Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 403)

Trigger Happy
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While such cybernetic innovations hold out tantalizing
possibilities for the future, one aspect of videogaming
that drew ever greater interest during 2001 was
massively multiplayer action, either over wired
networks or online. Full-time gamers, such as Britain’s
Sujoy Roy, can now earn $300,000 a year by traveling
the world playing Quake III in organized tournaments.
Networked videogaming is already huge among the
PC-owning population, and with each new
nextgeneration console—PlayStation2, GameCube and
Xbox—now offering internet connectivity, it is only
going to get larger. Professional gamers’ leagues are in
place in Britain and America, as well as much of Asia.
Far-sighted individuals such as Edward Watson,
manager of The Playing Fields videogame bar in
London, see no reason why in the future such
videogames should not be officially recognized as
sports in their own right. “Take away what’s physically
happening,” Watson told me, waving his arm around
the neon-lit basement den of The Playing Fields, “and
you couldn’t tell the difference between what’s going
on here and a professional sports tournament. The
tactics that can be employed in a videogame are as
varied as those that can be employed in any game.”
Indeed, action videogames of this type