Twenty-two-year-old Kurtis Ling from Vancouver and his team Evil Genius earned a multi-million dollar prize after winning a video game championship in Seattle.
Beating out dozens of gamers during the week-long International Dota 2 Championships, Ling and his team took home a $6.6 million prize.
Ling, also known as Aui_2000, is ranked as Canada’s highest paid professional gamer, and the 13th highest paid gamer in the world. He earns a living playing video games, winning competitions around the world, and earning tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars at tournaments.
I hope my son never see or hears of this.
I don't know if I should shake my head or be jealous.
Good for him I guess.
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There's a link to a video in the video game thread about Dota. It's like a full length film about the athletes competing and the obstacles they need to overcome. (lol).
So is whacking at a disk with a twig while balancing on ice. So is killing each other for possession of a ball. So is seeing who can hit a thrown ball the furthest and running around some arbitrary base placements. So is trying to get a ball in a hole hundreds of yards away with a goofy club.
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Keep in mind, most professional gamers are under 25, and after that age, you pretty much have hit your peak and don't perform as good. This is what I recall from a conversation with a pro gamer in Japan a couple years ago.
Unless you're cream of the crop, you're not getting much. It's a very small community to be a profitable professional gamer.
So is whacking at a disk with a twig while balancing on ice. So is killing each other for possession of a ball. So is seeing who can hit a thrown ball the furthest and running around some arbitrary base placements. So is trying to get a ball in a hole hundreds of yards away with a goofy club.
So true. You could even look at it and argue that e-sports makes more sense than things like golf.
Like with anything, when you understand the rules of said game/competition, you can appreciate how good the pros actually are. Then it becomes entertainment. Then it becomes business.
They aren't playing games, you and I play games. These guys calculate the living $%# out of everything they do and know every aspect inside and out. They live the games.
I love watching esports.
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The Sklar Brothers were talking about a recent big video game contest - one contestant in the final knocked down his opponent (some kind of fighting game). He got up and ran around the room gloating. While he was doing this his opponent recovered and knocked him out. The commentators went nuts.
My co-worker follows dota tourneys pretty closely. He told me one of the guys who won that $6.6 million pool is a 16 year old Pakistani kid who used to just play in public rooms for fun. Kid came from abject poverty, but sold some of his personal possessions to play dota. Got scouted by Evil Genius, and is suddenly a millionaire.
Also, screw you Peter. I watched a Starcraft tournament in Seoul one day and it was wicked fun. Not dumb at all. Fun crowds, super friendly. You know what's dumb? Soccer riots.
You don't even need to be a competitive gamer to make a living. An old co-worker was laid off at a big pipeline company here (ala "Layoffs in the Oilpatch" thread).
He now sits at home streaming video games on Twitch and Youtube for income.
So is whacking at a disk with a twig while balancing on ice. So is killing each other for possession of a ball. So is seeing who can hit a thrown ball the furthest and running around some arbitrary base placements. So is trying to get a ball in a hole hundreds of yards away with a goofy club.
All power to them, but to me you can't compare this to sport.
All power to them, but to me you can't compare this to sport.
I think a better comparison is poker or darts or:
Spoiler!
I would agree. Some people would call those sports though. I tend to refer to these things ("sports" where you can be as out of shape as you want and still compete) games, not sports. This includes baseball. Looking at you, Cece.
But for the sake of the argument (ie, why are people being paid to do this?) they all fall under the same umbrella of sports entertainment.
The point is, they are all equally ridiculous if you really break it down.
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One thing is that the production values rival that of the big sports for sure. In fact, I would argue that the analyst desk, the play by play and color commentary surpass that of the "real" sports.
If you ever listen to a DotA cast, it feels so alive and that things are happening. When HotS was broadcast on ESPN2 earlier this year, most people watching were tweeting "I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING BUT THIS IS AWESOME" - and it's all because of the casters.
It's basically the quality of Peter Maher for play by play and no PJ Stock on the analyst desk. It's quite stunning.
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