The founders say that there have been about 80,000 cash tournaments played in the year their site has been in beta, with about $1,000,000 paid in winnings. Most of the games are played for about an $11 entry fee. Virgin takes a 12% fee.
The Virgin site is free to join and is designed to be something of a social network for gamers, earning them Virgin Points for active behavior, giving them access to chatrooms and, most importantly, letting them challenge each other. You can play a game in a ready-made tournament or match of your own making for money, or even just for those Virgin Points or mere pride. A Virgin Points store is set to launch later this year and will let players cash in their points for discounts on things such as Virgin Air flights.
Sony has already teamed with VirginGaming for a ModNation Racers tournament that was offered to Canadian gamers when that PS3 game was launched. The Virgin plan is for more games to have for-pay online tournaments tied to their launch. (Virgin Gaming currently works console versions of Halo 3, Fight Night Round 4, ModNation Racers, NCAA Football 10, Madden NFL 10, FIFA 10, MLB 10: The Show and NHL 10, with more games set to be added in the coming months, including, it seems, Guitar Hero or Rock Band in September.)
One of the wrinkles to the Virgin Gaming plan is that the games involved are console-based, while Virgin's service is web-based. The company works with game publishers to access data for games played over Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, but Virgin's system only reads the after-action gaming data, information that customer service representatives can check to verify if a match was legit. Because the service isn't available directly on, say, an Xbox 360, players have to agree to their match via the site, establishing whatever parameters that want to play in (10 minutes of Halo 3 team slayer, for example) and then trust that the other player cooperates with those settings. Disputes can be settled by Virgin customer service, the founders said.
Anyone can play games via Virgin Gaming for free. Paid matches are permitted in 36 states. States where paid matches can't be plaid, according to the Virgin site, are: Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Vermont.
Is something like Virgin Gaming meant to propel a cultural shift that makes winning games more synonymous with winning money?
"It makes things more exciting when you're playing in the living room, order some pizza and put a few dollars down," Levy said. "This just makes the living room that much larger."
