Quote Originally Posted by '-silencer-',index.php?page=Thread&postID=87534#post87534
My girlfriend and I met up with an out-of-state coworker of hers for lunch yesterday, and it happened to be at the convention center where MLG was being held. Her coworker's son was competing in the Halo 3 tourney. It looked decent, but as an event, it looked like it fell far short of the summer/winter CPL events of a few years ago with regards to spectators & prizes. I can't believe how many conversations I heard at lunch of players thinking of skipping college to play competitive games. WTF. The gaming community is so fickle as it is, so why seriously derail your future for a major risk that will still be there in 4 years.
Sorry for the bump, but I can't help to to chime in on this. ><

As somebody who got into the MLG/competitive Halo scene about 5 years ago... I can tell you the face of MLG has changed drastically. It may just be the nostalgia of it, but at my first MLG tournament everybody was there as a gamer.. not as an E-Celebrity signing autographs. As for the dropping out of school bit, you can thank THIS GUY. He dropped out of High School to play competitive Halo, while his larger grossing rivals of one of the other top Halo teams are making 5 times as much money and are finishing college. But these kids don't see that. The very last MLG tournament I attended was in Vegas of '06. This was the last in a series of tournaments aired on USA. They hired local kids to sit in the stands to look good for the camera, and all of the regular MLG attendee's had to sit cramped the entire time be a spectator. After the finals, myself and a group of friends tried to get going to beat the traffic, and were stopped by the crew because they "weren't done filming". They physically would not let us by to leave. We were all so furious.

I'm all about competitive gaming, and I've long been active in competitive FPS (both console and PC). There's a point within "E-Sports" where it goes too far. This is somewhere between standing in line to get an autograph and having the players run through a smoke machine and strobe lights to their consoles.

/endrant