Victor M. De Leon III tiene 9 años. Hace cinco que ha sido un jugador profesional de videojuegos.
The New York Times tiene un perfil en el diario de hoy.
7.6.07
Victor M. De Leon III: jugador profesional de videojuegos (tiene 9 años)
Suscribirse a:
Comentarios de la entrada (Atom)
1 comentario:
June 7, 2007
He’s 9 Years Old and a Video-Game Circuit Star
By BRUCE LAMBERT
HOLBROOK, N.Y., June 5 — Victor M. De Leon III has been playing video games on the professional circuit for five years now, racking up thousands of dollars in prizes and endorsements at tournaments around the country. He has a national corporate sponsor, a publicist and a Web site, with 531 photos chronicling his career. A documentary filmmaker has been following him for months.
Victor weighs 56 pounds and likes to watch SpongeBob SquarePants at his home here on Long Island. He celebrated his 9th birthday last month with a trip to a carnival and a vanilla cake. He gets above-average marks in the third grade, where he recently drew a dragon for art class.
The appropriately named Victor — better known to cyber rivals and fans as Lil’ Poison — is thought to be the world’s youngest professional gamer; Guinness has called about listing him in its book of World Records. Starting on Friday, he is set to be among 2,500 competitors in the three-day Major League Gaming Pro Circuit Event at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, battling for titles like the titan on the Xbox game Halo 2 and prizes up to $20,000.
Asked what he thinks about the fuss over his virtual exploits, Victor shrugged with shy indifference. Pressed, he mumbled: “I don’t know. I didn’t think about it.”
What was it like to be featured by “60 Minutes” as one of “the seven most amazing youngsters”? Victor’s only reaction was that he “looked small” on television because he had grown a bit during the lag between the taping and the broadcast.
Victor’s aptitude for video games surfaced at age 2, as he begin mimicking his father’s play. Mr. De Leon, 31, who markets and sells warehouse equipment, was an early adopter himself, having started at 8 with such quaint games as Pac-Man.
But Halo is a violent, shoot-’em-up game, the type that has stirred much debate about effects on youngsters since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, where the killers were frequent players of the computer game Doom.
Many researchers caution that excessive gaming displaces exercise, socializing and creative play, and that video games like Halo can promote aggressive feelings and actions. “It’s not enough,” said Joanne Cantor, a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, for “a parent to just tell a child that the video violence is not real.”
Anna Akerman, a developmental psychologist at Adelphi University on Long Island who specializes in media and children, said that it was not that simple to disentangle cause and effect, and that some violent people might be drawn to gory games because they are already predisposed to violence.
To critics who suggest that he is ruining Victor’s childhood, Mr. De Leon shrugs like his son, and notes that when not training for a specific competition, his Xbox time averages about two hours a day. Away from the screen, he said, Victor is a typical third grader who likes to bike and swim and plays the violin.
“If they don’t live here, they don’t know what we do,” Mr. De Leon said at his home here. “I’m not overdoing it, and he’s not overdoing it.”
Although Mr. De Leon helps manage his son’s career and accompanies him to contests around the nation, he insisted he is not the digital version of the archetypal stage mother. Victor’s mother, Maribel De Leon, runs a day care center and shares custody with his father.
Before Victor enters a competition, his father said he always asks, “Do you want to do it?”
Mr. De Leon said he never pushed his son to play video games in the first place, but welcomed his interest. Mr. De Leon’s brother Gabriel, a Halo aficionado known online as Poison, also served as a mentor.
“He copied me, and he was real good,” the father recalled. “He liked to help me finish games and found glitches, which is pretty hard to do.”
Soon Victor bested his father. “He kind of passed me when he was 4,” Mr. De Leon said. “I just couldn’t keep up with him. I became sort of a coach, but every time I told him something, he’d say, ‘I know, Daddy.’”
That year, Victor joined a team with his father and two uncles at a New York Halo contest, winning fourth place. At age 5, he entered the Major League Games and ranked in its top 64 players internationally. By the time he was 7, Victor competed in Chicago against more than 550 contestants, placing second — behind Uncle Gabriel.
Besides prizes and product endorsements, Victor has a deal worth about $20,000 annually, plus expenses for trips to tournaments, from his sponsor, 1UP Network, a division of Ziff Davis Game Group, owners of gamer magazines and Web sites. Mr. De Leon declined to specify how much his son has accumulated, but said that it was almost enough to cover a private college education.
Matthew S. Bromberg, chief executive officer of Major League Gaming, one of several groups that sponsor competitions, said Victor had been a “phenomenon” for some time. But while Victor earns money for playing, he is not yet a full-fledged pro by the league’s strict definition, since he would have to rank higher — and be at least 15 years old.
Victor plays video games in the corner of the basement of his home. Dwarfed by a 60-inch video monitor, he settled into a big chair on Tuesday evening, barefoot and wearing a black jersey with Lil’ Poison emblazoned across the back. His gaze locked on the screen, his tiny thumbs jabbed away at the controller, causing virtual mayhem of gunfire, explosions, blood splatters and cyber corpses in the outer-space battle.
Mr. De Leon said he took care to use parental controls to block excessive gore and offensive language. “Our family, we’re very old fashioned,” he added, noting that they belong to the Baptist Church, “and there’s no cursing.”
The father said he also counseled Victor about what is real versus pretend. “You can’t jump off a building and come back to life, or reach out and stop a truck,” Mr. De Leon gave as examples.
Victor reaps some extras from his gaming career, like a side trip to Disneyland during a competition in Los Angeles, and a visit to a rodeo while in Texas — his favorite excursion.
Victor said he has no plans about what to do when he grows up. For now, he seems preoccupied with Star Wars toys, fried chicken, jujitsu, guitar music, basketball, his hamster and his dog, Rocky.
“I like to ride my bike every day,” he said. Asked if he ever gets bored with video games, he said, “Sometimes, yeah.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/nyregion/07gamer.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
Publicar un comentario