On Reflection: America’s New Pastime

Since the early days of pinball, arcade gamers have been competing for top spots on the high score charts. In the 1990s, the internet changed competitive gaming entirely, allowing people to play their favorite games against each other in teams. Since then, competitive gaming has created hundreds of cash-prize competitions.

Bellevue-based Valve Corporation put Seattle on the world gaming map this year as it took the value of championship prize packages to an astonishing new level. Some 40,000 people bought tickets for The International minutes after they were made available, then gathered at KeyArena from July 18 through July 21 to watch on a 30-foot-high screen as 16 teams from around the world battled for supremacy in Valves online game Defense of the Ancients 2, or Dota 2, for a total prize purse of $10.9 million. Team NewBee, an all-star cast of Chinese players, took home the grand prize of $5 million, defeating another Chinese team, ViCi Gaming. Most of the purse came from sales of the Compendium, a virtual playbook that sold for $10, with $2.50 of that going into the prize pool. Valve contributed $1.6 million of the total.

Valve, one of the most successful of the some 300 video game companies based in the Seattle area, hosted the tournament. It debuted Defense of the Ancients 2 in 2009, following on the success of its 2003 precursor. Valve held the first tournament for the game in Cologne, Germany, in 2011, when 16 international teams competed to share a purse of $1.6 million. Seattle hosted the tournament at Benaroya Hall in 2012 and 2013 total purses: $1.6 million and $2.8 million, respectively but the venue was changed to KeyArena this year to accommodate the exploding interest in Dota 2.

Initially, the price for a three-day pass to the International was $49.99, but resellers were charging anywhere from $199 for regular floor seating to $499 for VIP seats. The average daily attendance of the tournament was estimated at 10,000, and online viewership soared to 20 million. The tournament even earned coverage on ESPN3, complete with play-by-play announcers and commentators.

In bringing the competition back to Seattle, Valve helped boost the citys reputation as a breeding ground for software and technology, and also as a center for a eSports. Among young people especially, eSports could quickly trump the likes of baseball, boxing and horse racing. The $10.9 million purse of this years Dota2 surpassed those of the Super Bowl, the Masters Tournament and the Kentucky Derby (see StatShot, below).

If you need even more proof that Seattle and video gaming are becoming an item, Amazon.com in August agreed to pay nearly $1 billion for Twitch Interactive, a San Francisco-based site that lets gamers stream video of their gaming activites.