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Once a year they come to Las Vegas. Not to party. Not to compete. Not even to play Street Fighter.
I realise this pours gas on the bad parenting flames of yesterday, but holy crow, I can't not show you this story. Yesterday reader tooji tipped me off to the story of Blake Peebles, a 16-year-old in Raleigh, N.C., whose parents have let him drop out of school so that he can focus on a professional gaming career via Guitar Hero.
Blake convinced his folks (that is, "We couldn't take the complaining anymore", said his mum) to let him drop out last September. They hired in-home tutors to continue his education there, at least, but there's no doubt priority number one is Guitar Hero. There's a vaguely defined goal of Blake playing it professionally, either through Major League Gaming or by winning prizes in a national and international competitions. But so far he's only made about $US 1,000, most of that value realised in meals and other freebies won at local competitions. The other pro gamer the reporter contacted for this story said he's cashed in about $US 25,000 in his entire career.
Chris Chike, whose 100 percent effort on "Through the Fire and the Flames" back in June earned him celebrity status and consultant to peripherals-maker Ant Commandos, is profiled in today's New York Times.
Even if you know all about Chike -- iamchris4life -- put down your urge to dismiss his fame and read the story. It is a very, very positive portrayal of a young video gamer, something we rarely see in mainstream media, much less The New York Times. The best we usually get are condescending features on local news, read over by with-it reporters faking lingo. Writer Dave Itzkoff goes to Rochester, Minn. to get the full story, and then expands on the future and potential opportunities for super-expert or professional gamers.
Chris Chike is Guitar Hero's Hero [The New York Times, thanks Yeliab]
In a breathless Christian Science Monitor article about pro-gaming (no doubt inspired by the proximity of the World Cyber Games to the Olympics), Gloria Goodale breaks the news to their readers that people actually get paid money to play video games competitively.
She even warns readers not to snicker, seeing that ESPN broadcasts the even less athletic pro poker tourneys. It doesn't take long for the article to enter familiar territory, pinning the hopes of pro gaming on Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, who wraps up the shortish story with this doozie of a quote:
Let's lead off what will be an epic Sunday with a goldmine of retro-game nostalgia: Starcade. Not the commenter, the TV game show in the early-to-mid 1980s that ran in syndication, and featured contestants battling it out on Ladybug, Sinistar, Mr. Do, Defender, etc. Fifteen of the shows are available at the site, and it also features a rich "games of Starcade" to serve as a nice stroll down that memory lane.
Games Media Properties announced today that it would no longer produce the World Series of Video games and that the remainder of its 2007 pro-gaming series had been cancelled. The competitive gaming league announced in May that it had signed an agreement with CBS to air four of its competitions, two of which now appear to no longer taking place.
GMP wrote in a statement that "the continuing challenges of securing adequate revenues to sustain the production of the WSVG's large scale events and television programming, in a very crowded field of competitive gaming leagues, has prompted us to re-evaluate our direction as an organisation." GGL Wire writes in its post on the subject that other well known pro-gaming leagues are also showing signs of financial difficulty.
