Professional Gaming
I have fond memories of watching The Wizard back in ‘89, and pretending I was Jimmy Woods every time I played Super Mario 3. I was nowhere near as good, of course, but I loved that movie, and I loved the game. Still, the concept of gaming competitions seemed a tad more farfetched than my dreams of being a ninja or a pirate.
Enter the Cyberathlete Professional League:
Launched June 26, 1997, the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) is the world’s first computer game sports league.
Having hosted live tournaments on five continents and official qualifying tournaments in over 50 countries, the CPL is the global leader in professional computer game competitions.
Over the past eight years, the CPL has hosted 45 international main events with a total attendance of 50,000 gamers and has awarded $3,000,000 in prizes.
The CPL events attract both national and international media coverage and have been featured on: MTV, CNN, ESPN, USA Network, WB, GSN, Fox, Nickelodeon, G4, TechTV and ABC World News Tonight.
These days, gaming stars like Johnathan Wendel (”Fatal1ty”) and Sander Kaasjager (”Vo0″) are living the dream: playing games and making a living out of it. In 5 years, Johnathan Wendel has won more than $350,000 in gaming prize money, averaging about $70,000 a year.
He is currently a qualified player in the CPL World Tour, alongside these other great gamers:
The Cyberathlete Professional League®, recognized worldwide as pioneers of the professional gaming industry, presents the CPL World Tour, the largest, first-ever, year-long competitive tour spotlighting the growing new sport of video game competitions.
The ambition of the CPL World Tour is to attract mainstream-population interest to the sport of professional gaming through a series of high-exposure events hosted in selected countries around the world. A World Tour Stop will take place each month of 2005 beginning in February and will conclude with a Championship Finals Event. The combined prize purse for this Tour is $1,000,000.
The next stop for the tour: Singapore. The competition will take place from October 14 until October 16, 2005 at The Padang in a 20,000 sq ft. air conditioned tent.
The Padang is located at the heart of Singapore’s central business district, and is surrounded by a variety of landmarks; those in the immediate vicinity include St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Singapore City Hall, the Singapore Supreme Court and the City Hall MRT Station.
In addition to the Painkiller tournament, the Singapore World Tour stop will also host a $20,000 Counter-Strike 1.6 tournament. Prize distribution will be as follows:
First prize - $10,000
Second prize - $5,000
Third prize - $3,000
Fourth prize - $2,000
Not a bad gig, if you can get it. The CPL and Wendel are being featured in the next issue of BusinessWeek, and the article, entitled “Game Boy” is currently available online. It’s a long, but interesting article. Recommended reading for anyone who is interested in professional gaming and/or happens to be a fan of those in the biz.
You can also learn all about the CPL here.
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