By Jake Moore, Monica Irizarry and Tony Skrobo
The first games were primitive, two bars would jaggedly slide on the left and rides side of a screen controlled with a single joystick. Between them, a single ball would bounce between him. Whoever got past the other would gain a point.
Moving forward 40 years, the games industry brings in more revenue than the film industry, music industry, and the big four sports combined--a total of just under 140 billion dollars. Some of the biggest games today such as 2018’s the Quentin Tarantino inspired Red Dead Redemption 2 grossed more than Quentin Tarantino’s newest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
But gaming has also paved the way for a new type of athlete in the ever-growing field of eSports.
eSports is the product of competitive gaming which was highly popularized in the 1990s with LAN parties through first-person shooter games like Counter-Strike, GoldenEye 007 and Halo: Combat Evolved.
However, the elite eSport athletes now make six-figure contracts (in some cases higher), are provided with a place to live--typically in Los Angeles--and a personal misuse to prevent serious eSports injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome.
Live-streaming services such as Twitch and Mixer have launched eSports into the mainstream as the 2014 League of Legends final beat out game six of the 2015 NBA finals in viewership and that game featured NBA elites like LeBron James and Stephen Curry.
League of Legends is an extremely complex game that in many ways mirrors mainstream professional sports as there are numerous complex plays to memorize and each player is designated a hyper-specific role to ensure team success.
“When everyone is moving at the same time [in League of Legends],” Competitive League player and Gig City Games founder Joe Card says. “it is so synchronized with how everything moves where if one team is a second off they can loose. Timing is huge.”
But eSports continues to be on the rise as new gaming innovations unfold. The most recent trend is from “battle-royale” style games which places 100 players in a large map that slowly shrinks--the last person standing is the winner.
The most popular game of this style is Fortnite which has grossed nearly three billion dollars since it’s launch. Epic Games, the developers of Fortnite, recently held a tournament that featured a $30,000,000 prize pool. And who was the grand prize winner? A 16-year-old named Kyle Giersdorf.
The major sports leagues are also trying to get a piece of the eSports pie. Recently the NBA created the NBA2k league where each of the 30 NBA teams has an eSports squad complete with a draft and tournaments.
But just like mainstream sports, training is an essential part of the game and in 2016 Joe Card had the vision to create a location for people to practice and create a community of gamers in Chattanooga.
“It all started when Joe and I were 17.” Gig City Games manager Tyler Flippen says. “We would go to his house and all have our computers hooked up to the same network and played all these video games, it was kind of the inspiration for this place. We are trying to establish [eSports] here in Chattanooga. We have the best internet around so it was a no-brainer.”
Both Flippen and Card got to work constructing Gig City Games by hand-building dozens of computers of their clients to use.
“We started a couple of months before the whole Bitcoin thing happened, so our graphics cards were only like $270,” Card says. “but then they jumped up to around $550 so we had to wait four months for it to come back down.”
But shortly after Gig City Games was open and it seemed to fulfill a spot in Chattanooga that people were wanting. The system is simple, connected to a LAN Network called GG Leap players have the opportunity to play dozens of games for an affordable price on high-performance gaming computers ($3 an hour, $10 a day or a $30 monthly pass).
Immediately, Card and Flippen noticed communities beginning to form among gamers. People would come into the center and leave with a new friend or even a new teammate.
“Everyone here is very friendly, giving each other tips and practicing outside of tournaments,” Flippen says. “It’s a great community and people really love playing games together and it’s a great way to bond with the teamwork and everything. It has been an awesome experience working here in Chattanooga.”
Contrary to popular belief, the audience for this is not limited to just younger audiences males. Card has seen numerous older gamers and tons of women come into the shop to get in their fix.
Tournaments are a massive way to connect different types of gamers and expose new clients to Gig City Games. Most of the younger audience who frequents GCG came during their Fornite tournaments with a $50 prize for the winner. But Card also hosts tournaments for League of Legends, Infected, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the more underground world of competitive fighting games.
Card though has not stopped with just building Gig City Games from the ground up. He is also looking to give back to the community. Card has already worked with high schoolers to build their esports skils but now Gig City Games is looking to connect Siskin Children’s Institue for their own tournament.
Moving forward, Gig City Games looks more like moving to be a full organization. They already have established their own League of Legends team and are seeking funding through sponsorships from local businesses to become an official team that moves around the world competing in high-level tournaments.