Today I’m focusing on the world of video games, more importantly competitive gaming. Recently gamers from around the world came to Las Vegas to compete in EVO 2012, the primer fighting game tournament in the world and every year it just gets bigger and bigger. One person that competed in this year’s tournament is Mike Ross, one of the top street fighter players in the world and he was the focus of a documentary in 2010 called FOCUS (directed by Steve Hwang).
This documentary looks at Ross’ journey through the fighting game scene, with him competing in various tournaments and his goals for the future. While Ross is very passionate about what he does he realizes that he might not be competing in these tournaments much long due to the fact that in some tournaments for all the practice and time you put into a particular fighting game, you don’t really get a return in the time that you actually invested in.
For example, in one tournament that he won, his prize total was only $73. The only way that you can make real money is competing in much bigger tournaments where the prize money range from $,1000 to $20,000 (Top prize in EVO). I like this documentary because it speaks to me as a gamer and the fact of the matter is that while I still play video games, my real life priorities (working on my film) have gotten in the way me playing video games on a daily basis and in all honesty that’s not a bad thing.
At first, I didn’t know how this documentary correlated with my film but it does. I have really grown up as a person and has a reached a point in my life that maybe 10 years ago I didn’t expect to reach when I was an everyday gamer, but I’m trying to find a balance where I’m still a gamer and have real world priorities. I feel that Mike Ross was dealing with that as well and maybe he has or is still trying to figure out to this day. Please check it out, it’s really awesome.
Justin
FOCUS: An Original Movie About Street Fighter Champion, Mike Ross – G4 Films
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