This post was updated at 11:30 p.m. PDT with a corrected photo credit. The photo of Alyson, aka Nin9ty Nin9, was taken by Stephen Couratier.
Mark Smith, the winner of the World Cyber Games Ultimate Gamer competition, which was aired as part of a reality TV show on Sci-Fi Channel, concentrates during the tournament. Smith outlasted 11 other contestants to win the $100,000 grand prize.
(Credit: Sci-Fi Channel)On Tuesday, after eight weekly episodes, video game enthusiasts--and others--saw a winner crowned in the Sci-Fi Channel's reality TV show, "World Cyber Games Ultimate Gamer."
Pitting 12 hard-core gamers--whom the public knew only by their first names and their "gamertags"--against each other in what could be called the video game version of "Big Brother," the show highlighted the difficulties of top-level gaming, as well as the social challenges of coming out on top in a hypercompetitive group.
So for Mark Smith, who came back from an epic deficit in the finals to win the show's $100,000 first prize, victory was both sweet and a confirmation of his ability to overcome even the longest odds. In his mind, at least, he was always a huge underdog to contestant Robert, the eventual runner-up, and the month the group spent filming--and living--together in Los Angeles last fall forced him to summon all his skills.
Ultimate Gamer winner Mark Smith.
(Credit: Sci-Fi Channel)While also a reality show in the traditional vein, "Ultimate Gamer" pitted the 12 contestants against each other in a wide range of games, including Halo 3, Rock Band 2, Virtua Fighter 5, and Dance, Dance Revolution: Universe 3. And winning meant being the best of the group, in the end, across the board.
Now, as the show's champion, Smith will take on the added role of representative of the World Cyber Games. That will see him traveling the world on behalf of the gaming league, including to the 2009 World Cyber Games championship in China.
Smith, 23, lives in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and, like any professional, devotes a great deal of time to his sport. Some may scoff at the notion that video gaming is a sport, but there are more and more leagues around the world these days offering players the spotlight--and big money.
On Wednesday, Smith sat down for an interview with CNET News to talk about what it took to win Ultimate Gamer, the fact that it should shock no one that some of the best gamers in the world are women, and how to prevail even when faced with the toughest odds.
Q: Why is "Applesauce" your gamertag?
Mark Smith: When I was around 13 or 14 I was really into punk rock and gamed as "SexPistol." But the older I got and the more gamers I met I decided to settle on a more family-friendly name. I don't know how Applesauce came up, but I knew it was right when I first picked it.
How many contestants were there in this competition?
Smith: To start off there were 12 of us in the house, with five girls in the mix of it. I was actually really surprised there were so many females, but then that quickly went away as soon as I saw Alyson and Ciji pick up Rock Band 2 for the first time. All of the girls there were really fantastically talented gamers and that really caught me off guard.
That's not so surprising anymore, though, is it? What with teams like the FragDolls and such?
Smith: Oh yeah. I already knew who Amy was, what with the PMS Clan being as huge as it is. But I always wrote those girl clans off as hokey and just as a good place for girls to play. But after living with some of these girls and seeing how well they can play, not anymore.
Alyson, aka Nin9ty Nin9, was one of five women to compete for the Ultimate Gamer title. She had previously won a competition to join the all-women video game team, the Frag Dolls.
(Credit: Stephen Couratier)
How did you win? what pushed you over the top?
Smith: I think it was just all my past experience that helped me keep a cool head even in the very end when I was down 0-4 against Robert in the finale. I know these guys have a lot of game time under their belts too, but I didn't have broadband until my senior year in high school. So, I lived for the next LAN party that was coming up or whatever tournament was in the area. It would be nearly impossible to put a number on all the events I paid to attend out of my own pocket just because I love it, but it would have to be well over 200 LAN parties since I was 14 years old. I'm 23 now.
What does it take to be a championship-level gamer?
Smith: The first thing it takes to be on the top is dedication. Your favorite players didn't get to where they are by not working hard. Plenty of practice and experience will help you get ready for when the "big show" comes around. Also, you have to show up to events and tournaments. You can be good online all day but when it comes to a face-to-face battle with everybody watching, most people don't have the nerves to perform. It's a totally different environment from playing in the comfort of your home. But it also makes your winning a thousand times more satisfying. And I'm really jealous of how many more opportunities young kids have today to compete. Local events were few and far between where I lived as a kid so I did a lot of traveling to find people to play with. Now I can just log onto okgamers.com and see four different events in Oklahoma on any given weekend.
You have to admit that for a lot of people, it would be funny that you would be jealous of "kids" when you're 23.
Smith: Yeah, that's true. But I grew up playing games like UT99', Tribes and Quake II and most people I meet through Halo 3 have never heard of such things. I think I'm just getting old in "gamer years."
Of the games that you had to play in this competition, what are you best at, and worst at?
