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- Young gamers can now add “e-sports athlete” and “digital content creator” to their picks for Career Day.
- The pirated games your kids are playing could end up costing you thousands.
- And, happily, video game violence appears to be on the decline, as, for the moment, is gaming itself. Impossible to believe?
Read on…
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According to the NY Times, “e-sports is now the fifth-most popular future job among South Korean students”. South Korea’s elite gamers draw big salaries and celebrity-level sponsorships, but South Korea’s universities offer no athletic scholarships for the pursuit, shrinking opportunities for committed young gamers working to go pro. Enter… the USA. In 2019, California-based company Gen.G launched The Gen.G Elite Esports Academy, to give serious gamers a pathway to an American high school diploma and a chance to apply for e-sport scholarships at American universities. Gen.G charges $25K a year, and works to help “more young gamers find jobs” — while also building a pretty solid talent pipeline for themselves.
NYT | June 19, 2021
You know the old adage: if something is too good to be true, it probably is… CNBC reports that “malware is being hidden in free versions of games like NBA 2K19, Grand Theft Auto V, Far Cry 5, The Sims 4 and Jurassic World Evolution”. Parents should be on the lookout for their kids acquiring games from these pirate sites — aside from being, you know, a little bit criminal, these bootleg programs may “quietly use the computer’s processing power to mine cryptocurrencies for… hackers”. It’s a multi million dollar enterprise, so if the pirates are paying you, have at it! However, if hackers are jamming your processing power and paying zero doge for the privilege, it may be time to start budgeting with your kid for the real stuff.
CNBC | June 25, 2021
The Financial Times reports that video games are becoming less violent. “A study of [last] month’s E3 trade event … found that 33 percent of the games shown at the event contained no violence, almost double the number identified in 2019.”
Financial Times | June 29, 2021
