Play to win

Posted on 25 Sep 2008 at 10:59

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

 1 of 8

Gallery

Many professional gamers specialise in a single event (or game) and, in the case of the Championship Gaming Series, each team comprises a collection of specialists for four games: Counter-Strike (a first-person, team-based shooting game), football simulation FIFA 08, sports car racer Forza Motorsport 2 and the all-out action beat 'em up Dead or Alive 4, which produced the exciting showdown between Messy and Offbeat Ninja in this year's semi-final. With that victory, Messy's UK-based team, Birmingham Salvo, secured a sudden death win (Offbeat Ninja having won five rounds in a row to level the scores between the two teams) and a place in the final of the competition. The ending proved every bit as thrilling for those in attendance as at any major sporting event.

A few days later, on 24th July 2008, Birmingham Salvo went on to win the final in an exhilarating encounter with San Francisco Optx to become the first ever non-US CGS champions, putting British pro gaming firmly on the map.

"I'm extremely proud of my team," says Birmingham Salvo's general manager and former semi-professional gamer Michael O'Dell. "I watch each of them practise, I make them practise when they don't want to, wake them up in the morning, make sure they eat the right food. There are so many things that we go through when we practise - training, tactics, there's so much involved behind the scenes."

O'Dell's comments reveal the often overlooked side of high-end competitive gaming: the unwavering desire, discipline and dedication of the competitors to become champions in a competition that demands incredible hand-eye coordination, reactions and mental toughness, with milliseconds often separating a contender from a champion.

"Most of us are quite fit. The fitter you are the faster reaction times you have and the better you feel," explains Pete 'pt' Wright, a member of Birmingham Salvo's Counter-Strike team. "If you're good enough you can definitely make a living out of it. Focusing on the CGS, you can win a lot of money. By winning the final you get $50,000 prize money for roughly a month's work. If you win other tournaments during the rest of the year you're looking at over $100,000 a year."

Don't give up the day job

Not all professional gamers are as successful as the Birmingham Salvo team, or lucky enough to have sponsors. Many professionals struggle to make a living from solo competitions and often have to fit contests around their day jobs. "At the moment, very few pro gamers can make a living out of the sport," says O'Dell. "There are tournaments all over the world where you can win money, but only the top players can live off it."

Even though many pros can't earn a living from their chosen career, professional gaming has come a long way since its early days in the mid 1990s, when the emergence of first-person shooters such as Doom and Quake gave birth to the first professional tournaments.

Before he became the CEO and president of Gearbox Software (one of the world's most respected game development companies), Randy Pitchford was a professional gamer. He competed between 1994 and 1996 in events featuring classic shooters such as Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. "There wasn't much of a professional gaming scene back then - the seeds were just being planted," he recalls. "I competed in several online and local tournaments and I won multiple Doom tournaments run on CompuServe."

It was a more innocent time, and even larger tournaments involved gaming enthusiasts congregating in large halls and competing for glory rather than lucrative sums. Without serious sponsorship and television revenues, prizes were often modest compared with the six-figure sums of today's contests, although, as Pitchford recalls, there were a few exceptions.