered nerds. They talk like jocks, barking profanity-laced trash talk at one another. They act like jocks, thumping their chests with victory and high-fiving and fist-pounding one another after big wins. Okay, so most of the pro gamers here don't have ripped abs and athletic physiques, and quite a few are of a more diminutive stature. But they're not fat blobs either. Oh, and some of them have uniforms, too.
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9. There Are Female Pro Gamers
Yes, there are girls in the professional gaming circles. And some of them are quite good, too. There aren't a whole lot of females around on the first day of the CPL Championship Finals event here in Dallas, but there are a few. For example, there was the SK Gaming Ladies team in the Counter-Strike competition. In another game room, I counted half a dozen females playing various PC and consoles games. And they blended in well with the rest of crowd, cheering loudly and yelling commands during matches.
8. Trash-Talking Is The Air, And So Is Sportsmanship
Playing online can lead to spirited trash-talking and unseemly insults - just like basketball, football, and baseball. However, I was surprised that, after a Counter-Strike match ended, I saw the winning players get up from their seats, walk around the table and shake hands with their opponents. Sure, there's trash-talking and cussing and gangster rap-flavored insults that are lobbied across the PCs during heated competitions. And there are plenty of rivalries between pro gamers and top teams. But there's also standard of sportsmanship, at least at this CPL event. When professional gamers come face to face with one another and when alls said and done, there exists a mutual respect for one another. And in this day and age when NFL players stomp on each others heads and spit in their opponents faces and brawls break out on NBA basketball courts, such sportsmanship - and professionalism - from young gamers is a breath of fresh air.
7. Pro Gamers Retire Earlier Than Tennis Players
You'd think that playing video and PC games professionally would be a dream come true for many, especially the top pro gamers. Yet a number of them seem to retire at a young age during their so-called "prime." For example, Kristoffer "Tentpole" Nordlund has said he will retire after the CPL World Tour Championship wraps up this year - at the ripe old age of 21. Nordlund is a member of Sweden's top professional team, dubbed Fnatic, and he's pretty damn good at Counter Strike. There's been no word about what Nordlund will do after retirement, but there is life after pro gaming. For example, Sander "Vo0" Kaasjager, 21, who is one of the top Painkiller players in the world and earned more than $230,000 on the 2005 CPL World Tour alone, retired earlier this year to concentrate on his college studies. And Dennis "Thresh" Fong, who was once one of the dominant Quake players in professional gaming during the late 1990s, went on to become a successful entrepreneur, founding the gaming site Gamers.com and Xfire, the communication software maker and social networking provider for online gamers. Xfire was acquired by MTV Networks last spring for more than $100 million, so Fong is doing quite well.
6. Pro Gaming Has Its Own Sports Media
In addition to being broadcast on MTV, USA Network, and DirecTV, professional gaming has its own dedicated sports media that broadcasts the matches via the Web and reports box scores, stats, and news recaps. For example, GotFrag.com is a site dedicated to covering live competitions with online streaming video as well as news reports, stats and record keeping. There's also Amped eSports , which covers a variety of professional gaming tournaments and organizations. In addition, Cohesion Productions is currently filming documentaries on the history of professional gaming. And just recently, Gotfrag partnered with Beckett Media to launch the first e-sports magazine, dubbed eSports. A number of other gaming and tech sites are following the trend and increasing their coverage of professional gaming.
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