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Atlanta • They stare at their computer screens, eyes transfixed on the bloody spectacle in front of them, trying to figure out if there's an enemy player around the corner.
They go by names such as FalleN, TACO and Spunj — stars of the online world, if not to those who prefer their sports be played on actual fields.
Yet when it's over, after the powerhouse Brazilian team known as Luminosity scores the final two points to survive an overtime thriller against the underdog outfit from Down Under that goes by Renegade, it sort of feels like LeBron hit a game-winning shot at the buzzer.
For those who play video games, this is another attempt at going mainstream.
The ELEAGUE kicked off Tuesday at a high-tech studio right next door to the set of "Inside the NBA," a joint venture between Turner Sports and IMG that features 24 teams from around the world, playing the war-like game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for some $1.4 million in prize money.
The stakes are even higher for those who believe a bunch of headset-wearing guys sitting at computer consoles clicking a mouse can carve out their place alongside those viewed as legitimate athletes.
"I absolutely do enjoy watching Counter Strike from a competitive standpoint," said Craig Barry, the executive vice president of Turner Sports. "And I didn't even know about it eight months ago, nine months ago."
In a broad sense, video games are the point in their development that extreme sports were some two decades ago, a hodgepodge of disciplines played in a largely underground world until they were brought together and legitimized for the general public by the X Games. Now some of those sports are part of the Olympic Games.
Much like their extreme-sport counterparts, there are plenty of gamers who don't want to cave in to the lure of fame and fortune, who feel it will ruin the purity of what they have built.
Richard Lewis, a former eSports journalist now working as a commentator on Turner's broadcasts, insists that those concerns have been addressed with the ELEAGUE.
"This is true to the sort of endemic culture you have within eSports," he said. "We're not going to sanitize it or change terminology or change games. We're not going to censor things out."