Filed under: Culture , FPS "Playing PC games for money? That's crazy." That's certainly the mainstream viewpoint of the pro PC tournament industry but the documentary Frag offers up a look at the profession at is at times both fun and also extremely hardcore and serious. Friday at QuakeCon a special free showing of Frag was performed (the movie also came out on DVD on Friday). The filmmakers clearly wanted to showcase the darker side of becoming a professional gamer. After the movie goes through the brief period in the 1980s where gamers who played Pac Mac well could get a little money, it switches to the modern era where the idea of people competing with each other in the game took over thanks to id Software's Doom and later Quake.During the Q&A session after the Frag screening the filmmakers said they had 220 hours of footage they could use to make a 90 minute film. As a result, Frag sometimes feels it is just scratching the surface on its subject matter with serious issues like gamers falling out with their parents over their choice to pursue this career, dealing with sponsors and tournaments who have stringent rules and issues of taking drugs to continue to play well. One thing the documentary does well is use some different ways to present its ideas. It uses a fictional 1950's style school educational film to describe how the pro gaming industry works. It use 8-bit animation to describe the founding of id Software. The differ ...
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Filed under: Culture , FPS "Playing PC games for money? That's crazy." That's certainly the mainstream viewpoint of the pro PC tournament industry but the documentary Frag offers up a look at the profession at is at times both fun and also extremely hardcore and serious. Friday at QuakeCon a special free showing of Frag was performed (the movie also came out on DVD on Friday). The filmmakers clearly wanted to showcase the darker side of becoming a professional gamer. After the movie goes through the brief period in the 1980s where gamers who played Pac Mac well could get a little money, it switches to the modern era where the idea of people competing with each other in the game took over thanks to id Software's Doom and later Quake.During the Q&A session after the Frag screening the filmmakers said they had 220 hours of footage they could use to make a 90 minute film. As a result, Frag sometimes feels it is just scratching the surface on its subject matter with serious issues like gamers falling out with their parents over their choice to pursue this career, dealing with sponsors and tournaments who have stringent rules and issues of taking drugs to continue to play well. One thing the documentary does well is use some different ways to present its ideas. It uses a fictional 1950's style school educational film to describe how the pro gaming industry works. It use 8-bit animation to describe the founding of id Software. The differ ...