Last night, a US teenager who goes by the name Bugha – real name Kyle Giersdorf – became the Fortnite World Cup Champion. The 16-year-old beat 99 other players in the brightly coloured Battle Royale game, fighting his way to a $3m victory.
The competition began months ago. A total of 40 million people attempted to qualify for the World Cup, the first esports event of its kind for the mega-hit Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular video games. The 100 who made their way to New York this weekend represented 30 different countries.
Bugha pulled ahead in the very first round, racking up nine eliminations and surviving all the other players.
Though his performances in future rounds were less attention-grabbing, his consistency meant that he stayed in first place throughout. He ended up with almost double the score of the second-place competitor
The American competitor's family was in the stadium to watch and congratulate him. So, too, were approximately 16,000 other attendees, with millions more tuning in online.
Many viewers of the Fortnite World Cup had favourite players that they supported throughout the tournament. The most popular competitor at the World Cup was likely Turner Ellis Tenney, better known as Tfue, who regularly broadcasts his matches to a dedicated community. Playing Fortnite is already his career, both as a competitive player in tournaments and as a streamer on Twitch, entertaining his fans on a daily basis.
But many of the 100 competitors were ordinary teenagers, who practise on their home computers or consoles.
Sixteen-year-old Bugha represents the average age of a competitor, while others, including fifth-place finalist Thiago “King” Lapp from Argentina, were as young as 13. They were competing for a slice of the World Cup’s $30m prize pool, currently the biggest in esports history – and the same amount awarded to teams in the recent women’s football World Cup.
One 15-year-old British player, Jaden Ashman, took home over $1.3m by placing second with his partner in the duos version of the competition on Saturday. He told the BBC "I will probably save half of it and put quite a lot of it into a house and my family”.
His mother admitted that she had been “quite against his gaming”. But with Ashman, King, Bugha, and others taking home life-changing amounts of money, and every competitor in the final 100 earning at least $50,000, it’s clear that professional gaming can be an incredibly lucrative career for those few who are lucky, talented, and hardworking enough to make it.
From The Guardian (edited)
