Tech Mile High Club – Gaming at 35,000 over Greenland as Top European Gamers take on the Top US Gamers

March 22nd, 2006 |

 
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WiFi on the plane. One word ‘awesome’. I’m sitting here at 35,o00 feet and I’m surrounded by the professional gamers from Europe. Intel and SAS have teamed up to provide WiFi on this flight to NY where the top European and American gamers face off in the first international gaming event of its kind – The Trans-Atlantic Showdown. Head to head challenge and the winning team will walk away with 100k in cash!

Gaming has exploded on to the mainstream stage where gamers are getting millions of dollars a year in gaming. One of them is Fata1ity (Fatality) who was featured on PodTech at the Sundance film festival.

Boeing put out a press release today talking up the fact that 50+ gamers (35 are pros) are gaming on the plane as they head to NY.

We believe this is a first, having online video game champions playing live while a mile-high above the earth,” said Connexion by Boeing Vice President of Marketing and Direct Sales, David Friedman. “As we approach our two-year anniversary of offering in-flight Internet access to passengers, we think this is a unique way to showcase that being online in a plane isn’t all about email and business productivity — it’s also about being enabled to pursue your passions in the air, in this case online video gaming.” – and Podcasts!

The Trans-Atlantic Showdown was organized by GGL – Global Gaming League. Europe has a commanding lead in terms of number of years of organized gaming. The Clanbase organization has over 1 million members along.

Now that we are seeing formal events organized by bon a fide sponsors (Intel) expect gaming matches to explode and the ranks of quality and number of Pros increase dramatically. Here is a photo of the group of gamers that I took in Copenhagen prior to flying to NY.

More photos will be up on Flickr later after I land in NY.

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Posted in: Blog, Gaming