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While I've been a gamer for much of my life, I'll be the first to admit that I'm braindead when it comes to the realm of professional gaming, much less the people that actually make money off of their mouse and keyboard skills. I've heard of names like Daigo and Fatal1ty in passing, but without any idea of how exactly they became known in gaming or their personal accolades. Thus, I'm turning to you guys and gals to enlighten me. I'll start off with these questions: 1) What's the average longevity for a game to be able to hold any sort of professional competition? I know people have played stuff like Quake 3 and Starcraft for a longass while, but are there any other games that have maintained a competitive base like those two have? 2) What do tournaments tend to pay out? I know that different tournaments for different games will award different amounts, but is the average payout about the same from game to game or are there certain ones that bring in the most bucks? Have many professional players tried to make a living solely on winning tournaments or do the majority of them tend to hold down a day job in addition?
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| # ? Nov 03, 2009 16:15 |
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 21:51 |
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I can't answer either of your questions but I wanted to let you know there was a pretty big thread about Professional StarCraft in Korea that you would probably be interested in reading.
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| # ? Nov 03, 2009 16:35 |
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Both your avatars work great together.
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| # ? Nov 03, 2009 16:56 |
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the SC scene in Korea is pretty good in that it has a feeling of legitimate competition that is fun to follow. They do have stupid poo poo like booth girls and occasional flashy lights going off, but it's basically just like really good players playing each other with an oversight organization (kespa) that keeps making better maps and organizing the leagues. The players are basically like little kids that get pulled from their families to live in shoe boxes and play SC all day for lovely pay, only the very top players really make any money, some are making little more than room and board in hopes they will get big. The pro gaming poo poo in the US and Europe is just totally retarded and no one gives a poo poo, it's all feels catered toward 11 year olds, just think of shows on that vide game channel with "extreme" poo poo, I think they had a half-pipe with people skateboarding at one of the big pro gaming events to give you an example of what I mean. Then think of "gamer culture" in the US, people who identify themselves as a "gamer," and things like "pro guitar hero players" etc. etc. I think this is why it's never going to catch on in the US or Europe, this approach is horrible. Though when you compare it to how much Koreans have to play SC and how much they sacrifice to be good at a game, neither option looks so great. Fighting games are different and most FG players want nothing to do with "pro gaming." It's actually a pet peeve of me and probably other people who play fighters when people say "the pros" in reference to Daigo or people who place at EVO etc.
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| # ? Nov 03, 2009 18:05 |
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systran posted:Fighting games are different and most FG players want nothing to do with "pro gaming." It's actually a pet peeve of me and probably other people who play fighters when people say "the pros" in reference to Daigo or people who place at EVO etc. How are the people in the fighting game tournament scene different to, say the RTS tournament scene or the FPS scene? I'm genuinely curious. Is it that fighters get older players or just less stereotypically nerdy ones? The (admittedly few) pro FPS types I've met were certainly not 'exxxxtreme' teenage nerds, but looked down on people like that as well. Edit: Pretty sure Counterstrike is still going competitively. Danger - Octopus! fucked around with this message at Nov 03, 2009 around 20:42 |
| # ? Nov 03, 2009 20:39 |
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Danger - Octopus! posted:The (admittedly few) pro FPS types I've met were certainly not 'exxxxtreme' teenage nerds, but looked down on people like that as well. Yeah, more or less. In my experience (which is more extensive than most people's), they are, with few exceptions... not the friendliest people. I have a personal experience with a former top pro gamer that would make you cringe, but it wouldn't be appropriate for me to get into it (sorry). Pro gaming is much like any other fame... either you handle it wisely, or you succumb to the fame and the fortune and end up like Lindsay Lohan. iastudent posted:2) What do tournaments tend to pay out? I know that different tournaments for different games will award different amounts, but is the average payout about the same from game to game or are there certain ones that bring in the most bucks? Have many professional players tried to make a living solely on winning tournaments or do the majority of them tend to hold down a day job in addition? At QuakeCon this year, the CTF tournament paid $12,000 to the winning team and the 1v1 tournament paid $14,000 to the winner. I don't know how this stacks up against other big tournaments, but that kind of money is nothing to sneeze at. MaberMK fucked around with this message at Nov 03, 2009 around 21:01 |
| # ? Nov 03, 2009 20:58 |
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There's "Starcraft" and then "everything else". I think Starcraft is even losing popularity. Also, Starcraft is more like a professional sport here in the US than anything else -- there are teams that basically get money from sponsors and poo poo (not sure if there are team owners or not, but probably) and I'm sure the TV networks pay out cash, etc.. Kespa (Korean E-Sports Association) pretty much runs the whole thing (http://www.e-sports.or.kr/). People get paid whether or not they win (although a losing player could potentially be let go from the team or not have his contract renewed, etc.) There are tournaments here and there for other titles, but there really isn't any "professional" gaming scene where you can reliable make a living if you're good. The main reason is that there is no way for anyone to make money off of the competitions. In Korean Starcraft, it's broadcast on television, so there's revenue from selling commercial airtime, game sponsors, etc.
