It Pays
to play
Esports team Vanguard is finding success through Fortnite BY M I TC H H O O P E R | P H OTO S BY O L I V I A K . JA M E S
In
1972, a game took the country by storm. It featured three simple elements: two lines on opposite sides, a dot ricocheting from wall to lines, and a scoreboard. It now stands in the Smithsonian as a relic to the past and a connector to the future. The game is Atari’s Pong, and not only is it the first-ever commercial success in video game history, it sent waves that eventually led to competitive gaming as we know it today. While competitive gaming of new seems light-years away from what Pong started, it’s really not far off. Pong is a multiplayer game where only one winner can be crowned a champion. It sucked away people’s lives, too; when, in 1975, consoles were released for athome gaming by Sears, Atari sold 150,000. It was one of the best-selling products of its time in Sears’ history.
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Throughout the following decades, the trend continued. From the 1980s into the early 90s, Nintendo and Atari were hosting nationwide gaming tournaments, where players were tasked with setting high scores in games like Mario or Pac Man, competing for prizes such as new cars. In other words, the craze to game has always been there. Today, competitive prize pools reach upwards of $25 million. The hype might be at its all-time high. The current landscape of gaming is—for lack of better words—absolutely bonkers. Modern competitive games, or esports, include big-name titles like Call Of Duty, Overwatch, and League of Legends. Top players can earn cold hard cash. These players, better known as e-athletes, have broken the mold of what it means to be a professional gamer. Game
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streaming services like Twitch and Mixer have seemingly made folks overnight gaming celebrities, meaning the only gatekeeper of growing an audience is your skills and personality. And while games like League of Legends have followings large enough to fill sporting arenas, it seems no game has gained as much attention as Fortnite. Does Fortnite even need an introduction? It’s past the point of mainstream—it has become an incubator for pop culture. Amid all the pre-teens flossing on Tik Tok and online memes, there is a growing culture in the esports community that perhaps should be taken more seriously. While on the surface, it may look like young folks spending too much time in front of a television screen, that image is a disservice to the work professional e-athletes are putting in. Just ask Columbus’ Jonathan “Yung Calculator” Weber—a
