<p>60 Minutes tonight featured a 24 year-old who’s earned $300K over the last 5 years as a professional video gamer. He keeps in shape via tennis, considers it a sport. Average age of video-gamer is now 30, according to a Professor who studies the sociology and economics of video gaming.</p>
<p>Thank heavens our RPG-obsessed sons don’t watch 60 Minutes. Anyone’s hs kid making a living this way? Beats summer job $$ (although I guess there’s a bit of travel involved).</p>
<p>Great! So the video game equivalent of making it in the NBA does exist!</p>
<p>My 13 year old S has already informed of the viability of this as a career…</p>
<p>or you can design them:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.etc.cmu.edu/[/url]”>http://www.etc.cmu.edu/</a></p>
<p>I can honestly see my S returning to his alma mater for this in a couple years.</p>
<p>For a pretty cool job:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/JesseSchell.shtml[/url]”>http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/JesseSchell.shtml</a></p>
<p>or if it doesn’t work google Game Design 201</p>
<p>My son’s #1 choice school offers the interactive game design major, and we’re waiting to hear if he got in. Apparently it’s an “impacted major” and they’re taking their time looking over their applicant pool. When we visited we were told they have an association with EA games and students in the major can get paid internships testing games on campus. Son put the game design major as #1 choice and undecided as #2 thinking that he could go undeclared for a year and then get into game design. We shall see…</p>
<p>Is that where they win competitions and recieve lots of $? My friend told me about that. It is SO tough to get into the top few gamers aparantly (maybe more tough than getting into harvard lol). Congrats to those who are able to do it though :)</p>
<p>It is funny how when i was little (15-20 years ago) all the adults were complaining about kids always playing video games and now that generation has children of thier own and are playing video games still!</p>
<p>My stepdaughter’s husband is on his second, really cool job as a programmer of online interactive games. He is an avid gamer and has made his hobby his profession. </p>
<p>But these techno-boys are all over the place. I know two bright college freshmen, at different schools, who are both majoring in Japanese with their primary motivation being to listen to anime in the original language. (Whatever it takes, right?)</p>
<p>If my primary hobby were my profession, I’d be spending my days doing animal training and husbandry, with some fence painting thrown in.</p>
<p>My junior son is planning to head for college to study computer science, but only if the school has a concentration in interactive game design, graphic arts, and new media. And he’s starting Japanese for exactly the reason you listed, yulsie: to understand the original soundtracks of the anime he watches (and figure out the words that he can already sing to the soundtracks).</p>
<p>Some kids are actually serious about this. I imagine there need to be <em>some</em> college-educated designers involved in this field, so why not? As you said, whatever it takes. (And for a kid like mine, he will only put significant effort into things that interest him: if this is what interests him, well, OK, I give. Go for it, dude.)</p>
<p>Now, if we can find a major in Instant Messaging, my son will be rich!</p>
<p>How about “Facebook Interpretation” or “Designer Livejournals?”</p>
<p>In Alabama there was a story in the newspaper over the weekend about a student who dropped out of the University of Alabama to compete in poker tournaments. Apparently he started playing poker on the internet in his spare time and now competes in live tournaments (rather than completing his junior year in college). He won over $200,000 recently at a tournament in Australia. When I read the story all I could think was a) Great! Now how many kids are going to read this article and decide the guy is a genius and try to follow in his footsteps and b) Wow! It would take me years to make that much money with all my college degrees. I wonder if I could get the name of that poker website. =)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.digipen.edu/main/Main_Page[/url]”>http://www.digipen.edu/main/Main_Page</a>
“THE” place to study game design, etc.<br>
When S was 13, he won the US championship of a “certain popular video game” sponsered by Nintendo. 30 grand worth of prizes and cash which included a trip for four to Sydney during the Olympics for the world championship of that “certain” game.</p>
<p>[Online</a> Video Gaming](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_South_Korea]Online”>Culture of South Korea - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>The level of professional gaming in South Korea is the highest in the world. The country has several television channels dedicated to broadcasting video games on TV as spectator sport. Players get contracts from large companies, much like in baseball or basketball. The fan base, resembling those of some major sports, is large enough to fill grand stadiums for the grand finals of tournaments.</p>
<p>There are, at any given time, over 4 million South Korean on-line gamers. In the over 25,000 PC-bangs (high speed 24 hour internet cafes) there are Korean on-line games such as Lineage and foreign games such as Halo with Korean captioning. Among the first and most popular video games that made it big in South Korea is Starcraft (by Blizzard Entertainment).</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_gaming]Also...[/url”>Esports - Wikipedia]Also…[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Yeah, South Korea is hardcore. They televise StarCraft matches on their main channels. As cool as designing video agmes may sound to gamers, its not really a “fun” job. You have to know a ton of math, and companies like EA run sweatshops when they’re getting close to deadline. 90 hour work weeks one EA employee’s wife said.</p>
<p>Sounds cool, but here’s an insight into the reality that Vyse is alluding to:
<a href=“EA: The Human Story - EA: The Human Story - ea_spouse Page 32 — LiveJournal”>EA: The Human Story - EA: The Human Story - ea_spouse Page 32 — LiveJournal;
<p>None of this dissuades me from encouraging my S in his pursuit. He’s good at math/physics/programming/art/graphic design and has ADHD. He can hyperfocus for hours upon hours if he’s engaged in something, and would love nothing more than to be “allowed” to spend 15 hours a day programming and doing graphic design work. I’ve decided that if this is what gets him to think seriously about college and a career, so be it.</p>
<p>(PS: The EA-spouse livejournal is from 2004, and some of the recent comments lead one to suspect things might be somewhat different for that company, and perhaps for the industry overall, at this point.)</p>
<p>Yikes! I’ll forward that livejournal entry to my son. I’m not 100% sure that my son will really pursue a game design career but it’s what he thinks he wants to do right now.</p>
<p>These gamers who play professionally… I know some of them. While I still don’t believe they made the right career choice, a lot of them are having fun doing what they do. They get paid to travel around the world and some are even paid salaries.</p>
<p>Not all gamers are slackers. In fact, one of the best gamers who won multiple tournaments in the game Quake 3, went to Princeton.</p>
<p>I just came back from the National High School Game Academy, hosted by the ETC at CMU. </p>
<p>I’m one of the aspiring game makers. It’s a very exciting field to go into. Like film once was, video games are an entertainment medium that’s rapidly maturing. I can see why I and many other kids my age are looking into games for employment.</p>
<p>By the way, EA is still having a bit of trouble with quality of life issues, but they and many other companies have wisened up to the fact that it’s actually bad business as well as pretty evil. Things are getting better.</p>