Confession: My husband is a big video game fan. He owns (or has owned) every gaming console ever sold except the two brand-new ones: The Wii and Playstation 3. You have three guesses as to what he wants for Christmas, and the first two don’t count.
So when I was reading one of his gaming magazines he had left laying around, and saw an article where Tom “Tsquared” Taylor (who apparently plays video games very well) had signed a contract to be paid $1.25 million dollars to do just that, I yelled, “So Doug, just how good are you at playing, anyway?” I mean, sheesh–he has spent thousands of dollars on different systems and games and controllers and magazines over the years–surely all of this money has gone towards something that is going to pay back, right?
Wrong.
Apparently, you not only have to like to play every once in a while, you have to be truly dedicated to it. There are leagues and championship games and people playing as “pros” who travel all around the world playing against each other…Truly amazing. I had no clue this sort of thing existed, let alone knew that big companies like Pizza Hut and AMD were corporate sponsors of the events.
Some people are wondering just how big this is actually going to get, but as one interviewee pointed out, the X Games was a small novelty thing 10 years ago, and now look at where they’re at.
Is it a far stretch to think of quitting your day job to become a player and a pro in the video gaming circuit? Well, yes, but not quite as far as you would think. The founder of the Cyberathelete Professional League, Angel Munoz, was a successful investment banker who quit his day job to start the CPL. And in the last year, the CPL has handed out over $1 million dollars in prizes. This is one investment that has really paid out for Mr. Munoz.
So the next time you yell at your kids to stop playing all of that video game trash, just remember, he may be the next “Tsquared”–he may be on his way to signing a huge contract just for being able to play Halo.
Stranger things have happened.