Smith: I'd definitely have to say my worst game was Project Gotham Racing 4. I don't know what it is, but racing games just don't click for me. Also, the real-life challenge for Dance Dance Revolution was pretty devastating for me. There's a YouTube video to prove it. But my best game for the show was Halo 3. If you can't already tell, I am a PC gamer at the heart, and consoles aren't really where I do my best gaming.
What makes a good tournament game?
Smith: I really wish game developers would put more focus into adding "tournament modes" into their games and work a lot harder to make them spectator-friendly. Look at Halo 3. After two sequels, it still doesn't have a proper live-spectator mode and you can't even go into first-person view yet. On the tournament modes, if developers want their game to be the next nationally played competitive game, then they shouldn't leave it up to the communities to write mods or scripts to do it.
Smith squares off against a competitor during the Ultimate Gamer tournament.
(Credit: Sci-Fi Channel)
What it was like for you during the finals? What was on your mind?
Smith: Well, Robert was the favorite from the start, and even more so when it was just us two left. But I've never been one to count myself out of anything, especially one-on-one in almost any game. So in my head, I tried to treat it as just any other tournament because the more I built it up and the more I thought about how much was at stake, the less confident I felt. From the beginning, I knew anything could happen but my chances of getting slaughtered were pretty good because everyone idolized Rob. All that changed after I took down Shawn White's Snowboard for the first game. It was like, "Wait a minute, Rob is human. I might just win this." After that it was game on. Also, in the finale, the last game was Soul Calibur 4. The first to five points wins the whole show. Rob went up 4-0 on me. I had to give myself a little pep talk in my head, something along the lines of "Mark, did you seriously come this far to get shut out in one of your favorite games? Man up and start playing like you know what the heck you're doing."
It must have been hard to concentrate with $100,000 on the line.
Smith: That wasn't the hard part! The hard part was concentrating with my girlfriend two feet away making faces like someone was pulling off her toenails. I looked over once for some support and saw that it looked like she needed a lot more than I did.
Since this was a reality show and was going to be seen by lots of people on TV, how was it different than other tournaments you'd been in?
Smith: This was definitely a way more competitive tournament. There is the whole "meta-game" going on 24/7, as Geoff called it. The game within the game. Chelsea is a perfect example. She did a great job staying in everyone's favor and never having to see an elimination until the gauntlet. There were people throwing matches, and people scheming to take others out of the game, There was a lot more in motion all around you than just the Xbox. Lots of us have been to multiple-day tournaments, but our actions outside of the screen never helped govern what position we finished in.
What was the hardest part of this whole process for you?
Smith: The most difficult thing has been keeping my mouth shut this entire time. We finished filming a few days before Christmas, So I've been sitting on this win for a long time. Especially when even my friends on my own CSS team said, "You probably didn't win."
Now that you've won (and everyone knows) what's next for you? How do you follow up something like this?
Smith: It will be tough to beat winning $100,000 and becoming a World Cyber Gaming rep. But I think all of us are going to attend as many events as we can over the next few years. The goal is always to win, but getting out there and helping e-sports grow is a huge priority. A few of us will be at the LINK Iron Man of Gaming tournament this July in Dallas. And the WCG is sending Rob and I to Mexico this summer for the Pan American championship. Then I'll be going to China this November. It's going to be a crazy couple years, but I'm just going to take it one first-place finish at a time.
What do you think is compelling about competitive gaming?
Smith: The best thing about competitive gaming is that it welcomes anybody regardless of how you're built, or any limitations you might have. I can't tell you how many three- or four-fingered gamers I know that still rip it up with the best of them, But can they throw a perfect spiral? Probably not. Also, most of us come from playing high school sports and believe it or not, gaming offers a lot of the same thrills.
Zeebo's got game.
Zeebo, a closely held company partially funded by Qualcomm, unveiled its 3G wireless video game console on Monday, with plans to begin shipping the device to the Brazilian market next month.
(Credit:
Zeebo Inc.)
With its device priced at $199 for the Brazilian market and plans to offer it for as low as $149 once it starts shipping in volume internationally next year, Zeebo is seeking to attract users in emerging markets.
The consoles will also come with four games preloaded and the ability to download a fifth game title for free. Zeebo noted the games will be designed for the local markets with relevant content to the country.
Game publishers, such as Electronic Arts and Capcom, are porting various console to high-end mobile titles to the Zeebo platform.
Eventually, Zeebo is aiming for users in markets where Internet access is limited or slow to connect their PCs and Netbooks to its ZeeboNet Wireless Network. The network uses 3G broadband wireless cellular service.
If you're the kind of video game player who likes to spend hours in shooters like Call of Duty or Halo and you want to instantly pick up some serious street cred, what better Xbox Live gamertag than "Hitman" could you get?
