Print Screen: "Game Boys": The Gamers or the Game?

(Page 1 of 3)

Professional gaming is always on the cusp of hitting it big. Dazed by the status of Korean StarCraft players and impressed by the huge numbers of people who regularly game online, entrepreneurs, players and wannabe sports moguls have been trying to convert LAN parties into computer sports leagues for years. Michael Kane's "Game Boys: Professional Videogaming's Rise From the Basement to the Big Time" covers a couple of very important years in the life of professional gaming -- from 2005 to 2007, the sport saw the collapse of the Cyberathlete Professional League, the appearance of the World Series of Video Gaming, and finally the founding of the Championship Gaming Series.

Kane writes about the sport through in depth reporting on two Counterstrike teams. 3D is the heavyweight in the sport, sponsored by Intel and NVidia and managed by Craig Levine, a 20-something go-getter who can use his deep pockets to keep his players away from real jobs. Levine sees great promise in the professionalization of gaming and emphasizes media-friendly gamers who stick to the plan. Team CompLexity is managed by Jason Lake, who funds the team entirely out of his own savings. Composed of castoffs, hired guns and one preternaturally gifted sniper, Lake spends much of the book struggling to get any sponsor interest at all and chasing 3D for a big-money showdown that, he hopes, will justify the strain on his marriage.

As you can see from the description, Kane is writing a traditional sports story about a favorite and an underdog, someone to root for and someone to root against. Though Levine pitches the rivalry to a broadcaster as the New York Yankees versus the Bad News Bears, Lake resists and resents this portrayal -- confident that his team is better. Kane, clearly fond of Lake, seems to have bought into the underdog narrative, though, and it colors every chapter.

In this way, it's not far removed from last year's "The King of Kong," the movie about the quest for the top score in Donkey Kong that pitted a smooth-talking villain and the high score establishment against a plucky newcomer who only wanted to be the best. But Kane is perceptive enough to see what the polished media mind of Levine can bring to the sport -- that only someone with his vision and business acumen can lift professional gaming to the level of Texas Hold'em.

Kane's observations on the management of the sport are particularly interesting to those of us whose knowledge of pro gaming is limited to the occasional human interest story on the local news. Even up to last year, there were few guarantees that prize-winners would ever see much of their winnings; unscrupulous promoters or Byzantine claim policies could erase whatever pot was due. Female clans are invited for promotion or sex appeal more than for any interest in their gaming abilities or equity, and some clan organizers are fine with that; the PMS clan has more luck with sponsors than Lake's much better team for the media-friendly reasons that Levine promotes.