Want A Degree In Playing Video Games? Tokyo School Of Anime Offers Vocations For Pro-Gaming
As the years go by, video games have evolved from a niche endeavor to a lucrative business. Just last year in 2014, the industry made over $12 billion in revenue. With such numbers, it only makes sense certain industries would invest in it. The Inquisitr has kept up with the most important news pertaining to video game industry expansion to other markets for mutual benefit. For example, prior to Xbox One’s launch, Microsoft tried to stand out from competition by emphasizing fitness with companies like Beachbody. In Japan, video games and anime often collaborate, and the latest cross-over will be an arcade adaption of Attack on Titan by Capcom.
Now, the latest industry news reports that Tokyo School of Anime will offer vocational degrees for pro-gaming. That’s right! Gamers can now attend classes to learn how to play video games professionally. Upon graduation, they might be able to hang with e-Sports greats like Justin Wong, who won Marvel vs. Capcom 2 six times at Evolution (EVO) Championship Series, or Daigo Umehara, famous in the e-Sports community for this gem back in EVO 2004.
According to 4Gamer which was translated through Kotaku, Tokyo School of Anime, a vocational institution which initially concentrated on professions endeavored towards the anime industry and voice acting, created their first e-Sports curriculum. It is divided up into four majors: pro-gaming, e-Sports business and promotion, e-Sports commentating, and behind-the-scenes e-Sports events setup. Even the classes for the four majors are specified to assist students in their pursued field-of-study. For example, in gaming classes for pro-gaming, students learn how to do five clicks per second and 180 degree spins on a mouse. Another example in pro-gaming is studying strategies for fighting games, first-person shooters (FPS), real time strategy (RTS) games, and other important techniques.
This may seem ridiculous to a lot of people, especially since video games are usually played for leisure (even among the hardcore gaming demographic), but there is good money to be made in pro-gaming. According to Event Hubs, just for EVO 2014, Oliver Hay, the winner for Ultra Street Fighter IV, earned $17,154. Keiji Okamoto, who won BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma, earned $18,048. Even Justin Wong earned $6,084 by winning Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
In conclusion, the Tokyo School of Anime may be onto something with their pro-gaming vocational degrees. With video games becoming exponentially more popular with each year, it’s a profitable investment. Now that you’ve read about a school that offers technical degrees for pro-gaming, what are your views? For those of you who identify yourselves as gamers, would you pursue such a degree?
[Image via Tokyo School of Anime]
