How much can I win being a gamer?
My first computer was at the age of 8, a Mac (Macintosh) that had a single set of ships and asteroids. My dad only let me play 30 minutes a day maximum.
At the age of 15 I put together my first computer, motherboards, processors, memories, energy, everything to have my first “gamer” computer capable of supporting the best games of those times (at least for me) StarCraft, Age of empire, Sim City, Sims, Warcraft, among others, and the best part of it, you can play it online vs player of all over the world! By then, my obsession with playing on a computer grew so much that my mom hid the power cords from me so I wouldn’t play (she didn’t know I have more than one, so I never stopped playing). “You will not get far in your studies”, “That world has no future”. What would my mom say today if I told her that the 2021 DOTA 2 champion team won a prize of 47.2 million dollars?
The PC gaming world has grown enormously in recent years, it is said that today the entire PC/laptop world dedicated to this is bigger than Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo together.
Professionalism has also taken this challenge seriously: entire teams train daily, followers through Twitch or YouTube follow and look for their stars, game updates continually give material to continue producing new video content, and finally the creators themselves of these games create world championships with the best teams to find out who is the best.
Let’s analyze the specific case of DOTA 2, an acronym for “Defense on the ancient”, which was and was born from a modified “map” of Warcraft III from the Blizzard company, where teams of 5 vs 5 “Heroes” fight each other with the objective of eliminating the “Core” of the opposing team. Supports, DPS, strength, Agility, abilities, ultimate, skins, bot/mid/off are some concepts that will be left for a following game guide.
Game that became famous among young people around the world and that the first “The International” (world championship) was held in 2011 with a “humble” prize of 1.6 million dollars won by a team of 5 young Ukrainians. Paradoxically, its latest version made in 2021 in Bucharest, is won by a Russian team called “Team Spirit” and the prize is nothing more and nothing less than 47.2 million dollars.
The question that arises with a large prize is, where does a company that creates video games get 47.2 million dollars for a prize? (and that every year it continues to rise?), and here is the key part of the market, and the answer is its fanatical consumers (and I include myself), more than 80% of the prize was paid by players from all over the world, to Through the purchase of 1 ticket that gives you access to the in-game event, skins, new challenges and also the possibility to see and bet on your favorite teams.
What’s coming for the future?
Perhaps the next question is that this is something temporary, that fans of this type of game “grow up” and stop contributing (at least I’ve been playing DOTA for more than 15 years), and that in addition, new games are not born that inspire professionals to dedicate themselves to this and likewise to players and fans to play these games constantly.
Point 1 is debatable, under 2 quite reasonable arguments: 1. We know that as a general rule, as time passes it is more likely that a person will have more money (therefore more money to contribute or to buy better technology), and 2. The growing older is not an indicator today to stop “playing”. I leave you the link of a Japanese gamer grandmother with 90 years and millions of visits on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/c/GamerGrandma/about )
Point 2 is easy to refute with data and mainly it is that looking at the ranking of the best prizes awarded in the gaming world, after DOTA 2, all the games are recent releases that have had immediate success and that also move in other genres of this world, mainly shooter
What comes now?
What is clear is that the trend is for this market to continue to increase in players and professionals, the incentives of better prizes, fame and fun are for those who want to prove that they are the best in this category. Likewise, the low price of access and trial and customers generates a solid base with which to continue building the market.
Finally, and the subject of my next post, it will be the generation of gamer content by “youtubers”, non-professional people in the world who win but who have a great influence on young people addicted to these platforms, only 1 video of Rubius (one of the youtubers with the most fans all over the world) can move customers, players and developers towards a new game.
Thank you very much and see you in the next post to analyze the next piece of this puzzle.
