Game boy

Whitefish native leads video-gaming team to finals

Tall, tanned and clad in business casual, Whitefish native Mark Dolven doesn't look like the stereotypical gamer.

Nor, at 25, does he look the part of a sports-team executive.

But as the general manager of a professional gaming team, he's actually a bit of both.

Dolven manages the Carolina Core, one of six North American teams in the Championship Gaming Series.

The CGS, still in its inaugural year, is billed as the first true professional gaming league. It's built around team franchises with paid general managers and contracted athletes.

A small cadre of the gaming community, like Dolven, has been competing professionally for years. But the creation of an actual league, backed by money from sponsors such as Mountain Dew and DirecTV, may signify pro gamers are entering the mainstream.

"We try to treat it as much like traditional sports as we can because that seems to be working," Dolven said.

Organizations such as the Cyberathlete Professional League and the World Cyber Games have been hosting competitions for professional gamers for years. But those competitions are more like tournaments or tours than an actual league with a draft, season play, playoffs and a championship. The CGS was modeled after established pro-sports leagues, Dolven said.

And managing a team of professional gamers isn't all that different from managing any other professional sports team, he added.

Dolven is responsible for observing and evaluating draft candidates, selecting players and managing the roster throughout the season.

He also observes practices, sets the budget and handles all the day-to-day minutiae of running a professional sports team.

In the future, general managers are expected to negotiate player contracts and develop team branding initiatives.

DURING HIS time at Whitefish High School, Dolven was more passionate about golf than video games.

But he never took up skiing and he needed something to do during the long Montana winter, he joked.

"I took up video gaming because it fulfilled my competitive need when I couldn't play golf," Dolven said. "My parents were always great at getting me the latest and greatest computer equipment," he said.

And so a gamer was born.

After graduating from college, Dolven moved to Arkansas to work as a marketing director for the Subway restaurant chain.

While he was there, he started managing Team Pandemic, his first professional video-gaming team.

"I kind of enjoyed the business side of things a little more," said Dolven, explaining why he didn't stop at just playing video games.

Dolven recalls making 20-hour road trips up to twice a month to get his team, which was sponsored by Subway, into tournaments.

"We played anything that came around," he said.

Dolven managed Team Pandemic and worked in marketing from the summer of 2005 to June of this year, when he went to work for the newly created CGS.

"They offered me a job, which was great, but I had to make a decision," he said.

Ultimately, Dolven made the switch to full-time professional gamer. He sold his stake in Team Pandemic and went to work for the CGS.

"[Team Pandemic] was everything I'm doing now, but at a lower level," he said. "Being able to do the gaming full time for this new league, which I really think is the way of the future, I just couldn't pass up."

In June, the CGS invited gamers from around the country to attend a combine. The six general managers, including Dolven, watched the players show off their skills.

The combine was immediately followed by a draft at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

"It was hectic from then on out," Dolven said.

Each team has 10 players who compete in four different games. Five players compete in Counter-Strike: Source for the PC, two players compete in Project Gotham Racing 3 for the Xbox, two players compete in Dead Or Alive 4 for the Xbox, and one player competes in FIFA 07 for the PC.

Winners are decided by a point system, usually the difference between players' scores in each game.

"They win their game and they're happy, but they have to go cheer for their teammates because if they don't win too, we're not going to win the match," Dolven said.

Dolven's franchise, the Carolina Core, went 6-6 in the regular season and entered the playoffs seeded third among four North American teams.

They ended up losing the North American championship by one point to a team from Chicago.

However, the Core's second-place finish earned them a berth in the CGS World Championship event, to be held this December in Los Angeles.

Teams from North America, Europe, South America and Asia will compete at the championship. The winners share an unprecedented single-event total prize purse of $1 million with $500,000 going to the top team. The CGS World Championship will be televised on five continents.

As the Carolina Core prepare for the event, Dolven is pleased with his team's performance.

"But it would be very difficult for anyone to make a prediction," he said.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com