"In Games We Trust"- Columbia Chronicle, 12/13/05
1400-word feature on the life of a professional gamer. Published in print and online on 12/13/05. Due to minor formatting issues on the web version, I've included the text below.
Kyle Miller began his career as a professional athlete while still in high school. His hours of practice between classes and after school were rewarded with endorsement contracts, paid trips to Europe and a five-figure salary—All before he was old enough to drink. His sport? Counter Strike, a videogame. Welcome to the world of e-sports.
Miller, now 21, is a member of the United States’ most prominent team of professional gamers, Team 3D. The team’s bills are paid by technology giants Intel and Nvidia, the gaming equivalent of landing endorsements by Nike or Reebok. Nvidia, known for creating high-end graphics processors favored by gamers, first noticed the team after its appearance in the World Cyber Games in 2002. Commonly referred to as “the Olympics of gaming,” the WCG is an international tournament in which national teams are formed through regional qualifying matches, then compete for national pride—And huge paychecks.
Team 3D’s founder, Craig Levine, was pleasantly surprised with the deal Nvidia offered the team in 2002.
“At that time, getting sponsored meant getting a company to pay your travel expenses,” Levine said. “When we signed our first sponsorship deal with Nvidia, it was much more than we had hoped. It meant salaries, travel and hardware—all these perks that, a year before, had seemed unbelievable.”
The young team members found their new income relieving; it allowed them to forgo jobs and devote more time to gaming, which is exactly what their sponsors hoped for.
“The salaries are designed to give the players stability,” Levine said. “They know they can pay their rent and their car insurance, but it’s like, ‘Hey, if you want to go on that week-long vacation to Jamaica, you’ve got to win this event.’”
Indeed, the big money in pro gaming is in tournament winnings. According to Levine, Team 3D has earned an estimated $350,000 from tournament play since 2002, a nice supplement to their endorsement contracts. And the tournaments are only getting bigger. At the first WCG Challenge in 2000, the total purse for the event was $200,000, an amount that has more than doubled since, swelling to $435,000 in 2005. 3D’s Counter Strike team took home $50,000 for its gold-winning effort; their teammates who specialize in Halo 2 took home an additional $20,000, for a total of $70,000. According to Levine, 3D will be attending a tournament in Dallas next summer with a $90,000 prize for first place in Counter Strike.
With money comes fame, a lesson 3D is beginning to learn. Last month, Intel featured them in a full-page ad in Blender magazine, which replaced the traditional “Intel Inside” logo with profiles of 3D players. It’s an obvious attempt to market toward a youthful audience and exactly the reason Intel’s relationship with 3D is so successful.
Magazine ads aside, the notoriety of American gamers is eclipsed by their counterparts in South Korea, where gamers are recognized as pop celebrities.
“It’s always nice going to Korea; it’s like heaven,” Levine said. “These [Korean gamers] are like rock stars and have hair dressers and are making six figures just off endorsements.”
Even in Korea, the level of gamers’ fame depends highly on which game they play. In general, American gamers prefer first-person shooter games like Counter Strike and Halo 2, while Asian gamers, especially in Korea, tend to prefer real-time strategy games such as Starcraft and Warcraft 3. As a Counter Strike player, Miller believes his career is flourishing in America more than it would in Asia.
“I don’t think the Counter Strike scene is as big over there,” Miller said. “There are a lot of players over there, but I don’t think the sponsorships are even close to what we have. We probably have the best deal in the world. If you were a Warcraft player, yeah, maybe Korea would be better for you.”
Levine founded Team 3D while still enrolled at New York University’s prestigious Stern School of Business, and encouraged by his team’s quick success, devoted his life to it after graduating. He has certainly chosen a different path from the average NYU grad, something that he says is often a cause of envy from his former classmates.
“When they first started their jobs, I was traveling around the world to different competitions,” Levine said. “I was in Turkey, Brazil, Spain and Singapore, and [former classmates were] working 100 hours a week as an investment banker. So there’s definitely a bit of jealously, I think.”
Having a background in business, Levine looks at the team like he would any other entrepreneurial venture, although he enjoys the relaxed schedule and freedom to work from home. Unsurprisingly, Levine sounds like a businessman when describing his average day at work.
“Like with any startup, there’s no start time or end time,” Levine said. “I work from home, start at 10 a.m. and work until about 10 p.m., with breaks for dinner and lunch.”
According to Levine, he spends much of that time working on sponsor relations, concocting new marketing strategies such as the Intel Blender ad.
