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    DF VIP Member Bald Bouncer's Avatar
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    Info Professional killers: fear and loathing at the Call of Duty championship

    A lone spotlight hits the stage of the Palladium Theater on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. As music blares, an announcer calls the name of a young man, barely 18, who lopes into view. He's nervous and shows it; this moment is the culmination of months and weeks of training. But he raises his arms and waves - and the crowd goes wild. They cheer and chant his name while cameras broadcast his face to thousands watching around the world. He walks forward to join his three team-mates, and together they enter a darkened, soundproof booth and sit, flexing their fingers and donning heavy-duty headsets. Almost in tandem, they each pick up a game controller, faces fixed in fierce concentration. Next to them, an identical booth houses their four opponents, gazing with identical intensity at the loadout screen for Call of Duty: Black Ops II. The match begins, and in moments the arena is filled with the sound of frantic gunfire, excited cheering, and rapid-paced commentary from two experts sat alongside.



    This is the Call of Duty Championship 2013, the latest effort by Activision to convert its million-selling franchise from game to sport. 32 teams from across the globe entered, through existing gaming leagues and Call of Duty ELITE, and two months later only two remain, slugging it out for a $400,000 top prize. To do what they do is a dream for many people sitting in the crowd and watching at home, but the path to success isn't an easy one.



    "eSports is currently the biggest it's ever been, by far," says Rich McCormick, who covers the industry for PC Gamer. "According to Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime, StarCraft II now has more viewers than the NHL. It's a multi-million-dollar industry, and many of its professionals are making good salaries or impressive tournament winnings."

    Blizzard - Activision's other half - has been a huge part of this. PC strategy title StarCraft became hugely popular as a spectator sport in Korea on release in 1998, but its sequel, StarCraft II, surprised everybody - including Blizzard - by becoming hugely popular in the West as well. Its blossoming eSports community was spotted by free-to-play upstart Riot Games.

    "Where Blizzard used to let tournaments like Major League Gaming provide their own prize pots and operate independently, Riot unified the competitive League of Legends scene into "seasons" and provided millions of dollars of their own money for winners," explains McCormick. The tactic was mirrored by Valve, which coughed up a million dollars as top prize for a recent tournament for its free-to-play battle game Defence of the Ancients 2. Between StarCraft, LoL and DotA2, eSports has spread away from its Korean heartland to become a truly international sport - complete with pro commentators, hugely popular live broadcasts, celebrity players and millions of fans.



    "The eSports bubble is growing, and encompassing the world for the first time," says McCormick. "It's still a bit wobbly as business practices haven't yet been laid in, but it'll be hard to pop at this point thanks to big investment from both hyper-engaged communities - many of whom don't even play the game they watch - and the companies who make these games."

    It's a multi-million-dollar industry that Activision wants to be a part of, which is why it's shipped the world's best CoD players to Hollywood, installed a live broadcast with professional commentators, and put up a million-dollar prize pool. But there are two big differences to Valve and Riot's approaches: first, CoD is an FPS - a world away from the strategy titles that drive eSports on PC. Second, it's being played on Xbox 360 - which may well help to bridge the gap between pro-gamers and those wishing to join their ranks.



    Black Ops II was specifically built for competitive gamers, with the addition of commentating tool CoDCast and matchmaking system League Play. David Vonderhaar, Black Ops II's game design director, is hoping that with its following and these features, it'll be the game to push competitive console gaming to mainstream success.

    "This is a franchise with 30 million fans," he says. "There hasn't been a way to figure out who the best player is and best teams are until the Championship, and I think that part of it is an interesting dynamic of what's happening here. The guys at home will see this and be exposed to a broader range of people, and then maybe they'll be interested, maybe they'll find a team that they want to follow, maybe they'll play League Play. I think you've gotta just show this to people."

    Vonderhaar freely admits that competitions like this may influence how the developers approach the game later on. "There are actually multiple developers from Treyarch roaming the floors, because where else are you going to see the top 32 teams in one building, throwing down against each other? Watching what they do is an important part of keeping in touch with how that game is played and how they're using the game. You can learn a lot of lessons about that, which apply to the macro game."

