High-stakes video-game tournaments may be all the rage, but the real fights occur behind the scenes, where companies spend millions trying to get their technology directly into the hands of gamers.
The $10 billion game industry continues to grow, fueled in large measure by new hardware sales. That expansion has created fierce competition among technology companies looking for new ways to market the latest high-powered graphics cards and processors.
Those battles are played out long before the tournaments begin, when companies offer to put up money for prizes, donate hardware and even sponsor individual gamers in exchange for exclusive promotion at these events.
"Gamers are the most loyal customers," said Hits Naik, Intel's European marketing manager. "They see the performance benefits of what we do. They are hungry for power, and they are the people who buy our products long before anyone else."
Hardly a weekend goes by these days without a major tournament occurring somewhere in the world. This August, thousands of gamers have been making the rounds. The Cyberathlete Professional League's Pentium 4 Summer 2003 Championship drew 3,000 people. The Nvidia Championships at QuakeCon 2003 had 5,500 gamers. Later this month, Los Angeles will host the U.S. regional finals for the World Cyber Games.
The tournament phenomenon grew out of games like Counter-Strike, Quake and Unreal Tournament, all first-person shooters in which players hunt each other down for points.
The first-person genre has exploded as players continually seek competition over the Internet. However, the real fun in those games came when players began hauling their computers around the country, connecting them and fighting it out in person.
These LAN parties caught the attention of companies like Intel and Nvidia, which realized they could reach more gamers by offering prize money and hardware at regional tournaments. As the prize money got bigger, so did the audience.
The phenomenon continues to grow, with dozens of game leagues thriving around the world, but the battle for top billing at the premiere events is rough-and-tumble. Many of the largest tournaments hold closed bidding where companies put together finance packages without knowing what competitors are doing.
The closed bidding and increased competition has forced companies to pour more money into these tournaments or face losing coveted sponsorships.
Nvidia, which makes graphics processors, ponied up $125,000 for QuakeCon, $30,000 for the Cyberathlete Professional League's Unreal Tournament competition and $350,000 for the winners of the Make Something Unreal game-design competition.
Advanced Micro Devices spent more than $300,000 on this year's QuakeCon.
http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,60097,00.html
The $10 billion game industry continues to grow, fueled in large measure by new hardware sales. That expansion has created fierce competition among technology companies looking for new ways to market the latest high-powered graphics cards and processors.
Those battles are played out long before the tournaments begin, when companies offer to put up money for prizes, donate hardware and even sponsor individual gamers in exchange for exclusive promotion at these events.
"Gamers are the most loyal customers," said Hits Naik, Intel's European marketing manager. "They see the performance benefits of what we do. They are hungry for power, and they are the people who buy our products long before anyone else."
Hardly a weekend goes by these days without a major tournament occurring somewhere in the world. This August, thousands of gamers have been making the rounds. The Cyberathlete Professional League's Pentium 4 Summer 2003 Championship drew 3,000 people. The Nvidia Championships at QuakeCon 2003 had 5,500 gamers. Later this month, Los Angeles will host the U.S. regional finals for the World Cyber Games.
The tournament phenomenon grew out of games like Counter-Strike, Quake and Unreal Tournament, all first-person shooters in which players hunt each other down for points.
The first-person genre has exploded as players continually seek competition over the Internet. However, the real fun in those games came when players began hauling their computers around the country, connecting them and fighting it out in person.
These LAN parties caught the attention of companies like Intel and Nvidia, which realized they could reach more gamers by offering prize money and hardware at regional tournaments. As the prize money got bigger, so did the audience.
The phenomenon continues to grow, with dozens of game leagues thriving around the world, but the battle for top billing at the premiere events is rough-and-tumble. Many of the largest tournaments hold closed bidding where companies put together finance packages without knowing what competitors are doing.
The closed bidding and increased competition has forced companies to pour more money into these tournaments or face losing coveted sponsorships.
Nvidia, which makes graphics processors, ponied up $125,000 for QuakeCon, $30,000 for the Cyberathlete Professional League's Unreal Tournament competition and $350,000 for the winners of the Make Something Unreal game-design competition.
Advanced Micro Devices spent more than $300,000 on this year's QuakeCon.
http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,60097,00.html