Play games, win a million
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The TEN online gaming service is dangling more than a million bucks in front of gamers as inducement to take its just-announced Professional Gamers League seriously.
The league's first season will launch early next month and consists of a month-long qualification period that will collect the top 128 players in each of two divisions - action and strategy.
After the top 128 players are identified, a six-week competitive season will commence. At the end of competition, the top eight players in each league will duke it out at a gaming or entertainment site yet to be determined.
Quake will be the action title. Command & Conquer: Red Alert will be the strategy title.
The PGA, er, PGL will dole out $120,000 in cash during the first season. "That's what we've got in the bank ready to go.... I'd be surprised if the [level of cash prizes] was not significantly higher than that in six months," TEN's Garth Chouteau said today.
TEN has already lined up Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), 3COM, U.S. Robotics, GTE Internetworking, Logitech, and Rendition as sponsors - and it says it is talking to Frito-Lay, American Airlines, and Pepsi-Cola as well. Just when those blue-chip advertisers will be ready to jump on the sponsorship bandwagon is another story.
Of course, you must be a TEN subscriber to participate, and the beast is designed to drive new subscribers in TEN's direction. But Chouteau says the league is really about identifying TEN as the host with the most. "We are the only ones in the [technical] position to oversee and host a competition like this."
TEN will post demos of the best matches - on its site and possibly AMD's site as well - and hopes to deliver streaming audio and video to armchair gamers sometime during the first season. Initially, expect daily reports to appear in TEN's chat areas.
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