Online addicts are getting more and more press lately

Peregrine

Peregrine

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http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/fun.games/10/07/korea.onlinegameaddic.ap/index.html

Hong Jin-ho, a 24-year-old professional gamer, earns more than 133 million won ($130,000) a year, living and training with his fellow game team members in an apartment in central Seoul.

Hong, who specializes in Starcraft, a science-fiction strategy game, says he has never thought of video games as an addiction.

He admitted, however, that the seven to eight hours of daily training -- which sometimes drags on for nearly 24 hours before competitions -- can be physically challenging.

"My body doesn't welcome it, but I do it to win," Hong said.



I wonder if top gil sellers come close to making 130k a year.
 
Gil selling businesses are probably multimillion dollar industries. You can expect to see donald trump getting in on that action in the next episode of the apprentice probably.
 
Yeah but that dude plays tournaments. He's not a seller. It's like the culture embraces it as a profession. He plays Starcraft for a living, and makes about what I will in 5 years...
 
And he'll probably die from exhaustion. Eventually he's going to lose all sense of reality and will be completely anti social. I could live a very comfortable life off 50k a year, a lot happier than a lot of people who make a lot more.
 
7-8 hour days are kind, especially for that pay. Many people sit in front of a computer for 7 hours a day for a third of that pay, AND they hate it.

I wouldn't say he's addicted in particular. He's working at what he loves, and is getting paid to do it. All he has to do is put in 8 hours a day practicing, with some on-call days that he has to pull 24-hour shifts. That's still pretty darn good hours for 130k a year. Very few get that much pay for doing something they love to do.

Others, however, who play for entertainment or both entertainment and a small allowance (most people who sell to IGE are indeed "hardcore" players who don't need more gil but still generate it), are in a totally different boat. The media is starting to make this into a discussion stump. It's coming up more and more in articles.
 
Starcraft is almost like a sport in Korea. You even get sponsored by some big companies if you're good, yea they have jersey's that carry company logos. They even have a channel dedicated to Starcraft along with commentators. If you do a search over the internet i'm sure you'd find some videos.

Call them nerds if you want but if i'm making that much money in a year playing starcraft I could care less what you call me.

Another thing about gil sellers, they are basically people who plays the game for gil and it's usually sold by a higher up and not the people actually farming it. Basically it's like a digital sweat shop instead of a real sweat shop, with sewing machines replaced with computers, and the people actually doing all the work gets paid much less than what the person who actually sells the gil for, I remember reading an article in some pc gaming magazine where they get paid less than $1USD/hr.. Now why would they do that? It's another country and they do what they must to get paid for food i'm sure. Hell I bet it's even considered a good job in China.
 
Starcraft game is my own time favored ^^

Play SC for like 4 years ^.^b

Never play as like my job tho, only play for fun ^^
 
Acutie said:
Those crazy foreigners.
Click to expand...

Not just them. The world champion Halo player lives right down the road from me in good ol' Allen, TX and his bank roll last year from Halo alone was 120k+ he was also signed to some "up and comming" American game team corp. aka "We will help you make a living at what you love so we can mooch off of you for a living." He's expected to pull in over 200k in 2006. This mofo will search out of country and in for anyone who he thinks may can beat him, fly to their place or a place of meeting, play/own them for hours/days, then fly back. What a life if you love it I guess.
 
it would be fun to get paid for doing something you enjoy.
 
If you don't get paid to do what you love, consider a career change. This is how it should be. I just never thought Starcraft would ever be a venue for it.
 
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