Professional Gamers Get Rich And Famous Playing Video Games

If you think your kids are spending too much time playing video games on their Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, PC or PSP (Playstation Portable) consoles then you may have a reason to be concerned, but not worried. Before you tell your child to put down the game remote and pick up a text book you should consider this fact; there is a professional video game circuit out there with professional gamers who earn thousands, even millions of dollars.

South Korea has a genuine passion for playing video games. This is a video game obsessed nation. The electronic gaming events in this country can draw up to 100,000 spectators at a single event. Their cyber-athletes make hundreds of thousands of dollars playing in tournaments that are televised nationwide. Some of them are so popular they cannot go out in public without body guards to shield them from adoring fans. They even date movie stars and get their faces on the covers of newspapers and magazines.

Recently there was an electronic gaming tournament held in Seoul, South Korea at Jamsil Indoor Stadium. This event was the equivalent of our Superbowl. The game of choice for this event was StarCraft, which is a web game that is played on PCs. This event was nationally televised and broadcast on the Internet. The audience of 1.78 million who viewed it on television and online were glued to their seats as they watched the daylong event unfold. They came to watch the most popular gamer in their country strut his stuff.

His name is Lim Yo-hwan, he is 27 years old and he is the Mick Jagger of e-sports in South Korea. This young man has made quite a name for himself playing StarCraft, the only game that matters on the video game circuit in this country. His fans wanted to see him put on a show, and he did, winning the event easily with a take home prize of $20,000. Lim Yo-hwan has won many of these events in recent years and this has put his income in the six figure category. Not bad for playing video games.

The United States has some Superstar cyber-athletes too who make a very good living on the electronic gaming circuit. The brightest star in this country is a 26 year old man named Johnathan Wendel, otherwise known to his fans as Fatal1ty (his screen name). He lives in Kansas City, Missouri but his reputation lives all over the world.

Johnathan became a professional gamer at the age of 19, and in the past seven years he has won 41 major e-sports video game tournaments. He has won more electronic gaming competitions than anyone else in America. Johnathan has also done very well financially, winning over $450,000 in prize money.

Johnathan Wendel has traveled all over the world playing in video game tournaments. To date he has played on every continent except Antarctica. These tournaments have been held at some very interesting, unique and famous places including the Great Wall Of China and Moscows Red Square, so the idea of holding one in Antarctica some day may be not be so far-fetched.

Everywhere Johnathan goes he is swarmed by fans who just love the way he plays video games. All of his expenses are paid when he travels and he lives like a rock star. With world championships in five different video games, Johnathan is considered by most in his sport to be the best in the world. No other gamer has even come close to matching his accomplishments.

In November of 2006 Johnathan Wendel defeated his biggest nemesis and won the world championship for his fifth video game (PainKiller), and in doing so he took home a prize check for $150,000. He defeated the reigning world champion for that game, a 20 year old man from Holland that goes by the screen name Vo0.

Johnathan is becoming more and more popular every day as he continues to shine as a Superstar in the world of professional gamers. He is a force to be reckoned with in the Cyberathlete Professional League. He has recently launched a line of Fatal1ty products that include such things as mouse pads, headsets and keyboards that are made specifically for playing video games. He has a marketing Guru named Mark Walden working with him and both expect to make millions of dollars selling these products to gamers worldwide.

The video gaming industry is expected to make $30 billion dollars this year selling video games and consoles for products like Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PSP. This is an enormous amount of money that is more than twice the yearly grosses of the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball combined. With this kind of money involved and hundreds of millions of people playing video games all over the world the sport of professional video gaming is starting to attract major advertising sponsors and merchandising companies.

Professional video gamers are no longer just kids who are wasting their time spending endless hours playing video games. Many of them have managed to transform a hobby into a lucrative career. There are hundred of thousands, and even millions of dollars being made these days by gamers who travel the world (all expenses paid) and live like rock stars.

So the next time you think your child is spending too much time playing Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC or PSP games you should not worry too much. If they show more than the average amount of interest in the sport of electronic gaming, try not to discourage them from playing video games. It is important for you to realize that they may not just be playing games when they sit down in front of their television or computer, they could also be training to be a world famous cyber-athlete millionaire.

Michael P. Connelly is an Author, Artist and award-winning Filmmaker who writes on a variety of topics that effect people in their every day lives.

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Playing Fascinating Games With the XBOX

The XBox is launched as a seventh generation video game console designed by the Microsoft Corp. There are several versions of the Xbox the latest being the XBox 360. This gaming console supports wmv, H.264 and MPEG-4 video file formats. One can use the device to download arcade games, movies and television shows for entertainment purposes.