To date, of course, the best you could do would be something like "Hitman238" or "xxHitman42." That's because "Hitman" itself was snagged back in the summer of 2002, during the beta phase of Xbox Live, by a then 16-year-old named Chris Graziano.
But now, Graziano, 22 and a student at SUNY New Paltz, has decided to sell Hitman, and has put it up for auction on eBay. He is hoping someone out there will plunk down big bucks for the right to shoot their way through the most popular war games while sporting such an obviously old-school gamertag.
Longtime Xbox Live player Chris Graziano has put his gamer tag, "Hitman," up for sale on eBay. It may end up netting big bucks as a desirable moniker.
(Credit: Chris Graziano)"Don't bid on this item if you don't want to be the center of attention of every game lobby you're in," Graziano wrote on the eBay ad. "You'll regularly hear comments of 'You're the original Hitman?' and 'Wow, how did you get that gamertag?!'"
It's too early to tell how much money the Hitman name might bring in the end, as the auction doesn't end until February 19 and as of this writing, the high bid is $49.99. But Graziano said he was inspired to sell the account by another auction he'd seen not too long ago in which a player sold a gamertag with a very high gamerscore--the measure of how many achievements someone has earned in Xbox Live--for thousands of dollars.
... Read moreThe number of iPhone users downloading mobile games to their devices jumped 14 percent in November, putting them in the lead of all mobile-phone game downloaders in the U.S. that month, according to a ComScore report released Friday.
The figures, based on a year-over-year comparison of three-month averages, showed that game downloads in November rose 17 percent overall to 8.5 million.
(Credit:
ComScore)
Although mobile subscribers users are increasingly putting their phones to work to download games, only 3.8 percent of all U.S. mobile phone users took the time to download a game in November, according to ComScore.
However, a significantly higher percentage of all iPhone users, 32.4 percent, downloaded a game that month, according to the report.
Mark Donovan, a ComScore senior analyst, said in a statement:
The rapid growth in smartphone adoption in the United States has provided a boost for mobile gaming, as 34 percent of those downloading a game in November did so using a smartphone.
Last year, not one smartphone appeared in the top 10 devices used for mobile downloads. This year, six out of 10 are smartphones, excluding devices with smartphone-like functionality, such as the Instinct and Voyager, which also make appearances.
Updated 8:02 a.m. PST with more information about EA's decision to increase the size of its layoffs and with Friday's share price performance.
Game publishing giant Electronic Arts announced Friday that it is expanding the scope of its previously announced layoffs and will cut 10 percent of its workforce, as well as close nine studios and publishing operations and reduce its product lines.
The bulk of the now approximately 1,000 layoffs are expected to be completed by March 31, with the company hoping to save $120 million in annual costs.
In late October, EA had said it would be cutting 6 percent of its workforce, but it boosted that figure as its outlook for 2009 grew bleaker.
EA is also slimming down its product line, as it focuses on its more profitable hit games. That said, however, the company noted it will continue to invest in new games, as well as games for mobile devices and online play.
As part of the restructuring, EA also plans to close its Black Box Studio in Vancouver, British Columbia, and move the development teams and related game franchises to its studio in Burnaby, British Columbia. In total, the company plans to close or consolidate at least nine studio and publishing locations.
EA expects to take a restructuring charge of $55 million to $65 million over the next several quarters as a result of the layoffs and office closures.
The move by EA to trim its operations come as the game publisher finds its financial performance for 2009 will be challenged, as sales in Europe and the U.S. fall short of its earlier expectations.
When it lowered its 2009 expectations earlier this month, EA's chief executive John Riccitiello said in a statement:
While we saw significant improvement in the overall quality of our key products this year, we are disappointed that our holiday slate is not meeting our sales expectations. Given this performance and the uncertain economic environment, we are taking steps to reduce our cost structure and improve the profitability of our business.
EA rose more than 4 percent to $17.52 a share in Friday morning trading.
Electronic Arts on Tuesday warned its financial performance for fiscal 2009 will come up short from its earlier projections, due to slower sales in the U.S. and Europe.
The game maker had previously projected net revenue of $4.9 billion to $5.15 billion and earnings ranging from a net loss of 21 cents a share to net income of 7 cents a share for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009. EA did not provide an updated outlook, other than to note one would be provided when it reports its third-quarter results in February.
"While we saw significant improvement in the overall quality of our key products this year, we are disappointed that our holiday slate is not meeting our sales expectations," John Riccitiello, EA chief executive, said in a statement. "Given this performance and the uncertain economic environment, we are taking steps to reduce our cost structure and improve the profitability of our business."
EA plans to launch several cost-cutting measures, from layoffs to facility closures to reducing its product lines, the company said.
That said, however, EA plans to continue investing in the quality of its games, new properties, and its direct-to-consumer initiatives. The company will debut several new titles and online games in 2010.
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