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| # ? Nov 03, 2009 21:15 |
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I can give you a little insight to the competitive Counter Strike scene. I know a professional player in real life, and I asked him general questions about how it works. I wont say who he is, because I dont know if he considers this information personal, but I will say that he plays for Evil Geniuses. He gets the typical kinda stuff you would expect by being sponsored by Intel, MSI, and etc. They supply him with the best computer and monitors money can buy, mice, mouspads, headsets, the works. I do not remember exactly how much he gets paid, but I believe it was around $1500 a month. This is not including tournament winnings. His sponsors also pay for lodging and food and all that when they are going to the tournaments all over the world. I think he had mandatory practice nightly, or atleast every other night. As far as personality he is down to earth and not at all what you expect of a "pro gamer", and I think this is mostly true of all professional gamers. The people that throw pro around and talk trash and generally act like rear end in a top hat kids are mostly players who are not actually professionally paid competitive players.
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| # ? Nov 03, 2009 21:18 |
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Danger - Octopus! posted:How are the people in the fighting game tournament scene different to, say the RTS tournament scene or the FPS scene? I'm genuinely curious. Is it that fighters get older players or just less stereotypically nerdy ones? The competitive fighting game scene evolved from arcades, while RTS and FPS games evolved from playing people at home over the internet. There are some REALLLY awkward nerds who play fighting games, especially fighting games with anime art styles, but generally speaking fighting game players up until very very recently had to meet each other in real life to play at all, which tends to filter out some of the awkward nerd type people. Even today with all the games that have online play, most people that are even somewhat serious about fighters will meet up weekly to play offline, in part because fighters are so sensitive to latency and also because it's just kind of more fun that way. I don't just mean getting your friend or roommate into a game, I mean like if you go to shoryuken.com, you can go to a sub-forum for your area and most every city will have a thread. People wanting to get into fighters can just read the thread and show up at whoever is hosting's house and start playing with people. As for the competitive scene, you can only have tournaments offline. This makes it so a lot of people travel several times a year to tournaments, which has caused a whole "east coast vs. west coast" thing, since California and the east coast both have really big scenes and it's a huge hassle for someone on the west coast to travel to an east coast tournament and vice versa. In the non-korean SC scene they have a lot of pretty big events offline, there is the ICCUP ladder and lots of online tournaments that are taken seriously, whereas with a fighting game no one cares how good you are online. I haven't met many FPS pro-gamers or RTS people, so I can't really generalize too much about what they are like, but I think the big difference is that FPS and RTS gamers NEEDED the bullshit "fatal1ty branded video card" poo poo and all xtreme sponsorship stuff in order to get any competitive thing going at all. Otherwise you would just have online ladders and less incentive for big LAN events with tournaments, whereas fighting games have always needed a physical meetup to hold a competition, and I think most fighting game players just don't care about getting the "xtreme" treatment going when what they already have has worked for so long.
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| # ? Nov 03, 2009 22:33 |
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systran posted:In short, fighting game people actually meet other people IRL, and don't depend on their rig to be competitive, which keeps the freaks to a minimum.