When it comes to recruiting members, Levine said he first considers what games will be featured in upcoming tournaments, then pursues the best players he can find in the online communities for each game. Miller caught his attention after winning $25,000 in a Counter Strike tournament. Miller’s team disbanded soon after, but he was soon messaged by Levine, who explained his intentions of forming a national team of elite gamers. Miller soon signed on as 3D’s first official member.
Like any sport, discipline plays a huge part in staying on top. According to Miller, 3D organizes practices three or four nights a week. Unlike NBA coaches, Levine isn’t forced to punish players for missing practice—the team’s friendly spirit is enough to ensure everyone shows up on time.
“We’re just friends, so you respect everyone,” Miller said. “If practice is at 7 p.m. Eastern time, you just do your best to show up on time. If it’s important to everyone else, it’s important to you.”
Levine also thinks that the friendly nature of his team is key.
“That’s one of the great things about Team 3D—everyone’s really close-knit,” he said. “At WCG, everyone was there cheering each other on. When we’re not at an event, we talk online. Everyone has a good time.”
Their cohesiveness helps 3D to survive in a world where most gaming teams don’t. When asked if they have any rivals, Miller couldn’t name one—not necessarily because his team’s skill has given him an ego, but because teams form and break up so quickly.
“You see some of the same faces, but teams come and go,” Miller said, laughing. “So, I’d give you a rival, but he probably wouldn’t exist by the time this runs.”
With team members in their teens, parental support is also important for 3D, though Levine and Miller both say they have never had problems with it.
“When I started, [my parents] might have thought I was a little bit crazy, but now they see that you can make a living off of it if you’re successful,” Miller said. “They’ve always been really supportive, but they might’ve been skeptical at first."
The large paychecks surely helped end that skepticism, and Columbia Artist in Residence Janell Baxter agrees with Miller and Levine that the prizes and visibility for professional gaming have nearly unlimited potential for growth. Baxter, who is currently developing simulation and training software for the Office of Army Research, thinks that gaming has only begun to penetrate American culture.
“I think that gaming is on the edge of really taking off,” Baxter said. “To a certain extent, it’s pretty mainstream now, but it will be more ubiquitous at our schools and in areas of our lives that we didn’t think of.”
With the U.S. team waving giant checks (and American flags) on the gold podium at the 2005 WCG before a crowd of 55,000 spectators, it’s hard not to be optimistic. According to Levine, MTV recently aired a special on competitive gaming, and more stations are looking to follow suit.
“It’s like poker; you’ve got to have the right formula [for television],” Levine said. “It’s only a matter of time. Someone’s going to figure this out.”
Kyle Miller began his career as a professional athlete while still in high school. His hours of practice between classes and after school were rewarded with endorsement contracts, paid trips to Europe and a five-figure salary—All before he was old enough to drink. His sport? Counter Strike, a videogame. Welcome to the world of e-sports.
Miller, now 21, is a member of the United States’ most prominent team of professional gamers, Team 3D. The team’s bills are paid by technology giants Intel and Nvidia, the gaming equivalent of landing endorsements by Nike or Reebok. Nvidia, known for creating high-end graphics processors favored by gamers, first noticed the team after its appearance in the World Cyber Games in 2002. Commonly referred to as “the Olympics of gaming,” the WCG is an international tournament in which national teams are formed through regional qualifying matches, then compete for national pride—And huge paychecks.
Team 3D’s founder, Craig Levine, was pleasantly surprised with the deal Nvidia offered the team in 2002.
“At that time, getting sponsored meant getting a company to pay your travel expenses,” Levine said. “When we signed our first sponsorship deal with Nvidia, it was much more than we had hoped. It meant salaries, travel and hardware—all these perks that, a year before, had seemed unbelievable.”
The young team members found their new income relieving; it allowed them to forgo jobs and devote more time to gaming, which is exactly what their sponsors hoped for.
“The salaries are designed to give the players stability,” Levine said. “They know they can pay their rent and their car insurance, but it’s like, ‘Hey, if you want to go on that week-long vacation to Jamaica, you’ve got to win this event.’”
Indeed, the big money in pro gaming is in tournament winnings. According to Levine, Team 3D has earned an estimated $350,000 from tournament play since 2002, a nice supplement to their endorsement contracts. And the tournaments are only getting bigger. At the first WCG Challenge in 2000, the total purse for the event was $200,000, an amount that has more than doubled since, swelling to $435,000 in 2005. 3D’s Counter Strike team took home $50,000 for its gold-winning effort; their teammates who specialize in Halo 2 took home an additional $20,000, for a total of $70,000. According to Levine, 3D will be attending a tournament in Dallas next summer with a $90,000 prize for first place in Counter Strike.
