Professional Gaming

Professional Video Gamer seems like an amazing job. You get to sit around playing video games all day, eating free Doritos and drinking free Mountain Dew, and, most importantly, you get paid for it.

However, Michael Mcwhertor associate editor for the online gamers magazine Kotaku talks about professional gamers in his article “Guys, Professional Video Gaming is Hard.”

“Gaming for pay is not easy, ” Mcwhertor says. “Sure, you think that just because you're playing Halo 2 up to twelve hours a day that you're having fun. But no, it's hard, hard work.”

He says gaming for hours on end makes him physically exhausted. This profession is not just a fun pastime for hardcore gamers. It’s a job.

As 24-year-old game tester for “Electronic Arts” Andy Alamano says, “It’s like being a porn star. Sure, you’re still [screwing] gorgeous women, but it’s your job now.”
But if your heart is set on getting paid to play video games, there are several different ways to do it.

One way is to practice long and hard until you’re an amazing gamer, then go to tournaments and win thousands of dollars. Maybe after that someone will sponsor you, and pay your way to do the whole process over again.

This is what professional gamer Johnathan Wendel did in 1999 when he became one of the first professional gamers. At the Cyberathlete Professional League in Dallas, where Wendel played his first tournament, he took fourth place playing Quake III, and won $4,000. From then on, Wendel had people sponsoring him, wanting him to endorse their products. He was flown all around the world, making over $50,000 a year.

Wendel has never paid for a single trip, and his companies, such as MTV, supply him with all the new games and hardware he needs. But Wendel even admits gaming is a hard job. He says he has to work eight to 12 hours every day.
“It's about being competitive and thinking fast and knowing how to win,” Wendel says. “It's not about sitting at a computer all day.”

Another way to get paid to play video games is to become a video game tester. Most people in the gaming world take this job as a stepping stool to a better game-developer’s job.

Again, many people think this job is the dream fluff job, but game testing is a highly technical and analytical field, which requires an expertise in computers and the inhuman ability to sit for hours on end.

A game tester will have to play through a game to find the glitches, bugs and logic errors throughout it. Many times game testers will start playing the game when it is still in alpha and beta versions. And if a level is glitchy--the game tester may have to play through that one level over and over again for as long as 20 hours straight.
Alamano says there is little time in his field to eat and sleep.

“The longest week I put in was 118 hours, which was two weeks before the game had to be shipped to Sony’s QA for final approval,” Alamano said. “I slept in a chair most of that week.”

The week a game “goes gold” is especially hectic.  And this is all for little more than minimum wage and the hopes of becoming a designer.

So professional gaming at tournaments and testing games can be a lot of fun for people who work hard and have a lot of time. But don’t think it is all fun and games. Professional gaming is still a job. It takes up a lot of time and can be more tedious than enjoyable.