Picture this: the only glow in the room comes from the fourth-straight episode of SportsCenter. Sleep should have come hours ago, but work and insomnia force a few more hours of wakefulness. SportsCenter ends, and two guys holding Xbox controllers come on instead. They whisper their play choices into side cameras as they battle against each other in a passionate performance of Madden '06. Finally, as one guy explains why he chose a nickel defense instead of a dime, it becomes clear-it is bed time.
But, for an ever growing group of people, this is a forerunner for bold things to come. Competitive video gaming, once a term for beating your best friend at Mortal Kombat, is quickly making the transition from dorm room to televised tournament circuits.
A few months back, MTV aired an episode of the show True Life with the title "True Life: I'm a Professional Gamer," which chronicled the progress of two young men embarking on their professional video gaming careers. The show followed them getting signed and attending their first competitions. They could have been new recruits for any sport-only, their "sport" of choice was video gaming.
The protagonists in that show were Team 3D, considered the team to beat at the competition the show filmed. A hefty task, considering they've only lost once. Ryan Danford, an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a member of Team 3D and has been for more than a year.
"MTV showed what we do. sort of," Danford said of the episode of True Life. "The show was slightly skewed. They just took the bits and pieces that they wanted."
Of course, True Life is never a generalized portrait of the activities or competitions at its core. Instead, it offers a dramatic look at the people involved. Danford said he hopes to get more accurate TV coverage this year, like the World Series of Poker.
The comparison is apt. Poker was also once relegated to dimly lit basements. Moreover, while neither poker players nor video gamers can really be called athletes, the competition is as fierce as on any field. Danford said he plays 15 to 20 hours a week when there is no competition coming. Weeks leading up to competitions see him "not so much playing as practicing" Halo 2, honing his skills for the biggest competition yet.
This weekend Team 3D will compete against the other top-11 teams globally in New York City for the largest purse yet: $20,000 dollars for the champions of the Halo 2 four-player team competition. And instead of sneaker and clothing deals, Team 3D has sponsors like Intel and Nvidia paying their way to the tournaments.
"Right now I think [gaming] is still a hobby," Danford said. "But, in a few years I hope I can call myself a pro." However, if the definition of being a pro is earning a living, Danford is already there. "I made between 40 and 50 grand last year," he said. In fact, Danford's "hobby" took up so much time that he even left UNC for a semester.
Major League Gaming has grown quickly in the four years since its inception. Though tournament attendance varies, more than 100 teams show up to the larger events. And though Ryan said "the audience at the tournaments is mostly other teams who lost earlier in the week and stuck around to watch," he quickly added that "lots of other people play streaming videos online."
The growth of professional gaming is probably best proven by the huge increases in prize money award. According to the Major League Gaming website, $250,000 was given out during the 2005 season. That number is expected to rise to $1 million in the 2006 season. MLG is also aggressively trying to get television exposure, hiring Neil Pilson, the one-time president of CBS Sports and former consultant to the Arena Football League, NASCAR and the Olympics.
Nevertheless, it may be a rocky road for professional gaming. Watching someone, regardless of skill, play videogames is an extremely foreign concept to the vast majority of people. It is near-impossible to imagine the viewers of NASCAR, the most watched sport in the United States, make the leap to watching competitive video gaming. A large audience is already proving difficult to find: only a few dozen of the streaming videos available through the MLG's Video on Demand website see more than 1,000 downloads.
While it's easy to envy Danford's ability to earn a living playing games he loves, it is more difficult to imagine watching him frag the competition on ESPN. But that may be the future: competitive video gaming will probably never occupy the nation like football or basketball, but it may occupy your TV screen during the middle of the day, stealing slots from less-watched competitions like Trick Shot Billiards or reruns of the World Series of Poker.
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