This Far Side comic from 1990 made a joke prediction about people being paid to play video games in 2005...they were right!!

[Estil | 1,297]

This is the 10/15/1990 comic panel for The Far Side.  Now obviously they intended this as some sort of joke...but little did they realize how right they were!  2005 might have been a bit early though, maybe?

Edited October 13, 2020 by Estil

[ifightdragons | 234]

Hahaha, this is pure gold!

[RH | 5,429]

In the age of YouTube, good gamers can get a "free house" (as in move into a mega-mansion in Beverly Hills with your buddies) and many of them do, in fact, drive Ferrari's and "Lambo's". 

Poor Mr. Larson.  He was trying to be satirical but here we are.  What next? Will we be eating our babies?

Edited October 13, 2020 by RH

[Estil | 1,297]

24 minutes ago, RH said:

In the age of YouTube, good gamers can get a "free house" (as in move into a mega-mansion in Beverly Hills with your buddies) and many of them do, in fact, drive Ferrari's and "Lambo's". 

Poor Mr. Larson.  He was trying to be satirical but here we are.  What next? Will we be eating our babies?

That's why I said 2005 may be a bit early...because that was the year YT got started:

And bonus fun fact; this in 1992 was the first ever picture put on the Internet (I wonder if any of the quartet even know about their unique forever immortality in the history of the Internet?)

And a few other Internet firsts...

https://www.thrillist.com/tech/nation/the-first-things-ever-posted-on-the-internet-the-earliest-email-song-and-photo-upload-ever

[Estil | 1,297]

30 minutes ago, RH said:

Poor Mr. Larson.  He was trying to be satirical but here we are.  What next? Will we be eating our babies?

Well there's eating the placenta that comes out with the baby...does that count?

[jonebone | 1,336]

Touche, I do remember that exact Far Side cartoon and always thought it was funny.

[Tulpa | 3,771]

3 hours ago, Estil said:

2005 might have been a bit early though, maybe?

Depends on how you define it. If you mean paid on the regular, like a steady paycheck, it probably came about when streaming was monitized, and that's fairly recent.

But people have been competing in tournaments and getting prize money and endorsements since the early arcade days. Atari 2600 in 1982 had two contests (SwordQuest by Atari, Destination Atlantis by Imagic) that had prizes that totaled around $10,000 (about $26,000 today.) The NWC in 1990 had, among other things, a grand prize of a $10,000 savings bond (worth $20,000 in 2020) and a car. Granted it was a Geo Metro, but it was the bare minimum of a car. In fact, the NWC might have inspired the comic. The timing certainly lines up (NWC finals were in December of 1990, but the tournament started in March of that year. Possible he heard/read about it between March and sometime in the fall when he probably created the comic.)

And there were lots of fighting game tournaments prior to 2005, and quite a few in Japan well before that.

Edited October 13, 2020 by Tulpa

[RH | 5,429]

1 hour ago, Estil said:

Well there's eating the placenta that comes out with the baby...does that count?

You know, I considered that, but no.  It doesn't fit the intent of the source material.