Game Boys: Professional Videogaming's Rise from the Basement to the Big Time - Goodies

Genre: Non-Fiction

Subject: Professional Videogaming

Publisher: Viking

Released: June 23, 2008

Author: Michael Kane

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Game Boys:

Professional Videogaming’s Rise from the Basement to the Big Time

Anybody that’s ever played a sport while they were in their youth has dreamed at one time or another – even it was just a fleeting dream – of becoming a professional in that sport. But as 99.9 percent of them get older, the realization that there’s zero possibility of ever becoming a “professional” that’s paid for essentially playing games for a living settles in. But there’s always those rare few that do make it to become a pro and see their dream realized, even if it’s not entirely what they may have expected.

In the new book, “Game Boys: Professional Videogaming’s Rise from the Basement to the Big Time”, Michael Kane examines the struggles that a handful of individuals

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who have aspirations, because of a unbelievable skill that makes them better than nearly all others at playing a game on a computer of home console, of becoming a professional, and gives a glance at some of the rare few that have a resume with “professional videogamer” as one of its entries.

What is rather

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remarkable about this new book is that Kane doesn’t just give us a look from outside the world of professional gaming – he goes inside, deep inside – himself, giving a unprecedented glimpse into the lives of the young boys and men (and a handful of young girls and women) that have dreamt of becoming a professional gamer – and a in-depth examination of those that have succeeded in indeed becoming a full-time, fully paid pro. He has conversations with the teams, gives the reader an inside glance of the practices, the developing of strategies (“strats”) for in-game dominance, and even goes right down onto the floor of the LANs and fierce competitions, bringing a complete fly-on-the-wall perspective that reveals the true lifestyle of a professional and wannabe professional gamer.

“Game Boys” focuses on two e-sports teams particularly: Team 3D and CompLexity, two rival teams that develop a years-long battle for supremacy in the biggest game that has evolved videogaming into a sport: Counter-Strike.

Yes, this is a sports book, albeit not covering a “sport” in the traditional sense one may think. But Kane makes a compelling argument that videogaming competition is just as much a sport as baseball or football. Throughout the book, Kane time and time again compares Counter-Strike, which has transformed from an online-only gaming experience to small-time BYOC (bring your own computer) LAN events into full-fledged league competition that has just as much competitiveness that’s found on a baseball diamond or football gridiron. In fact, many of the central figures in the book from Team 3D and CompLexity have some type of athletic background. But they, as many videogamers are, as Kane puts it, too good for the junior varsity, not good enough for the varsity.

So, usually around the age of 15 or so, they realize there’s no shot at an athletic future, so they turn their attentions to the next best thing they can find that fulfills their competitive nature, and in the case of these kids in today’s tech age, it’s competitive gaming, even if it goes no further than logging on every day to play Counter-Strike or firing up the Xbox 360 to jump onto Xbox Live. For the best of the best, however, they’ve become the next wave of athletes, the e-athlete, relying more on quick reflexes and decision-making abilities than any physical attribute. And Kane successfully draws the parallel between the traditional athlete and the e-athlete.

Team 3D as Kane portrays them are the “Yankees” of Counter-Strike competition, with their large sponsorship deals that had made them for a time the only “true” professional gaming team that could afford, literally, to secure the services of the best Counter-Strike players around. CompLexity was the team of ragtags – the “Bad News Bears” ‑ that nobody else wanted yet they somehow rose up to become the biggest threat to Team 3D’s supremacy, but always faced the danger of being disbanded at any time because of a lack of sponsorship.

More to the point, Kane studies the two polar opposites of Team 3D and CompLexity –the two team managers that are just as important as the five “starters” on each respective Counter-Strike squad. Team 3D’s Craig Levine is the slick manager that procured big-money (six-figure) sponsorships for his team that allowed him to be Counter-Strike’s version of George Steinbrenner, literally able to pay for the best of the best, and just like Steinbrenner, has made Levine the most despised man in the competitive Counter-Strike community.

In direct contrast to Levine is Jason Lake (Jake, as he was affectionately known by his team) is an Atlanta lawyer, who personally invested $300,000 of his own money – which caused a strain on his marriage – as he desperately sought to keep his vested interest in Counter-Strike going, hoping for a payday in the form of sponsorship money or even better, a real professional gaming league. Jake’s team CompLexity, castoffs from other Counter-Strike teams, were always seemingly the underdogs. But just like in any other sport, sometimes the underdogs prove themselves to be much better than the perceived powerhouses, as CompLexity bested Team 3D to lay claim to the top ranking in the world of Counter-Strike.

Over the course of the book, Kane shows the struggles that competitive gaming goes through from its earliest roots, and those involved in it, from the oftentimes shady organizers to the young players who are usually “retired” by the age of 22 (when the real-world realization that it may be time to get a “real” job kicks in). The real goal of those involved in e-sports: get a real professional “league” started, and the difficulties such a league faces, from sponsorship and securing salaries for the e-athletes to how exactly to present what is essentially interactive entertainment to the masses who won’t be interacting with the entertainment itself, instead being relegated to spectators.

With a bit of drama, Kane rolls through the Team 3D-CompLexity rivalry that becomes an alliance as finally Levine gets a bona fide league created, bankrolled by DirecTV primarily (with lots of other sponsors involved, too) that benefits everybody. As of the publication of this book, the Championship Gaming Series is still around, and finally, after years of dreaming of going “pro”, the pioneers of e-gaming have indeed become professionals.

Only time will tell if they were the first of many to follow or a footnote to a never-accepted new era of sports, but for those who ever wondered what being a professional gamer was like, “Game Boys: Professional Videogaming's Rise from the Basement to the Big Time” is a great read that delves deep into the lives of professional gamers.

‑ Lee Cieniawa

lcieniawa@armchairempire.com

(July 13, 2008)