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| # ? Nov 03, 2009 23:56 |
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I'm not really trying to be elitist about it or say that one is better than the other; I think competitive RTS games( which is really just Starcraft) is really fun and also great to watch, it would be cool if they could the "pro" version of it good without skateboards, spiky hair, and the world cyber game music. I never could get into competitive FPS games even though I used to like playing them; they really aren't very fun to watch even if it might be really fun to play at a high level. I ended up preferring fighting games because I didn't really have interest in competitive FPS games, getting into Starcraft was kind of hard since there is no sense of community unless you're really good already and also because it takes so much longer to play a game. If you want to play a bunch of games and drill yourself to get better, you might spend eight minutes getting your economy running, then lose because you were a half second late moving your first control group of hydralisks out of a psi-storm. In a fighting game, after you gently caress up really bad you'll lose the round in a few seconds and you get a fresh start straight away. If you do well you'll also tend to win, whereas in Starcraft you can do really well for like twenty minutes, make a small mistake, and basically the twenty minutes you were on top of your game are out the window. This makes it really fun to watch and extremely frustrating to get good at.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 00:07 |
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iastudent posted:1) What's the average longevity for a game to be able to hold any sort of professional competition? I know people have played stuff like Quake 3 and Starcraft for a longass while, but are there any other games that have maintained a competitive base like those two have? 1) Really depends on the player base. If it's a game that's being looked forward to by a large sum of people and quickly gains popularity (see: CoD4), then chances are, it will be popular, or sequels and similar iterations will be popular for a good long while. Also for a lot of PC FPSes there is a lot of crossover between games. Many people who became crackshots in Unreal or Quake do well in other Shooters; an example of this is a lot of the pro-league TF2 players come from various games they became good at (Quake, Natural Selection, UT2k4, etc.). Another example would be some of the fighting game players who play a wide variety of fighting games, such as Justin Wong being one of the best players in Street Fighter/MVC2/and a couple others. 2) See question 1. Depends on how popular the game is, and how many teams enter the tourney. With Quake being such a big game for the competitive scene, naturally it's going to pay out more then TF2 (which iirc the top prize I saw dealt out was ~$6-8000 for a 6 person team). The more average viewers for the pro-league matches, chances are the higher the top prize will be. If you want to know more you could ask Waar or some of the other people in the Competitive TF2 thread in PGS. I know there's a handful of people who played competitively in a multitude of games in that thread (including our very own cliffy who got I think 3rd at QuakeCon this year).
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 00:34 |
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I played competitive counter strike: source and it is the most drama filled poo poo in the world. Only team that didn't cry every time we lost a round was a group of old friends and because of this, we won easily and we didn't make people nervous by yelling at them when they hosed up a round. I played CAL-Open (starting league) for about 2 years on many many teams before I just joined the one with my friends. We made it to CAL-Intermediate and got in the top 10 before it was bought out from a company in Dubai somehow. It's extremely fun and you can play for money as well in leagues like CEVO. I've never laughed harder at a game when our team just fucks with the opposing side and just do retarded poo poo and still win (knifed a whole team who used rifles, or just spam grenades into one spot to just see 3-4 people die instantly, and of course the always present *Sniper through team-mate head, kill enemy as well*) We actually studied videos of pros playing and used their strategies and poo poo. It was nerdy as gently caress to do that but it was very fun. Slumpy fucked around with this message at Nov 04, 2009 around 00:40 |
| # ? Nov 04, 2009 00:38 |
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Fighting game tournaments usually pay out peanuts as official prizes. There are very few people that make a living off of FGs, so they supplement their income through money matches. This is more of a US thing, but people love to bet on not only others matches but also their own. In Japan, the competition for fighting games is much higher due to population density and the persistence of arcades. People can easily walk down the street and find all kinds of skilled players. This is a whole different discussion altogether so I won't go into it too much. The largest tournament in Japan is called Super Battle Opera (Tougeki). People have to qualify from all around the country for the annual finals. They even accept international players so other countries are also represented (but rarely win). