After making a ton of money in the advertising business, Michael Sepso and Sundance DiGiovanni decided six years ago that it was time to goof off. How did these two guys, then in their late 20s, pass the time? They played a lot of "Halo."
Then they had an idea: Why not start a professional video-game league?
Don't laugh. The former ad men raised $35 million from private-equity investors, rounded up some skilled gamers and launched Major League Gaming in 2003. Today, the predominantly web-based league has five million monthly unique users, most of them young men whose average age is 19. They flocked to MLGpro.com to watch star gamers like FearitSelf and ThuggishKilla blast each other to smithereens in shooter games like "Halo 3" and "Gears of War." In June, the league hosted nearly 600,000 amateur matches on its GameBattles Web site.
New report from Skillsearch found that 22% of those surveyed had been laid off within the past 12 months.
It's a step forward for Stop Killing Games.
The Callisto Protocol director thinks the solution involves the right people, the right timing, and perhaps a little bit of AI
I don't agree with that. I WISH I could agree with that. But buying habits and customer opinions prove otherwise
We've seen developers in the AAA space try new things and ideas. More often than not, the customers aren't willing to give things a chance, or not enough people buy into the project for it to grow.
Creativity works better in the indie space because the budgets, pressures, and expectations aren't the same.
it's a nice idea and it worked during the PS2/PS3-era when AAA didn't cost hundreds of millions of dollars. smaller budgets and shorter development time left room for more creativity and more risk. a game didn't need to sell 4 million+ copies to break even. things are different now.
This is the guy who bragged about crunching his staff and having them work through the night. Crunch culture has lost more talent and done more damage to the industry than any other factor. Screw him.
