Other "Professional" Gaming

Now I'm pretty sure this is a topic that could spark some dangerous amounts of fire and rage, but I'm curious to see what others think.

How do we classify a "Professional" gamer? Is it someone who merely profits off their gaming, or someone who is faster, or otherwise more ingenious than most of the other players of such games out there?

I can think of a few examples, but I'd be curious to see how others classify it. For me it's a mixture of the two. Knowing a game and being able to experiment and bend the rules a little is part of the fun anyway, seeing someone do it to a phenomenal extent is always freaking astounding to watch. Equally; Seeing someone take established concepts and perform them at nearly double the speed of us mere mortals is somewhat breathtaking to watch too. (Although a right bitch to be on the opposing end of. I still remember my forays into Populous: The Beginning's Multiplayer. I think i'm still smarting slightly from where I got my ass so fully kicked.)

Anyway; Discuss. But please try and keep it in check. I'd rather this actually remained an interesting topic, rather than a firefilled Spamtrap.

 

I don't see how this could degenerate in to a flame thread. Here's my opinion, someone who has entered the competitive side of BF3

Professional = Profession = a reasonable amount of money made, doesn't mean that you still don't work at a regular job

Competitive = Playing at a higher level, cash/prizes/recognition may be awarded but you're not going to live on it

Casual = plays to have fun


If you have 1000x time the speed of an other causal game but never enter the competitive realm or make money from this skill, you're still just another causal.

BTW I don't think you have to be good in order to be considered a profession gamer. Look at people on youtube, most of them are only slightly better than an average causal but they make money off of it, so I would consider them to be a professional gamer. You can also be extremely competitive or even the best in the world, but if you're not making money, you're not a professional.

 

I think it can mean either - professional is often used as a synonym for expert, and I think there are a good few expert gamers who play competitively and would be considered professional even though they may not necessarily make their living from it.

My experience of pro gamers has been more about the skill level than the vocational aspect... but I suppose the pros are the ones who play 12 hours a day anyways lol.

 

Professional gamers should be gamers who's earnings are derived from activities involving video games. Producing gameplay/commentary videos, or other gaming content or competitively playing games when you have no other occupation I think that's the easiest way to tell

 

Wrong thread.. Whoops...

 

To me I don't think there is a professional gamer. Most of the gamers that win these competition and earn big bucks say they were just lucky on the day.
As gaming has a variety of topics like sports, rpg, platform etc. there will be some that even the top paid gamers are not so good at, and as the tech changes so does the skill for games.

If I was to class someone who is a pro gamer then I would say someone who was put alot of time into gaming and become good at it like with most skills, you put the time in and you'll eventually become a pro.

You don't have to earn money to be called a pro, for everyone that wins or is paid for gaming there will be 10 more that could beat them that are unknown.

 

Professional = A professional is a person who is paid to undertake a specialized set of tasks and to complete them for a fee.

 

EDIT: I see someone else also went to Wikipedia...

Wikipedia has this to say about the term "professional" (the emphasis is mine):

I pretty much agree with the highlighted sentence: if someone is being paid to play games, or earns cash prizes in competitions, then that pretty much makes them a "professional gamer". They might not be "sports players" - I really don't want to open that can of worms - but it is probably the easiest comparison to make.

The term does imply a level of skill which is above average, but that doesn't always have to be the case: a professional sports person may be no better skilled than his peers, but he is still getting paid to play and may still manage to win games/competitions/whatever now and then through sheer luck. I guess it's pretty much the same with "professional" gamers: you have those who are clearly far more skilled than even other "professionals", yet someone may still be paid (or win cash prizes) because they won a match through sheer luck.

 

A professional gamer to me is one who earns from playing the game, and is a level 'above' competitive player.
I'm not sure how many people I would consider professional gamers, but there are lots of people I'd consider competitive players and some of whom are good enough to earn money from it, but not enough for me to consider them professional.

The Beast has it spot on in my opinion.

 

There was a good picture used in the Frag Documentary about gaming which was a pyramid.

At the top you have professional gamers - Theses gamers make a living playing video games by professional torments by winning prize money.

Competitive gamer - These gamers enter the occasional tormentor, event and compete.

The casual gamer- These gamers play for recreational purposes to have fun.



Wish I could find the image :/

 

This link gives you a list of all the types of gamers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamer

To quote wiki;
So far as a professional gamer is financially dependent upon gaming, the time spent playing is no longer "leisure" time.

 

As an aside, I would bet there are a fair few competitive gamers who are technically "better" at certain games than professionals, and probably even some casuals too.

A lot of it is about who you know, or who sees you playing. I really wouldn't know, it's been some time since I did multi player gaming of any sort and I only ever fell into the casual category.

 

I rank myself as a hardcore gamer.

 

But people who know you rank you as numpty gamer.

 

To me a pro gamer is someone who travels all around the world entering and winning competitions and makes enough money for it to be their living.

That's what pro poker players do.

 

There's an asian american actress who's also a poker player. I'd like to poke her.

 

The closest thing to so called professional gaming I have experienced would be FormulaSimRacing.

They have teams sign up, who in turn enter their own drivers or advertise for one, I think 2011 had a prize pot of 2,000 or so euro?

If you are as into racing sims as I am it's not hard to imagine yourself getting involved.

 

Not much else to add to this, really.

My only addition is that I believe "the competitive realm" doesn't have to include organized competitions. Many games have their own ladders, rankings or leaderboards and anyone making a serious attempt to reach the top is competitive. Some in-game ranking systems might even hold more weight than smaller third party tournaments.

 

Yeah. I don't even think they have any events here in the UK, maybe a few. There seems to be a lot more of it in the US, same with everything I suppose.

And yeah I would be classed as a hardcore gamer. Basically a professional gamer who is so addicted to games he can't even bothered going to events And also most of the stuff I enjoy is not really competitive anyway, and the ones that are, you can just go online nowdays and compete with people as much as you like. So events are kind of redundant in terms of getting respect from gamers or whatever, it would only seem worthwhile if you stood a chance at winning something.

 

The ease of online play really has changed the way competitive gaming works. Almost every game has a multiplayer component now and many of them have some sort of easy to get into competitive option, often just the click of a "Ranked Match" button. I don't believe that just attempting at ranking in a game immediately makes someone competitive, but it has helped increase the number of competitive gamers.

Not mentioning prizes, tournaments have their own respect. It's one thing to say you're ranked 100th in a game on the leaderboards, but you don't really know if you're better than the 101st until you've had a match and won. Tournaments let players face off against set opponents and prove their skill. For some games they're also still the only way to determine ranking, like BF3.