CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) -
Grand Theft Auto 5 is being called the most expensive game ever made with a
price tag of $265 million. That's more than it costs to make most Hollywood blockbusters.
As the industry grows larger, Chicago serves as a training ground for some of the future game developers.
Howard Tullman, the chairman for Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, says that includes the shrinking of game consoles like Xbox and PlayStation into much smaller, mobile devices.
"The games that are super successful in this mobile world are very simple games," Tullman explains. "They have to be compelling and sort of addictive, but they're very trivial compared to the complexity of these big 3D games."
Creating games isn't the only way to make it in the industry. Stephen Ellis, known in the computer gaming world as Snoopeh, is a professional gamer, best known for his play in League of Legends.
Ellis spoke to a crowd of fans in Chicago about the messages he receives from fans.
"Where people have lost their fathers or their family members had
cancer or something like that and they message me saying I helped them get through that. And those are the kind of messages that when I wake up in the morning and I made that difference," Ellis says.
It's a difference that is also creating more opportunities for a younger generation of professional gamers. Some of the pros can make upwards of several hundred thousand dollars--not including sponsorships.