If you think your kids are spending too much time playing video games on their PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, PC, or PSP (Playstation Portable) consoles, then you may have cause for concern, but not cause for concern. Before you tell your child to put down the game remote and pick up a textbook, you should consider this fact; there is a professional video game circuit with professional players winning thousands, even millions of dollars.
South Korea has a real passion for video games. This is a nation obsessed with video games. Electronic gaming events in this country can attract up to 100,000 viewers at a single event. Their cyber athletes earn millions of dollars playing in tournaments that are televised across the country. Some of them are so popular that they can’t go out in public without bodyguards to protect them from the adoring fans. They even date movie stars and their faces appear on the covers of newspapers and magazines.
An electronic game tournament was recently held in Seoul, South Korea at the Jamsil Indoor Stadium. This event was the equivalent of our Super Bowl. The game chosen for this event was “StarCraft”, which is a web game played on PC. This event was nationally televised and broadcast on the Internet. The 1.78 million viewers who watched on television and online were glued to their seats as they watched the all-day event unfold. They came to see their country’s most popular player strut around.
His name is Lim Yo-hwan, he is 27 years old and he is the Mick Jagger of e-sports in South Korea. This young man has made a name for himself playing “StarCraft,” the only game that matters on the video game circuit in this country. His fans wanted to see him put on a show, and he did, easily winning the event with a $20,000 take-home prize. Lim Yo-hwan has won many of these events in recent years and this has put his earnings in the six figure category. He’s not bad at playing video games.
The United States also has some superstar cyber athletes who make a very good living on the electronic gaming circuit. The brightest star in this country is a 26-year-old man named Johnathan Wendel, also known to his fans as Fatal1ty (his screen name). He lives in Kansas City, Missouri, but his reputation lives on throughout the world.
Johnathan turned pro at the age of 19, winning 41 major esports video game tournaments in the past seven years. He has won more arcade competitions than anyone in the United States. Johnathan has also done very well financially, winning over $450,000 in prize money.
Johnathan Wendel has traveled the world playing in video game tournaments. He to date has played on every continent except Antarctica. These tournaments have been held in some very interesting, unique and famous places, such as the Great Wall of China and Red Square in Moscow, so the idea of holding one in Antarctica one day may not be so far-fetched.
Everywhere he goes, Johnathan is surrounded by fans who love the way he plays video games. All of his expenses are paid for when he travels and lives like a rock star. With world championships in five different video games, Johnathan is considered by most in the game to be the best in the world. No other player has even come close to matching his accomplishments.
In November 2006, Johnathan Wendel defeated his greatest nemesis and won the world championship with his fifth video game (“PainKiller”), taking home a $150,000 prize check in doing so. He defeated the reigning world champion of that game, a 20-year-old Dutch man who calls himself Vo0.
Johnathan is becoming more and more popular by the day as he continues to shine as a superstar in the world of professional gamers. He is a force to be reckoned with in the Professional League of Cyberathletes. He recently launched a line of “Fatal1ty” products that includes things like mouse pads, headsets, and keyboards made specifically for playing video games. He has a marketing guru named Mark Walden working with him and they both hope to make millions of dollars selling these products to gamers all over the world.
The video game industry is expected to make $30 billion this year selling video games and consoles for products like the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PSP. This is an enormous amount of money that is more than double the annual gross receipts of the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball combined. With this amount of money at stake and hundreds of millions of people playing video games around the world, the sport of professional video gaming is beginning to attract major advertising sponsors and merchandising companies.
Professional gamers are no longer just kids wasting time by spending endless hours playing video games. Many of them have managed to transform a hobby into a lucrative career. There are hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars being made these days by gamers who travel the world (all expenses paid) and live like rock stars.
So next time you think your child is spending too much time playing Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC or PSP games, don’t worry too much. If they show more than average interest in the sport of electronic gaming, try not to discourage them from playing video games. It’s important for you to realize that they may not only be gaming when they sit in front of their TV or computer, but they may also be training to be a world-famous millionaire cyber-athlete.