This being a seventh generation device has specifications that are very sophisticated. The device is supported with 733 MHz CPU, 64 MB DDR RAM, 6.4 GB/ sec bus memory bandwidth, 8 GB hard-disk storage, 250 MHz Graphics processing unit and windows 2000 core operating system. This enhances the speed and ability of the device to function according to the requirements of the users.

The USB mass-storage option allows the downloading of fabulous games from the internet. People can play these games to entertain themselves. Games such as "Call of Duty 2," "Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter" and "Dead or Alive 4" can easily be stored on the device though they require a huge storage space. One can easily watch demos and download games such as actions, road rash, puzzles, arcade, simulation, driving, adventure and role playing. These games are very exciting and help people to achieve highest levels of excitement while they play these games.

While playing games on the Xbox, one can also listen to music simultaneously. This increases the fascination as people listen to their favourite songs while simultaneously playing the games. The battery support of the Xbox is also very impressive. Even if one plays music and games simultaneously, still the battery is in a position to deliver long hours of run time.

The handset is capable of surfing the net at high speed and then download the files that are so desired. This is the beauty of this Xbox. So, whenever, users are bored up playing one single game, they can simple delete it from the memory and download the game of their choice from the internet. The users more or less remain gratified with the services offered by the Xbox.

While downloading the games, the users may have to pay for it. But then there are also many games that are offered free of cost by the online gaming sites. The charges for the games are not very high and one can afford them very easily. The Xbox too comes at a reasonably affordable price.

Stephen George is expert author of Games Products industry. Who writes on Game Consoles, Xbox Games

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To the Designers: How to Keep That MMORPG Market Fresh

I'd first of all like to file myself away among the millions of gamers who have (mis?)invested hundreds of days of playtime into the eternal timesink that the modern webosphere likes to call the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). There, I said it.

For me, as with most people, it started with an innocent-enough looking game: EverQuest. Originally, a friend suggested it to me in a casual conversation at work. I told him I'd been playing Phantasy Star Online for Dreamcast and was thoroughly enjoying it and he guessed (correctly) that EverQuest would probably be right up my alley. Though my time playing EverQuest was short, I spent ungodly amounts of time on it's sequel, as well as equally monstrous amounts of time on everyone's favorite online game: World of Warcraft. Toss in a dash of Guild Wars, Dungeons and Dragons Online, City of Heroes and Silk Road Online and we've got a recipe for horrendous grades and social atrophy.

The unfortunate part of this story is that all of the games I listed are, in essence, exactly the same! Do away with the differences in graphics, network support and fees, and the silly user interfaces and you're left with exactly what all of the multi-user dungeon (MUD, those gnarly text-only games only those with stomachs of steel can tolerate) players have had for decades. I target you, I cast spell, server calculates resistances and diminishes the usefulness of my spell, spell hits you... ad naseum. These newer, graphics-based games all have their slight spin on this theme, but when it comes down to it, they're all the same at heart. When we look at these games with eyes as objective as we can possibly have, when we really look at these games at the "meta" level, we can see that all of the small differences between them are different manifestations of the same thing!

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Download Computer Games

The first known computer game, Spacewars, coded for the PDP-1, ran on a massive mainframe. That was in 1962, when Stephen Russell wrote the program on MIT?s mainframe. Computer games have come a long way since then.

A computer game refers to a game played on a personal computer, and it differs from its counterpart, the video game - technically termed a ?console game? - by virtue of the fact that while the computer game sits on the hard disk of a PC, a console game?s instructions come through a controller, and video and audio emanates from a television.

PC games were designed to help personal computer users relax and have some fun without having to leave their office cubicle. With the passage of time, computer games became an alternate entertainment industry, and are now probably the highest revenue-generator for the software industry. With a PC in every home, children?s addiction for computer games is one of the most prominent parental nightmares. And with the surge in Internet speed, free and fast downloading of games, and online interactive games, even adult gaming addiction is on the rise.

In one click, several hours? worth of games can be downloaded. The 90s saw ?Doom? become immensely popular. It?s not just gaming for its own sake anymore?it?s an alternative lifestyle, an attitude ? either you are in it, or you are not. Downloading has its advantages, like faster data transfer and lower price (sometimes free). But there are cons to downloading games. Many creators add malicious spyware to the games to divert personal information from your PC, like email IDs. Also, downloaded games often contain viruses.

Computer Games provides detailed information on Computer Games, Free Computer Games, Online Computer Games, Kids' Computer Games and more. Computer Games is affiliated with Online Arcade Games.

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