In the past decade, there have been numerous case studies, reports and articles outlining how young children and teenagers are imprisoning themselves in their bedrooms playing video games on their computers or consoles. Some have even been holed up in an Internet cafe playing 12 hours straight of some of the most popular games around.
Youngbin Chung is one of these individuals addicted to video games. A few years ago, he played ten hours per day of video games, which worried his parents because he was on the verge of failing high school. It seems that his investment into gameplaying paid off in the end for Chung.
Today, Chung is studying computer networking on a roughly $15,000 annual athletic scholarship, which he received for playing “League of Legends,” the game that nearly ruined his chances of attaining his high school diploma.
The video game industry has dramatically changed from the early days of Donkey Kong, Pong and Super Mario into games that require strong attention, strategic plotting, problem-solving skills and enhanced reactions. Robert Morris, a not-for-profit university that maintains approximately 3,000 students, says those types of skills are not so different from athletic abilities seen on baseball diamonds, hockey rinks and football fields.
Although an abundant amount of college campuses have esports leagues, Robert Morris because the first university to actually identify video games as a varsity sport a part of its athletic department. The scholarships are quite lucrative: half off tuition and half off room and board.
The scholarship can be obtained by playing League of Legends, a game whereby five-on-five teams battle each other with keyboards and mice in a science-fiction setting with mythical fighters. This game is played by about 27 million people every day.
What does Chung think of it? “I never thought in my life I’m going to get a scholarship playing a game,” he told the Associated Press.
The warning from Associate Athletic Director Kurt Melcher that “it’s coming; it’s coming big time” may not be so far-fetched as some may think. The world of esports has turned into a multi-million-dollar business and has allowed people to embark upon a six-figure career of just playing video games.
ESPN has even covered esports events, but as the Daily Mail reports, network President John Skipper recently argued that it’s not a sport.
“It’s not a sport,” Skipper told an audience at a conference in New York. “It’s a competition, right? I mean, chess is a competition, and checkers is a competition. … I’m mostly interested in doing real sports.” He added, however, that “you can’t really ignore it.”
If you’re an esports spectator then you may be interested in an upcoming professional championship being held in Seoul on Oct. 19. The stadium, which was first constructed for the 2002 World Cup, expects a sold out crowd of 45,000 people. The winner of the championship competition will take home a sum of $1 million.
No longer are dedicated video game players depicted as skinny nerds with retainers living in their parents’ basements. Instead, they’re beginning to be identified as talented athletes.
Is it any different from fantasy sports, where workers have quit their full-time jobs in order to be professional fantasy sports managers? At least there can’t be any feigning of injuries like it’s seen in the NBA or soccer.