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vNFYa-8l7k The Japanese typically play for cred more than money. Different mindset. The largest tournament in US by far is Evolution http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HydqdyHY9I It's the American analogue to SBO. It has it roots in similar tournaments from the late 90s. Fighting games exploded when Street Fighter 2 was released. systran already touched on it, but the fact that FG competition came out of the arcades really sets it apart from other progaming. FG players typically don't consider themselves to be especially nerdy but it's all relative to be honest. Smash Bros, Street Fighter, Tekken.. whatever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMHc32ygldk What sets FG apart from the rest is the hype surrounding these events. Not only that, but matches are usually very easy to follow unlike twitchy FPSes. With all that said, FG are not supported in a big commercial way like other PC or casual games so keep in mind that very few people are making money doing this and those that are probably making less than an entry level salary. Americans approach it more as a competitive hobby whereas many Japs think of it as a matter of honor. Metamorphosis fucked around with this message at Nov 04, 2009 around 00:42 |
| # ? Nov 04, 2009 00:40 |
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Not sure if it fits your definition of progaming, but there's the whole subculture dedicated to speedruns. They largely fall into two categories: regular and tool-assisted. People try to set some kind of record -- usually a time attack -- with or without the help of things like macros, glitches, savestates, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool-assisted_speedrun The result can be impressive and absurd. I don't know anyone in real life who has done tool-assisted stuff but there are plenty of people who like to show off how quickly they can finish a particular game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zyd-UBXxgU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ReDf3NFPkc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BQi8Efm5Ig
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 01:23 |
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I used to play Counter-Strike and Tom Clancy's Ravenshield competitively... CS has a huge community with largely juvenile drama, while Ravenshield had such a small community personal vendettas came around often, perhaps that also becomes an issue in the upper secluded echelons of gaming to some degree. If you want to find out more about different RTS stuff, say Wc3, look up Gosu, gives an idea of the nerd charisma that can spread throughout the drama filled scene that is this ridiculousness. I had a friend in middle school get sponsored by the local lan center for CS, i think he won a mini fridge in a competition or something and sold it. His experience was also drama-filled.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 16:03 |
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Counter Strike is still crazy popular and their tourneys can have huge payouts. COD4, or even better is Modern Warfare 2, being released in a couple of weeks, are great for tourneys. If you want to know how much the different games' tournaments pay out, check out QuakeCon. QuakeCon hosts tournaments for a bunch of games, including fighting and RTS. If you're looking to play on a competitive FPS team, you should find a team that is already sponsored. Even if the team has a lovely sponsor, you'll know they at least know how to find sponsors and that they're good enough to actually get sponsored. The easiest way to find competitive teams for any FPS games is to find servers that they play on, and hang out in the IRC channels they chat on. If you find a server filled with people that have clan tags that are known, and you play consistently well, you'll build a reputation for yourself and you'll get on a team. Once you're on a team, expect to practice AT LEAST 4 days out of the week. Expect to study maps on your own time, find sniper spots that no other teams will use, improve on the strategies of top teams, potentially spend lots more money upgrading your CPU and headphones and mice and keyboard. It's a lot of time and dedication but it can be fun as hell, especially if you have the skill to keep up with your fellow teammates. Once you win a tournament and get another sponsor and a bunch of free poo poo, you'll be hooked.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 17:58 |
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iastudent posted:I've heard of names like Daigo and Fatal1ty in passing, but without any idea of how exactly they became known in gaming or their personal accolades.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 18:02 |
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Harcourt posted:Counter Strike is still crazy popular and their tourneys can have huge payouts. COD4, or even better is Modern Warfare 2, being released in a couple of weeks, are great for tourneys. If you want to know how much the different games' tournaments pay out, check out QuakeCon. QuakeCon hosts tournaments for a bunch of games, including fighting and RTS.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 18:37 |
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Harcourt posted:QuakeCon hosts tournaments for a bunch of games, including fighting and RTS. In terms of prize-paying tournaments, this is absolutely, 100% untrue. There have been BYOC tournaments for just about everything, but the only tournaments that have ever paid money were played on id or id-supported games (i.e., all FPS games).
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 18:53 |
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