Posts Tagged ‘education’

Pro Guitar Hero teen: winner or loser?

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

blake pheebs

Would you let your children drop out of public school to competitively play Video Games? If you have no children, would you expect your parents to support such a decision?

For those unfamiliar with the story of Blake Peebles, here is the short summary: 16 year old plays Guitar Hero, gets really good, wins prizes in various competitions, contemplates dropping out of High School for competitive gaming, his parents support his decision of his new found gaming career choice.

For those that play video games, this sounds like a beautiful Cinderella story, but is it all that it’s cracked out to be?

Competitive gaming is a growing trend by itself, and players can earn as much as $80,000 a year, but those are a few and are in need of rare granted sponsorships. For others, they can make an average of $25,000 a year with a lot of traveling, accomodations and daily needs eating into that salary.

We are not ignoring the actual problem of education…what about the children’s studies? Well, Blake’s parents did not give up on that, he is simply receiving home studies and actually improved his grades along with practice time alotted for gaming.

This particular poll received thousands of votes, along with many comments that varied from complete and utter support of Blake and his dream to disbelief and anger at such a “stupid” decision. It seems that people equal video games with stupidity. Is that so? That would have to be determined by another intriguing poll…next time.

guitar hero poll 2