With money comes fame, a lesson 3D is beginning to learn. Last month, Intel featured them in a full-page ad in Blender magazine, which replaced the traditional “Intel Inside” logo with profiles of 3D players. It’s an obvious attempt to market toward a youthful audience and exactly the reason Intel’s relationship with 3D is so successful.
Magazine ads aside, the notoriety of American gamers is eclipsed by their counterparts in South Korea, where gamers are recognized as pop celebrities.
“It’s always nice going to Korea; it’s like heaven,” Levine said. “These [Korean gamers] are like rock stars and have hair dressers and are making six figures just off endorsements.”
Even in Korea, the level of gamers’ fame depends highly on which game they play. In general, American gamers prefer first-person shooter games like Counter Strike and Halo 2, while Asian gamers, especially in Korea, tend to prefer real-time strategy games such as Starcraft and Warcraft 3. As a Counter Strike player, Miller believes his career is flourishing in America more than it would in Asia.
“I don’t think the Counter Strike scene is as big over there,” Miller said. “There are a lot of players over there, but I don’t think the sponsorships are even close to what we have. We probably have the best deal in the world. If you were a Warcraft player, yeah, maybe Korea would be better for you.”
Levine founded Team 3D while still enrolled at New York University’s prestigious Stern School of Business, and encouraged by his team’s quick success, devoted his life to it after graduating. He has certainly chosen a different path from the average NYU grad, something that he says is often a cause of envy from his former classmates.
“When they first started their jobs, I was traveling around the world to different competitions,” Levine said. “I was in Turkey, Brazil, Spain and Singapore, and [former classmates were] working 100 hours a week as an investment banker. So there’s definitely a bit of jealously, I think.”
Having a background in business, Levine looks at the team like he would any other entrepreneurial venture, although he enjoys the relaxed schedule and freedom to work from home. Unsurprisingly, Levine sounds like a businessman when describing his average day at work.
“Like with any startup, there’s no start time or end time,” Levine said. “I work from home, start at 10 a.m. and work until about 10 p.m., with breaks for dinner and lunch.”
According to Levine, he spends much of that time working on sponsor relations, concocting new marketing strategies such as the Intel Blender ad.
When it comes to recruiting members, Levine said he first considers what games will be featured in upcoming tournaments, then pursues the best players he can find in the online communities for each game. Miller caught his attention after winning $25,000 in a Counter Strike tournament. Miller’s team disbanded soon after, but he was soon messaged by Levine, who explained his intentions of forming a national team of elite gamers. Miller soon signed on as 3D’s first official member.
Like any sport, discipline plays a huge part in staying on top. According to Miller, 3D organizes practices three or four nights a week. Unlike NBA coaches, Levine isn’t forced to punish players for missing practice—the team’s friendly spirit is enough to ensure everyone shows up on time.
“We’re just friends, so you respect everyone,” Miller said. “If practice is at 7 p.m. Eastern time, you just do your best to show up on time. If it’s important to everyone else, it’s important to you.”
Levine also thinks that the friendly nature of his team is key.
“That’s one of the great things about Team 3D—everyone’s really close-knit,” he said. “At WCG, everyone was there cheering each other on. When we’re not at an event, we talk online. Everyone has a good time.”
Their cohesiveness helps 3D to survive in a world where most gaming teams don’t. When asked if they have any rivals, Miller couldn’t name one—not necessarily because his team’s skill has given him an ego, but because teams form and break up so quickly.
“You see some of the same faces, but teams come and go,” Miller said, laughing. “So, I’d give you a rival, but he probably wouldn’t exist by the time this runs.”
With team members in their teens, parental support is also important for 3D, though Levine and Miller both say they have never had problems with it.
“When I started, [my parents] might have thought I was a little bit crazy, but now they see that you can make a living off of it if you’re successful,” Miller said. “They’ve always been really supportive, but they might’ve been skeptical at first."
The large paychecks surely helped end that skepticism, and Columbia Artist in Residence Janell Baxter agrees with Miller and Levine that the prizes and visibility for professional gaming have nearly unlimited potential for growth. Baxter, who is currently developing simulation and training software for the Office of Army Research, thinks that gaming has only begun to penetrate American culture.
“I think that gaming is on the edge of really taking off,” Baxter said. “To a certain extent, it’s pretty mainstream now, but it will be more ubiquitous at our schools and in areas of our lives that we didn’t think of.”
With the U.S. team waving giant checks (and American flags) on the gold podium at the 2005 WCG before a crowd of 55,000 spectators, it’s hard not to be optimistic. According to Levine, MTV recently aired a special on competitive gaming, and more stations are looking to follow suit.
“It’s like poker; you’ve got to have the right formula [for television],” Levine said. “It’s only a matter of time. Someone’s going to figure this out.”
posted by T. Burbo at 1:05 PM
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