The Past, Present, and Future of Professional Gaming (MLG)
Major League Gaming (MLG) is the home of professional games and has been since 2002. Today we are in 2015, professional games have been around for 13 years and have grown tremendously since they began. The atmosphere, locations, games / consoles, and prizes have changed over the last 13 years.
When Major League Gaming started, most people saw it as a joke more than anything. People thought, are professional games really? Yes, really professional games were a thing then. It didn’t get a lot of attention from outsiders or non-players, but that would change. The atmosphere at the beginning of MLG was nothing spectacular, the only emotional feeling you could have would be from the players and the small number of spectators. It is equivalent to watching a sports game with a small number of spectators. During the period of time, the atmosphere grew to a whole new level; over time, of course. Today the atmosphere is crazy. You can feel the intensity as a spectator, you can see the hype from the players, and there are real crowds of people watching. They are not only watching, but they are also supporting their team, like at a sporting event. Fans make posters and cheer on their favorite teams and players. Looking ahead, this will only continue to grow. There will be more fans as time goes on and that means more atmosphere and excitement. Also, as time goes on, new players will enter the scene and add more excitement to the atmosphere. I guess we’ll see what happens.
At the beginning of MLG, tournaments were held in banquet halls. Events took place in these places for a time. I don’t know when MLG got their arena, but there is currently an MLG arena in Columbus, Ohio. This is where all MLG events take place. In the past there were no events in other countries or states. Now there are events in every state and in other countries, during the summer there was an event in Texas called X-Games just like the sports X-Games, but this is for games. The winner got gold medals just like in the other X-Games. There are also tournaments called G-Finity and UMG. During last summer there were 3 events in 3 different European countries. For the future, I can see that this will have some growth. I think there could be multiple venues for MLG events and there could be more countries for tournaments. Additionally, when events were held in banquet halls, players had monitors and systems lined up on long tables. As time passed and events were held in other places such as the arena, booths were made. Now players play in soundproof booths, with a divider next to another booth that separates them. There is also a large audience on the booths for people to watch the game. In front of the booths are the logo and the name of the teams. I think this will remain the same in the future with minimal changes.
Games have also changed over the years. When MLG started, games were played on older versions of the PlayStation, Xbox, and even Nintendo systems. There were games like Super Smash Bros. Melee, Soul Caliber, Call of Duty, and Halo. As time passed, newer games were added to more modern consoles, as were computers. Today there are modern consoles and computers that are used in professional games. Some of the games are Call of Duty, Halo, Smite, and League of Legends. This will continue in the future as well. The new versions of the games will be played on the new consoles when they come out.
As time went by, so did the number of prize money. When Major League Gaming started, the prize money was only in the hundreds. That prize money is divided by the number of players per team. So if the prize was $ 100, each player only received $ 25, so there wasn’t a lot of money, it was something but nothing special. As time went on, the jackpot increased to thousands smaller and continued to grow. Now the jackpots are in the thousands, hundreds of thousands, and some are even worth a million dollars. Now if the jackpot is $ 500,000, the first-place team doesn’t get all that money. That $ 500,000 is disbursed among the top eight teams or so and then divided based on the number of players.
In conclusion, the professional game has come a long way, going from nothing worthy of recognition to where it is today, it is a very successful and entertaining scene. It has been very successful and I hope it will continue to grow and become more popular as time goes on.