60 years ago video games were a novelty.

60年前，電子遊戲還是個新鮮事物。

And even 20 years ago being good at video games would only win you bragging rights or concerned looks from your parents.

而即使在20年前，擅長電子遊戲也只能為你贏得炫耀的權利或父母關切的眼神。

Today it can earn you a scholarship, a sponsorship, and even a career in one of the world's fastest growing sports leagues.

今天，它可以為你贏得獎學金、贊助，甚至是世界上發展最快的體育聯盟之一的職業生涯。

eSports are exploding in popularity, growing by 30% every year, and are on track to have more online viewers than the NBA, the NHL, or the MLB in only two years.

電子競技的人氣呈爆炸式增長，每年以30%的速度增長，僅用兩年時間，電子競技的在線觀眾人數就有望超過NBA、NHL、MLB。

With $750 million invested in 2017 alone, the eSports industry is now worth $1.5 billion and it's expected to reach $2 billion by 2020, but who's all that money going to?

僅2017年就投入了7.5億美元，現在電子競技產業的價值已經達到了15億美元，預計到2020年將達到20億美元，但是這些錢都給了誰呢？

And do you have what it takes to be one of them?

而你是否具備成為其中一員的條件呢？

On October 19, 1972, Stanford University hosted the first gaming tournament at their artificial intelligence lab.

1972年10月19日，斯坦福大學在他們的人工智能實驗室舉辦了第一屆遊戲比賽。

The tournament was called the Intergalactic Space Wars Olympics.

此次比賽被稱為星際空間戰爭奧運會。

And it saw two dozen players duking it out to win a year's subscription to Rolling Stone magazine.

而它見證了二十幾位玩家為了贏得一年的《滾石》雜誌訂閱權而展開的對決。

Nearly 50 years later, the Dota 2 International sees 90 players from the 16 best teams in the world faced off for $25.5 million grand prize.

近50年後，《Dota 2》國際賽迎來了來自世界16支最佳戰隊的90名選手對決，爭奪2550萬美元的大獎。

And this time it's in a stadium full of fans with 66 million more watching at home.

而這次是在滿是球迷的體育場，還有6600萬球迷在主場觀看。

But unlike some other sports, the big leagues aren't always where the players making the big money are.

但與其他一些體育項目不同，大聯盟並不總是賺大錢的球員所在。

They're on platforms like Twitch, the live-streaming platform that lets fans watch and interact with their favorite gamers.

他們在Twitch這樣的平臺上，直播平臺讓粉絲觀看並與自己喜歡的遊戲玩家互動。

The easiest way that I think it is to get your head around how big eSports is right now is to kind of look at the numbers that Twitch streamers get.

我認為最簡單的方法就是讓你瞭解電子競技現在有多大的規模，算是看看Twitch流媒體人的數據。

They stream you know five to seven days a week.

他們流你知道五到七天一個星期。

You can have one streamer getting 60-100,000 viewers at a time, which is larger than a lot of regional TV stations get now.

你可以讓一個流媒體同時獲得6-10萬的觀眾，這比現在很多地區電視臺獲得的觀眾數量要大。

One former pro, Imaqtpie, now reportedly makes $2 million streaming himself online, where companies allegedly pay him up to $7000/hour to play their games.

據報道，一位前職業選手Imaqtpie，現在自己在網上流媒體賺了200萬美元，據稱公司付給他高達7000美元/小時的費用來玩他們的遊戲。

That's because for both streamers and pro teams, most of their income comes from sponsorships, which involves promoting and selling everything from eSports drinks and keyboards to very expensive gaming chairs.

因為對於流媒體人和職業戰隊來說，他們的大部分收入都來自於贊助，這涉及到推廣和銷售從電子競技飲料、鍵盤到非常昂貴的遊戲椅等各種東西。

And in eSports, those sponsorships work in one of two ways.

而在電子競技中，這些贊助有兩種方式。

The first is being a title sponsor, who starts, pays for, and owns a team.

首先是做冠名贊助商，由他發起、出錢、擁有一個團隊。

The other is what's called an agency team.