    By the second day, half of the initial 32 teams are gone, and to the surprise of many, UK team Fariko Dragons were amongst those knocked out early. Fariko Gaming still has two teams in the running: US team Impact and Dutch team AllStars. Fariko's owner, Alexander Korf, started the company in 2006 as an IT consultancy, but was a keen gamer who saw the potential of eSports and decided to get involved with sponsoring and training young hopefuls. He's developed his own method of encouraging them to join Fariko's ranks.

    "I call it the Yin Yang formula," he explains, "In one country there's only one Yin team, and it gets funding to enter a tournament, and 100 Euros per person to spend. There are multiple Yang teams in the same country, and when a Yang team outplays a Yin team, they automatically become the new Yin and get funding. It really stimulates teams to get out there and compete for it."

    Korf also acknowledges the difficulty that many aspiring pro-gamers will encounter in getting the backing that they need. "At this point in time it's quite difficult to gain sponsorship," he says. "All you can do is do your best, improve, and hopefully you will play as well in a tournament and be noticed by a sponsor."

    Korf strongly believes that the accessibility of console eSports, and of CoD in particular, is a big part of its appeal to competitors and audiences alike. "In CoD, it is possible, even for me, to kill one of those top players. It's like playing poker; everyone thinks that if they get a good hand, they'll win. It's the same with CoD, and that's what makes it so attractive for a huge amount of spectators and gamers."



    The flipside is that CoD changes every year, which means that it doesn't have the foundation that other eSports depend on. "There's no time to build the infrastructure, set up the tournaments and let the community coalesce when you're bouncing between games every year," says McCormick. "StarCraft's been played professionally since 1999, DotA in some form for a similar time. LoL had success by updating DotA's template and pulling in an existing community, same with DotA2. To try and engender, nurture, pay, and grow a community in less than a year is near impossible."

    Black Ops II's casting features are a step in the right direction, but the proof will be in this year's game - the tenth in the series, widely expected to be Modern Warfare 4. If Activision can nail down an eSports game mode that doesn't get radically redeveloped every year then Call of Duty could join the eSports luminaries. Or it could just bully its way in, McCormick admits. "The thing about CoD is that millions play it, so some of these issues are ameliorated by sheer weight of numbers." Easy entry counts for a great deal.



    Though anyone can enter and perhaps even win, most pro-players agree that there's still a huge amount of skill and dedication necessary to reach the top and stay there. "You've got to play and be dedicated," says Jordan Kaplan of US team EnVyUs. "You don't see athletes just turn up and play; they practise and work hard. You've got to be the same for this... you've got to learn how we play and what we do different that you don't. That's really all it is."

    Be the best

    "If you want to be dedicated, start off on ladders and stuff like that online," says Christopher Duarte, better known as Parasite and captain of tournament favourites Fariko Impact. He maintains an impeccably calm demeanour throughout the Championship, and is, in his team's own words, 'confident, not cocky.'

    "360icons is a good website for Call of Duty, so is GameBattles," Duarte continues. "Make friends in the community; don't necessarily just play with people you know in real life." He's quick to impress the responsibility of competing. "It turns into a business, in a way. These events are no joke, they're meant to be taken seriously when the time comes, and that's how we treat it."

    Impact's upbeat attitude and even-tempered approach towards competing certainly pays off. They breeze through the majority of the tournament, losing only once to EnVyUs on the end of the second day to place them against OpTic Gaming in the semi-finals. After an incredibly close match, Impact eventually secure their place in the final against EnVyUs by dominating OpTic in Black Ops II's Hardpoint mode.

    Of course, CoD isn't the only game in town. UK-based twins Will and Alex Buck play Halo competitively. They're one half of the Mad Catz-sponsored Western Wolves, and have competed in and won a string of tournaments in the last few years. "It is a game, but if you want to do well, you have to take it seriously. You're playing for a lot of money and there's a lot on the line every time you play, so the more you practise and think about what you're doing every time you spawn or whatever, you can make better judgements."

