The Standard Journal

Gaming tournament­s draw players from Polk County to participat­e

- SJ Correspond­ent By Sean Williams

Earlier this summer, more than 10,000 competitiv­e video game players traveled to Las Vegas for the world’s biggest fighting game tournament: Evolution.

The event featured tournament­s for 9 different games including Street Fighter V, Super Smash Bros. WiiU, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Tekken 7, Injustice 2, Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Blazblue: Central Fiction, and the King of Fighters XIV. Street Fighter V was aired on ESPN2 and Disney XD; Smash Bros. was aired on Disney XD.

The peak viewer count on the streaming website Twitch hit nearly 200,000 viewers.

Player sponsorshi­ps are available, teams provide salaries, and tournament­s ensure a lofty sum of money for the winner. It sounds a lot like the same money being thrown into traditiona­l profession­al sports, and with the same amount of viewers.

But for gamers, there’s no big stadiums or venues to bring in fans custom tailored to the way that people watch video game tournament­s, which has thus far made e- sports catching on a slow process.

The concept of being a virtual athlete is becoming more appealing to youth as the paydays for prize money in tournament­s increases, and those getting into gaming as more than just a hobby are discoverin­g a new way of living off their passion.

The fighting game side of e-sports recently charmed a handful of Polk County youth, drawing several off to Orlando, Florida earlier in the summer to get involved in a national tournament in hopes of coming home with a big prize.

Earlier in June, Rock- mart citizens Noah Green and Brandon Graham participat­ed in CEO, or the Community Effort Orlando, a large-scale tournament held for fighting game enthusiast­s that featured a grand prize for the best in the competitio­n of more than $72,000.

Green is an avid player of Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers. He goes by the online alias “JigglyPuff­God,” and often participat­es in online tournament­s.

CEO was the first offline tournament Green had participat­ed in, and he shared that “it was an incredible experience.”

“I got to meet a lot of my favorite players like Nairo, HungryBox and Zero, and they really didn’t cut any corners with the venue,” he said.

These are names that Polk County residents won’t recognize, but in a world online with thousands of global players, they are superstars in much the same way that University of Georgia running back Nick Chubb is a hero for college football fans.

For Graham, CEO meant getting to compete against some of the top- ranked Killer Instinct players — with his main characters he played as “The Arbiter” and “Omen” — and faced such players with online handles like “Hollywood Sleep” and “Rico Suave.”

“Those are two players I really wanted to play,” said Graham. “Playing those two gave me a feel of where I stand in the grand scheme of things and I feel like I learned a thing or two.”

Graham himself competed under the alias, “The DankHaloRi­ng.”

They didn’t come home with thousands of dollars in their pockets or a big prize, but it’s something that has them thinking about what they might be able to achieve in the future. Graham and Green aren’t alone. The e-sports craving has also hit Rockmart’s Ezra Jacobs, who recently ventured to the metro- Atlanta area for Gwinnett Brawl, a monthly fighting game tournament limited exclusivel­y to Georgia players.

“Georgia’s f i ghting game scene is almost exclusive to the Atlanta area, and I really wanted to compete in Smash Bros. so it was definitely worth the trip,” said Jacobs. “It was only $7 for the venue fee and then $5 per game you competed in.”

Even just competing in one particular game in the tournament for $ 12 may seem like an insignific­ant fund, but considerin­g hundreds of Georgians gathered at Gwinnett Brawl, Wasteland Gaming was churning in a pretty penny.

Furthermor­e, Gwinnett Brawl is a all day long tournament, and participan­ts are likely to spend money at local restaurant­s or stores at some point during the tournament.

And it’s a growing industry.

For instance in one of gaming’s hardest competitio­ns, a DOTA 2 tournament, the estimated earnings just in tournament winnings for players has totaled more than $126 million since players began to treat it in the same way as a profession­al sport. A Las Vegashoste­d event known as “The Internatio­nal” was one of the biggest tournament­s of the sport, with tickets going for

It’s not just fighting games either. Madden players spend millions playing against one another online and in tournament settings too, and recent reports cited more t han 500,000 players participat­ing in the online shooter Player Unknown’s Battlegrou­nds, a first or third person multiplaye­r shooter.

Considerin­g how big e- sports are growing, Polk County could possibly see the appearance of venues, video game stores, and tournament­s sometime in the future.

In a similar fashion to the Perfect Game baseball tournament, a local e-sports tournament could bring in tourists from all over the country who would have their needs met by the county’s numerous restaurant­s and stores.

With SuperData Research, a gaming market and data research firm predicting e-sports will be worth $1.9 billion in 2018, Polk County just might have electronic athletes as guests sooner or later.

 ?? Sean Williams / Standard Journal ?? The Gwinnett Brawl hosted at Wasteland Gaming in metro Atlanta is one of many events across the nation drawing gamers of all kinds of tournament­s in hopes of winning prizes and more.
Sean Williams / Standard Journal The Gwinnett Brawl hosted at Wasteland Gaming in metro Atlanta is one of many events across the nation drawing gamers of all kinds of tournament­s in hopes of winning prizes and more.
 ?? Sean Williams / Standard Journal ?? Daigo Umehara, Sean Williams, Noah Green and Brandon Graham took part in recent gaming tournament­s over the summer.
Sean Williams / Standard Journal Daigo Umehara, Sean Williams, Noah Green and Brandon Graham took part in recent gaming tournament­s over the summer.

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