11-1 Career Gamers

Worldwide sales of video game consoles and software are expected to reach $30 billion this year – that's more than twice the revenue of the NFL, the NBA, and Major League Baseball combined. With hundreds of millions of people playing worldwide, it was perhaps inevitable that sporting competition would develop and give rise to the professional video game player.

The very best call themselves cyber-athletes, and travel the world competing in tournaments that offer hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money. The number one player is someone called "Fatal1ty." That's his screen name, anyway. His real name is Johnathan Wendel. Every new sport needs stars, and Fatal1ty is the first superstar of video games.

The best video game player in America lives in Kansas City, Missouri. When I showed up for the interview, Johnathan Wendel was in his room, glued to his computer screen. He was using a mouse and a keyboard to attack enemies in a computer-generated world on his computer. It's how he makes his living, and why he calls himself Fatal1ty. He was in a virtual death match with his opponents, oblivious to everything around him, including my arrival.

Wendel has been a pro for six years. When I first interviewed him last summer, he said he had won over $300,000 in tournament prize money.

There are parents all over the country that are telling their kids, "Shut off the video game. You're wasting your time." Wendel says he got that, too.

At age 25, he has won 41 tournaments, playing the same shoot'em-up video games that you can buy in most stores and living a life most young men his age can only dream of. He has traveled, all-expenses paid, to every continent except Antarctica. He has played in Moscow's Red Square, and on the Great Wall of China. And everywhere he goes, he is surrounded by fans.

Asked if he is the best in the world, he replies, "If you say so. I'm trying to be modest here but, yes. I'm pretty good."

What was his mother's reaction when he told her that he wanted to become a professional video game player?

"Oh that didn't go over so well," Wendel says with a laugh.

If he hadn't discovered professional gaming he would probably be doing tech support for some computer company in Kansas City. He was only 18 at the time and still living at home.

His parents were divorced, so having failed to persuade his mother, he moved in with his dad and went to work on him, offering him a deal: "I was like, 'Dad, just let me go to this one tournament. If I don't win any money, like any significant money, I'm going to quit. I'll just quit, I'll go full time school, no problem,'" Wendel remembers.

He went to the tournament and won $4,000.

"And came home and slapped that check on the table. And I go, 'Dad, I won $4,000 playing a video game. What's this world coming to?' " says Wendel, adding, "it was so insane."

At the 2004 World Cyber Games championships in San Francisco, the tournament prize money totaled more than $400,000.

The tournaments are often broadcast live over the Internet, complete with play-by-play commentary.

It has the look and feel of a sporting event and to Johnathan Wendel, that's exactly what it is.

"It's all about hand-eye coordination, reflexes, timing, strategy, being quick on your feet, being able to think fast," Wendel says. "You have got to be doing everything."

He may spend eight to 12 hours a day in front of a video screen, but don't mistake him for a geek.

Like most of the top video game professionals, he is an excellent athlete, and was a star on his high school tennis team.

"I work out a lot -- you know being physically fit and making sure your brain is working properly and making sure that you're in sync and ready to go," says Wendel.

He calls that "mental-fitness" and he believes it makes him think faster.

Wendel spends hours each day trying to kill people in the virtual gaming world. Does he think that is a good thing?

"Well, I don't think it's a bad thing," he says. "I mean you're trying to get the point. Like, I mean, football. Why are you hitting the guy? That's not right. But people will pass it, because that's part of the game."

"I consider him an athlete because shooting is an Olympic sport, right? That's moving your fingers as well," says Edward Castronova, a professor at Indiana University who studies and teaches the economics and sociology of video games.

"The average age of a video gamer is now 30. And you're getting to a point where the number of people who could pay money and spend time to watch is getting big enough to support a professional sport," says Castronova.

Parents all over the country watch their children play video games and Kroft notes he doesn't think it's that exciting.

"Well, baseball's not exciting to somebody from France, either. It's the kind of thing you have to know what's going on inside the game to really appreciate why getting onto that platform and getting that power up at the moment was just an awesome move that nobody's ever able to do. It's a skill that 30 years from now a lot of people will understand," says Castronova.

They already understand it in South Korea. A video game tournament in the country's second largest city drew a crowd of 100,000 people last year, and regular matches draw big ratings on national television. The top Korean players make hundreds of thousands of dollars, date movie stars, and need bodyguards to protect them from their overenthusiastic fans.

And a lot of people are betting that it's only a matter of time before the same thing happens in the U.S., and that pro video gaming will eventually take off, like skateboarding and extreme sports did a decade ago. Because of the Internet, players from all over the world can meet and compete, and it's all happening in real time.