另一種是所謂的代理團隊。

These teams don't have a title sponsor but allow sponsors to pay for any sort of promotion they want, from putting logos on their jerseys to creating content to promote their product.

這些球隊沒有冠名贊助商，但允許贊助商支付任何形式的推廣費用，從在球衣上貼上標誌到創造內容推廣產品。

The smaller percentage of a team's revenue comes from winning tournaments, and in some cases, from selling merch.

一支球隊的收入中較小的比例來自於贏得比賽，在某些情況下，來自於銷售商品。

And eSports athletes make anywhere from $80,000-$300,000 a season to help their team do both of those things. And just like any other sport, these leagues have teams with captains and coaches.

而電子競技運動員一個賽季的收入從8萬-30萬美元不等，以幫助他們的隊伍完成這兩件事。而就像其他運動一樣，這些聯賽也有團隊，有隊長和教練。

Some teams even live together with personal trainers, personal chefs, and practice rooms where they spend 10 or more hours a day perfecting their game.

有些球隊甚至和私人教練、私人廚師住在一起，還有練習室，他們每天花10個小時甚至更多的時間來完善自己的比賽。

But becoming popular or good enough to make money in eSports isn't exactly easy.

但是，要想在電子競技中成為人氣或足夠好的選手，賺到錢並不容易。

To use League of Legends as an example, their season starts third week of January and the competitive season runs up until the end of November, so that's longer than any other traditional sports league and they're expected to be on that entire time.

以《英雄聯盟》為例，他們的賽季從1月的第三週開始，競技賽季一直持續到11月底，所以這比其他傳統體育聯賽的時間都要長，而且他們有望在這段時間內一直上場。

It's pretty grueling.

這是相當艱苦的。

Of course, not everyone's born to be a pro, and sometimes even practicing for 12 hours a day like the pros do isn't enough to win.

當然，並不是每個人天生就能成為職業選手，有時候即使像職業選手那樣每天練習12個小時，也不足以贏得比賽。

That's why there's an emerging industry where you can pay to get personal coaching from some of the best in the game. There's always the option to become a sportscaster or analyst, who earn thousands of dollars a day to work at major tournaments, but one of the best bets is to become a game developer.

這就是為什麼有一個新興的行業，你可以付費從一些最好的遊戲中獲得個人教練。總有一個選擇是成為一名體育播報員或分析師，他們每天賺取數千美元在重大賽事中工作，但最好的賭注之一是成為一名遊戲開發者。

The makers of pro-level games make an incredible amount of money.

職業級遊戲的製作者們賺的錢非常多。

Blizzard, the developers of Overwatch and StarCraft, make over $7 billion a year.

暴雪，《守望先鋒》和《星際爭霸》的開發者，一年賺了70多億美元。

While the developers of the free game League of Legends bring in $1.6 billion a year on in-game purchases that let players unlock new and custom characters.

而免費遊戲《英雄聯盟》的開發商每年在遊戲內購買上帶來16億美元的收入，讓玩家解鎖新的和定製的角色。

But whatever your path into eSports, getting from the basement to the big stage takes an incredible amount of hard work.

但無論你的電子競技之路是怎樣的，從地下室到大舞臺都需要付出不可思議的努力。

And becoming a champion is much much harder than it was back in 72.

而成為冠軍，比72年的時候要難得多。

I mean I think the gaming space as a whole is growing, and I think competitive gaming is only going to continue to grow just because it's so accessible to everybody.

我的意思是，我認為遊戲領域作為一個整體正在增長，我認為競技遊戲只會繼續增長，只是因為它對每個人來說都是如此方便。

Anybody that wants to play can really do it.

只要是想玩的人，都可以真正做到。

The most popular games in the world right now have very low technology requirements.

現在世界上最流行的遊戲對技術的要求都很低。

It's not an easy scene to get into, but if you really like it, a lot of the time that's really what it takes.

這不是一個容易進入的場景，但如果你真的喜歡，很多時候真的是需要這樣。

And while we may have predicted that video games would become this popular, who would have thought there'd be a billion dollars to be made in mashing buttons?

雖然我們可能已經預料到電子遊戲會變得如此流行，但誰能想到會有10億美元的收入來自於按鍵？