"Do you think that my being faster, stronger has anything to do with my muscles in this place?" - Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix

Computer gaming exists somewhere between gladiators and The Matrix. Though the arenas of the Roman Circus Maximus no longer host duels to the death, technology that lets people completely escape into an alternate cybernetic reality doesn't yet exist. And in spite of progress, society has not been able to escape from the problem of violence. In particular, game violence has become an important issue in recent years, because games typically portray extreme violence and reward aggressive behavior. However, many people forget that computer games are mainly about competition - beating the game and other players - and are not gratuitous carnage films. When gamers come together, either face-to-face or online, the competitive instinct emerges - and it's a powerful instinct. But getting good takes time, and serious practice requires dedication and discipline. The problem of time would be solved if you could just play every day, all day. But then how would you support yourself? You'd have to become a professional gamer.

Professional gaming is really just the result of the spectacular growth in computer gaming over the past five years or so. With more and more households owning computers, kids are picking up games just as easily as they once picked up basketballs or footballs, and it was perhaps inevitable that someone would eventually decide to try to take gaming in the direction of those other more traditional sports and pastimes.

In the beginning, there were two professional gaming leagues: the Professional Gamers' League and the Cyberathlete Professional League. Both were founded in the fall of 1997, and both had hopes for making competitive gaming a sustainable, commercial enterprise. In the subsequent years, the PGL has gone through a lot of turmoil, eventually suspending operations and only recently being sold to the gamer who had been its biggest star. The CPL, on the other hand, just successfully organized the world's first $100,000 computer-gaming tournament and shortly thereafter followed up with a tournament in Asia, making it the first professional gaming league to host tournaments on two continents. The CPL has proven that professional gaming is sustainable. What it is now trying to prove is exactly how far it can go. A lot of gamers would like to know the answer.