Professional sports as a means of entertainment is a very, very old idea. It likely has its roots even before the first Olympic games, played centuries ago. Nobody has a problem with the idea of watching a game of basketball or football, and certainly, one would be challenged to find even one person that looks down on a professional athlete. In physical sports, it doesn't seem to be an issue that you can earn your full salary by "playing" a "game." However, for a combination of different reasons, electronic competitive gamers have had a more difficult time attaining a truly professional status. In the United States, movies were once considered the main source of entertainment. It takes millions of dollars to create a quality film, and in turn, enough people buy tickets to see the movie to makes millions and millions more. However, in the last several years, computer and video games, under the more sophiticated term, "interactive entertainment," have finally reached the point of bringing in more money than movies. If that's true (and it is), wouldn't one assume that there are as many professional gamers as there are actors, or perhaps physical sports athletes?
Professional gaming is not yet at the level we all want it to be, in Europe or the States. This is due to several factors. Perhaps the root of the problem lies in the situation we are in as spectators of the sports. There is no channel devoted to professional gaming, like ESPN or some other popular sporting network. In fact, there's not even a single television program that regularly covers the big competitive events of games like Warcraft III or Counterstrike. The level of mainstream exposure games get is basically nonexistent. If you want to watch the FIFA games coming up soon, it won't be very difficult at all to find two or three channels on television completely devoted to the games in real time, as they're being played. However, if you want to see the big up-coming 1v1 of Cooller vs. ZeRo4 (hypothetically, of course), you're going to have to wait for the demo, since there's no guarantee you'll be able to connect to the server. So, let's get this straight: we have a potential audience of hundreds of thousands of gamers around the world, who spend much more money on games than they do films, yet most gamers haven't even considered the thought of becoming a professional. We have a form of entertainment that we know is so amazing, yet a good deal of the world hasn't even heard of it beacuse there is a serious lack of media exposure to the professional level of playing electronic games (which is odd, considering the afformentioned popularity of physical sports).
However, electronic competitive sports is on the rise in most places, and in some places, it is much closer to where we want the activity to be than where the activity is in USA or Europe. In Korea, there are a number of people that make their full year's salary by playing competitive games. In this Cyberfight interview, the great Quake III player Fox mentions two definitions of a "pro" gamer. One is the gamer that plays at a very high level, and the other is a player that actually generates serious income from playing the games. Very few people have actually reached the second level of professional gaming that was mentioned, but the Koreans are definitely on the way to making professional gaming a legitimate career.
In Korea, a serious and sudden trend is sweeping across the young adult culture - shops called "PC Bang" are beginning to show up everywhere. At the PC Bangs, anyone can use the internet for an unlimited amount of time for a small fee. It is here that gamers take advantage of the great connection qualities and practice their online game skills. Several professional gamers spend most of their nights playing games at the PC Bang shops. Apparently, there is a strong enough community of gamers (and I'm sure it's growing at a healthy rate, too) so that these businesses are showing up rapidly. This suggests that the owners of the PC Bang shops see gaming as a serious enough activity that they can make a living hosting the professional players as they practice. This is not too much unlike the internet cafes we have in the US and Europe, but this is where it gets interesting. How would you like to know that your internet cafe has the backing of your nation's government?
Korea's government took notice of the thriving gaming community of youth and supports places like PC Bang the same way some governments would support a shelter for people in need. This is definitely a step in an interesting direction for games.
And - online competitive games aren't completely without media exposure. First, there are sites out there like Cyberfight and ESReality that serve as places of discussion and gaming news, as well as a place to download and view demos from your favorite online games. And - as it's been noted in the recent past, some gamers are getting real media coverage, like John "ZeRo4" hill being featured in a popular newspaper in California.
Professional gaming is growing. It is only a matter of time before this "interactive entertainment" becomes as mainstream as "real" sports. I look forward to that day with great interest, and dream for the day that our passion of competitive online games is legitimitized by the mainstream media. I only hope that great day is in the near future.
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