FORT MYERS, Fla. (WBBH) — At the 8-Bit Hall of Fame in Bonita Springs, you can see just how far video games have come over the past 50 years.
“I see it as history,” store owner Jason Crosser said. “I used to teach history, and now I’m in the history of gaming.”
Crosser buys and sells games from all eras: The original greats of the 70s, to the very newest games.
“Every year it’s busier and busier,” Crosser said. “It’s a multi-billion dollar industry now. It’s getting crazy.”
‘Crazy’ hardly describes it. In 2012, the U.S. video game industry was worth $31.2 billion. Today, it’s more than double that — nearly $65.5 billion.
And buying and selling games like Crosser isn’t the only way to be part of it.
PROFESSIONAL GAMER: ‘DO WHAT I LOVE AS A JOB’
At one point, making money by playing video games sounded like a Super Mario-sized pipe dream. Not anymore.
Sam Salyers, who grew up on Fort Myers Beach, has been playing video games professionally for 3 years now.
“It’s still hard to really put into words,” Salyers said in a Zoom interview. “I kind of just get to live my life and do what I love as a job.”
Salyers – known by his gamer tag “Gradient” – was drafted into the NBA 2K League by the Warriors Gaming Squad, which is affiliated with the actual NBA team.
For part of the year, he lives in San Francisco. The team pays for his living expenses, his travel, and a $35,000 salary for the 6-month-long season. And that doesn’t include the pot of more than $1 million in prize money that players can win each year.
Salyers said the job has given him the opportunity to travel across the country.
“It’s like we’re real NBA players,” he said. “They have the hotels set up with drivers, shuttle buses, and you have spots in the hotel sectioned off for you. It’s really insane.”
Of course, you have to be really good to turn pro like Salyers. He and his teammates practice for several hours each day.
“[Even] before I made the league, yeah, I was playing crazy hours,” Salyers explained. “I would stay up until 1, 2 a.m. to finish these series and these tournaments I was in. And set my alarm for 6:30 the next day to wake up for high school.”
“I really enjoy playing live on the stage against other people, competing and winning,” he added.
GOING TO COLLEGE TO CREATE VIDEO GAMES
At Florida Gulf Coast University, students can now take courses that literally teach them how to make video games.
“This is exactly what I’ve been wanting to do for years now,” Skyanna Billman, a student at FGCU, said while showing a game she created.
“I realized that game design was the answer to all of those passions that I have,” she added.
The courses are part of the university’s new Digital Media Design program, which has exploded in popularity in just two years.
“We had 75 students when we started, and we’ve got 263 now,” Professor Mike Salmond explained. “It’s absolutely phenomenal.”
Salmond said they have former students who’ve gotten jobs all over the country. He believes the video game industry is only going to get bigger.
“It can’t do anything else but grow, really,” Salmond said. “The more people there are, the more people want to play games. And you have to kind of feed that need.”
