Salary of Pro Gamers - Page 2

On October 05 2012 13:41 firehand101 wrote:

yes that's 'Insanely Good' for playing a video game

On October 05 2012 16:43 Ahzz wrote:
For not having to pay for food, rent, and other expenses, even 500 dollars isn't 'terrible' at all. Yes, you cannot live a posh lifestyle or anything, but by no means should you be short of money. If all you are concerned about is how your bank account will look like after a year, then you should not be a progamer anyway.

plus, if you are a respected player, you will get quite a bit of money from streaming and other small tournaments, and occasional increase from a larger tournament. In reality, that 500 dollars a month is probably closer to 800-1000 dollars a month for many at least, and like I said, if you have no expenses, a bit under 1000 bucks is something I would consider quite good. For a 'star' it's not that good yes, but not bad at all.

On October 05 2012 17:44 firehand101 wrote:

for many there is no salary at all. For an ex-slayers player the best they could do was $500, so I don't know where you are checking your facts...

On October 05 2012 14:18 Dfgj wrote:

Yet relatively terrible for a full-time job.

On October 05 2012 23:12 Sakray wrote:
Saying that "somebody said that they make only 500$ per month" is just useless, unless you can provide SERIOUS sources.

On October 05 2012 21:31 GhostOwl wrote:
Flash was making 300k right?

Anyway, you gotta take into account that the top players will win tournaments, events, and prizes even if they're not placed very first. Not to mention they can collect $ from streaming. If I KNEW I had the skills to be within top 10 players, I would pursue the career. Otherwise, I would never do it. Too risky for me.

On October 05 2012 13:41 firehand101 wrote:

yes that's 'Insanely Good' for playing a video game

On October 05 2012 22:02 Grobyc wrote:

Exactly. I mean I love StarCraft and all, but you could just be making so much more doing something else that is more stable and requires a lot less time. As well as you could pretty easily argue that you would enjoy the game more as a hobby since your life doesn't revolve around it in terms of work.

On October 06 2012 03:04 EG.lectR wrote:
There are very few people making salaries worthy of note within e-sports. There, I said it. I'd say in the Western scene (this includes Europe), Evil Geniuses is the only team with multiple players making salaries which could be considered lucrative or established right now. But this should be very expected.

Before the launch of StarCraft II and platforms like live streaming, e-sports wasn't really going anywhere in the Western world. The Counter-Strike scene had been dead since about 2006-2007, game developers were consistently reminding the PC gamers that the PC platform was too niche to build games for anymore, and there were no existent competitive titles sparking regular interest in anything which could be considered mainstream media. The tournament scene was also sparse as the rise and fall of event organizers was becoming a common occurrence.

Before StarCraft II (and the near perfect timing of live streaming's introduction to gamers), e-sports was by all accounts down and out. You would've been either a prophet or an idiot to expect PC gaming to pick up "steam" as rapidly as we saw with the introduction of StarCraft II even when you considered the game's predecessor's success. Sequels to popular PC franchises had come out so many times before and flopped that I don't think anyone thought two years before SC2 was released, "Oh man...the e-sports world will change once this game comes out." It wasn't until closer to the game's launch (i.e. the beta period which reinforced it) that we began to really recognize the potential of the game.

So, with that said, the expectation that suddenly pro gamers should be making tons of money is both naive and simply illogical. Our history doesn't show any reason for a sudden explosion in salaries or profits that pro gamers should be making (even with the existence of live streaming now) at this time. If anything, it should reinforce the fact that those who are making a lot of money quickly right now are of such a small fraction and that it's to be expected given our gradual rise to this time period.

Now, what's even scarier (or should be), and it's a topic which I have to both tread lightly upon and note that it hasn't been mentioned often, is that there are few team managers who know what they're doing. Point blank. I've seen this with the questionable player acquisitions, the lackluster attempts at creating promotions and content around teams, and the repeatedly failed attempts that come in between normal proper decision making as it relates to marketing, press, and the like. As much as I want to point my finger at the scene and then throw my hands up in frustration, I find myself pointing more blame at the failed teams and brands which come out of the woodwork than at the fact that right now people aren't making all that much money (or at least, not that many are).

One of the greatest and worst things about e-sports is that anyone can be a part of it. Anyone today can say, "I want to create a team," or "I want to create X" and then they can do so. That is an attractive thing about this industry because of its sheer freedom. Unfortunately, the damage that is caused and has been caused by people who have said those same phrases is immense. We at EG have to fight through that regularly as we approach clients who have said, "Oh...I sponsored X team once and it failed," or "I worked with them before, they didn't know how to X". These are frustrations we encounter regularly and they are spawned from the very people who know not what they're doing.

Ultimately, the topic of salaries is of little interest to me, personally, but I do hope my commentary has helped others understand what we should really be focusing on. Salaries will grow as e-sports grows. Stop worrying about them and worry about the building blocks which are responsible for creating them: teams and players. This is like...a very, very brief way of talking about some major topics, and this blog kind of reminded me about them again, but it should give you an idea of some other perspectives going into a topic like this.

If no one reads it, oh well...I enjoyed writing it