Trigger Happy
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
405