    Maintaining dedication, perfecting your skills and netting sponsorship are important in 'making it' as a pro-gamer, but they aren't the only steps a competitor will need to take to succeed. A common trait amongst the most successful and well-known pro-gamers is that they all stream online regularly, and have spent time and effort cultivating a following on YouTube or gaming service Twitch.tv.



    They see community support and exposure as not only as a way to build themselves up, but to encourage the growth of the pro-gaming scene in general. "It's really important to have those people in the community and those people that not only entertain, but whose fan base just grows and grows - and that only builds eSports more and more," says Duarte.

    The biggest eSports stars command huge follower and subscriber counts. Duarte himself has over 29,000 followers on Twitter, with over a million views racked up on his Twitch account, ParasiteTV. Matt 'Nadeshot' Haag, from the CoD Championship's second runner-up team OpTic Gaming, has more than 130,000 Twitter followers and over 15 million views on his YouTube account, numbers which recently earned him a lucrative sponsorship deal with Red Bull.

    Popular YouTube CoD player and commentator Tom 'Syndicate' Cassell, who isn't a pro-gamer himself but enthusiastically supports the scene, has over 750 million YouTube views on his channel, TheSyndicateProject. People like these are instrumental to the continued popularity of eSports. "They push it out to more of the casual viewers that just watch YouTube," Duarte explains, "so really, without them the scene would not have grown as much as it did."

    Though monetising their online streams and subscriber base is a way of supplementing income for a few of the bigger eSports stars, the reality for most is that competitive gaming is not yet a long-term sustainable career. The Buck Twins, arguably one of the most successful competitive teams for Halo, still don't see gaming as their full time job.



    "We'd love to do it long term," says Will, "but at the moment it isn't really justifiable. We still have to work a little bit, but it's a dream to actually become professional gamers and not have to worry about other commitments - to just focus on full-time gaming and actually make a living from it." The twins, both bartenders, are currently looking at ways to progress their eSports career.

    To make an eSports-dependant livelihood a reality, teams need sponsorship. Without more tournaments with large prize pools to attract sponsors, that's hard to come by, so for many competing remains a part-time endeavour. This is probably why most of the players present at the Call of Duty Championship are students; young men free of other pressing commitments. For the lucky few who do succeed though, the tournament's cash prizes can expand horizons and offer new opportunities.

    Fariko Impact's Marcus 'MiRx' Carter has helped his team achieve victory in every tournament they've entered in the last couple of months, ensuring an equal share of their total winnings, estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Until recently, he worked at Starbucks. Fariko's leader Alex Korf says that he wants to offer his teams guidance to "make sure they don't do anything crazy with the money and help them - if they want - to prolong their gaming career."

    Though none of the teams at the Championship are under any illusion as to the limited longevity of an eSports career, they all seem eager to pursue one as long as they are able to do so. It's not always for financial gain either; all of the competing teams recognised console eSports as a growing industry that they passionately want to support. It's also, simply, easy to get into, as Will Buck points out. "The thing about console eSports is that everybody has a console at home. It makes it so much easier to be a pro-gamer... you can literally sit at home in your living room, play a game, and then the next minute you're playing for a million dollars."

    At the final, Fariko Impact and EnVyUs do just that. In the VIP section overlooking the tournament, Treyarch employees were behind some of the loudest cheers from the crowd as the teams battled neck and neck for best of eleven through six alternating matches of Capture the Flag, Search and Destroy and Hardpoint. It was anyone's game until the final moments, when Impact cinched the win in a Search and Destroy standoff and laid claim to their $400,000 grand prize. Jubilant, they were immediately looking forward to entering their next competition.



    As to the Championship's long-lasting effect on the eSports industry, OpTic Gaming's Will 'BigTymeR' Johnson put it best. "I'm glad we were able to put on a good show; I know it's good for the growth of eSports. I want the entire thing to grow, not only CoD but all of eSports - StarCraft, LoL. I want all of us to grow together so it's something that we can sustain for ten, 15, 20 years, grow it into the next NFL, soccer, whatever it may be. We want to grow so we can be called one of the pioneers of this thing; we were one of the first ones to do it. That's the plan."

    Source: Rheena.com

    Thanks to Bald Bouncer

    furrry (21st July 2013)  


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