One of the bigger trends in these day in age is the sudden rise of professional video game players in all kinds of titles that provide a competitive environment. From MOBA games, to fighting games, to shooters, to racing games, and even sports games, the steady rise of professional games has started the youth to take the dream of becoming pro into reality.
And the rising trend doesn’t stop there. With big named titles starting to support the competitive scene for their community, there is a steady increase of “official” support gamers have. More and more players are starting to take the risk of becoming “Pro” instead of following the usual education track the previous generation has set in stone.
With the interest in competitive video game playing skyrocketing, the sports usual ecosystem found in sports communities have opened up quite a bit to the concept of “esports”. One of the biggest examples is that even sports channels like ESPN have started showing airing competitive matches for LoL, Dota 2, Hearthstone, and the like. In fact, ESPN has started airing finals matches from EVO 2017. You can even see the upward trend with the interest of people in esports that sports betting sites have started taking in bets for pro game matches.
Companies have also taken esports seriously as non gaming related companies like Monster Energy Drink, Red Bull, and even Bacchus has started sponsoring teams to carry their name. In fact, even the pornsite youporn has it’s own (surprisingly) solid e-sports team.
Gone were the days that the gamer has been typecasted as just another dude who’s stuck in their basement playing video games all day. Now, pro gamers even have started to become rockstars outside of game centric country of South Korea. Earning fans the world over at the same time having almost rockstar lives, except that they have gaming to thank for that instead of their ruggedly good looks or their skill with an instrument.
It’s not stopping there though as more and more people have taken video games a second hard look, I look forward to the time where the stigma of being a professional gamer would totally disappear.