Japan's new rising star

So now the time has come, and Japan now has someone they can look to and call a professional gamer. Gure is being given a chance to prove once and for all that Japan can hold its own in FPS gaming. I do not think anyone expects him to go out and win his first international event. However if he can place in the top 15-20, I think it is a huge step forward for gaming in Japan. Let's take a look at what this does for one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world and the milestones he has set in Japan.

This is the first time in Japans professional gaming history that a player from their country has been signed to an international team, and given the chance to compete around the world. What Gure does over the next 12 months will shape the way Japan looks at professional gaming. He is the talk of all Japanese gaming sites. The eyes of a nation screaming for a chance are all on him. If he succeeds this year and has some solid placings, with the amount of talent in the field this year, it will be nothing less then spectacular.

Lets take a closer look at what Japan needs to do to boost their professional gaming scene and how they can take advantage of this huge opportunity to do just that.

Gaming in Japan is widely accepted and entire families partake in gaming all over Japan. Pachinko is on every corner(a game kind of like slot machines in America), and arcades are still very successful in Japan. So, how can Japan become a force in the professional gaming community? I've said it all along, all that Japan needs is a face. A face to show people and an icon to look up to. They now have that. Gure, a player who is hands down the most dominate player in Japan when it comes to Quake 4 has been signed to an international team (Excello), and given the chance most gamers dream of. Gure needs to take this opportunity to show the rest of the country what can be accomplished through gaming, and help push it into the spotlight. It started well when 4dn competed in their first CPL. Subsequently, the number of Counter-Strike players in Japan sky rocketed. Servers that used to have very few players now are full almost twenty-four hours a day. However, something that never unfolded was a solid tournament placing. They never showed that money can be made playing a video game. This is where the pressure falls on Gure if he wants to change the way Japanese people look at professional gaming.

If Gure has a successful 2006 season, expect in 2007 to see many more players coming out of the shadows to show what they got. He's been given a chance to advance e-sports in a country that before now was considered to be a "console nation." However, if he wants to be a pioneer of e-sports in Japan, he needs to take advantage this opportunity given to him and help push the advancement. This is a great opportunity to get his face out to the general public, a la Mr. Fatal1ty. He needs to use every minute of his 15 minutes in the spotlight he has been given, and turn this into a few hours. While saying he could individually propel Japan into a professional gaming frenzy is far fetched, but he has been given a lot of weight to at least get the sport out there to people who may or may not have heard of it. He has made a small but apparent ripple in the Japanese community already, and with a solid 2006 season he has the opportunity to mold professional gaming into something that Japan can be proud of.

With gaming being so widely accepted in Japan, this is a chance for them to see that there are other games out there besides RPG and consoles. However with great steps forward also comes one backwards, with the discontinuation of the 2006 World Tour, we await patiently to see what the WSVG offers before Japan is given their true chance to shine. Gure is the best chance Japan has had to date to make a significant impact on the Professional gaming scene, but only time will tell. Last year during the Painkiller World Tour, Siguma showed the dedication that Japanese players give to anything they do. Hopefully this season Gure can bring results to take another huge step for e-sports in the land of the rising sun.