True Life: I'm Not A Professional Gamer

MTV has been running one of their True:Life "documentaries" recently that covers people who are so good at video games that they started to play for a living. I don't know if any of you have seen it yet, but I thought it was a pretty interesting show and recommend that you keep an eye out for it.

If nothing else, the segments featuring the girls who play in Counterstrike tournaments is very lovely. Made me feel like I was a high school boy again, when I always had crushes on pretty girls who were out of my league. Okay, so I never really did that in high school, so I guess it basically made me feel like a 25 year old loser who falls in love with girls on TV who happen to be awesome at video games.

In all seriousness, though, I have to say I was impressed with how much "work" these kids put towards video games. The one girl was saying how "at LEAST 11 hours of practice per day is a must", while the SMASH Bros. guy stayed up till 6am playing the game like it was nothing. I mean in college we had our share of video game marathons, but I don't think it even begins to compare to these psychos.

And their payouts actually weren't bad either. At first when the SMASH Bros. guy was saying how he made $100 for a day of playing, I was like, "haha, $100, big deal". But then I thought about it more and realized that hey, I don't make that much more than $100 a day myself, after taxes. And they're playing video games while I gotta actually engineer stuff. Not to mention he was probably going to make more after signing with a managing company and playing in bigger tournaments.

I think it just goes to show you that you can do pretty much anything for a living, if you work hard enough and can get good enough to be one of the best at what you do. Obviously some professions are going to be more profitable than others, especially if you consider the long term prospects. I can't imagine anyone could stay on top of their game for more than a few years, and after that, how helpful are your video gaming skills going to be to finding another profession?

But there's still something to be said for doing what you love and making enough money to support yourself by doing it. Ideally it would be something that helps society, but that's another discussion. I do admire these kids (even the T-Squared guy, who's pretty much a tool outside of his Halo skills), for the fact that they found something they know they excel at. And since they know 100% that it's what they want to do, they can wholeheartedly devote all of their time and energy to it and become even better.

I compare that to my job and it's not like that at all. I go to work, usually 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and get paid fairly reasonably for it. But that's it.

I don't find myself waking up early or staying up late to become a better engineer. Not because I don't have ambition and not because I don't have the work ethic for it. I don't see anything wrong with working way more than 40 hours a week, and in fact I believe you need to do that to be truly successful at anything.

The only problem is that unlike these "professional gamers", I can't say wholeheartedly that what I'm doing now, is what I was meant to do. What I was born to do. Maybe one day in the future that will change, but right now my job is just my job.

To those kids their job and their passion is one and the same. If I could feel about my job, the way they feel about theirs, there's no question in my mind that I would work as hard and as long as they do, and maybe even more so. But as it stands, being an engineer means not much more than something I spend 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week on, and in return allows me to pay all of the bills.

Anyways, I didn't mean to turn this entry on a MTV show about teenagers who play video games for money, into another long discussion about myself which nobody else really cares. But yeah, if you all haven't seen this show, I recommend it because I thought it was pretty interesting and entertaining. Or you can just watch it for the pretty girls.

(Watch out for the girls team from China, though. They should have had a disclaimer: The following scene contains extremely unattractive FOBs. Viewer discretion is advised.)

*****

Oh, and on a side note, 60 Minutes did a segment this past Sunday about online poker and how it is a thriving industry despite being illegal in the United States. This was definitely not as interesting or well done as the MTV show discussed above. Kinda sad that I'd consider a MTV True Life show to be more worthwhile to watch than 60 Minutes, but that's my honest opinion and I'm sticking by it.

(Not saying all of the MTV True Life shows are good, but at least the "Professional Gamer" one was.)