When junior Mason Kravitz began eighth grade he was not social and decided to stick with video games to take up his free time. That is how Kravitz claims to have begun his journey to fame and fortune in CS:GO, an online competitive 5v5 first person shooter game.
In CS:GO there are in-game skins that are worth money; the rarer the skin, the more money it is worth. Players can obtain skins by purchasing cases, a virtual box full of in game rewards and skins, or by wagering skins on matches. “I started out by buying one $50 case in eighth grade,” Kravitz said.
Kravitz didn’t spend any more money on the game after obtaining that first loot case. His prize in the case was a rare knife called the ‘Karambit Fire and Ice.’ According the Opskins.com the average selling price for that specific item is $410. Winning new items is as simple as players betting skins on a game and winning the game along with the opponents’ skins. “I made the money on CS:GO by betting in game skins on the outcome of my games,” Kravitz said.
Kravitz spent an average of six to eight hours a day playing this game. He never played for the money because all he wanted to do was have fun and win lots of games. “I loved that I was winning a lot in this game but my real passion was towards playing the game and having a good time,” Kravitz said.
CS:GO is a hugely popular game and people strive to be able to play as well as Kravitz. It can only be played on a PC and not a console so he made sure to upgrade his PC until it was fast enough to play CS:GO with no lag at all and maximum frame rates. “I used to play some CS:GO and it was really hard. I wish I could go on and just be the best player in every game,” junior Rory Sullivan said.
Although the skins that one can obtain don’t seem like they can make a huge amount of money, players can make thousands of dollars if they are good enough. Kravitz ended his CS:GO career with winnings totaling over $150,000. People might think that a high schooler would have no clue what to do with the money and would just spend it all at once. This was not the case with Kravitz as he has invested his money in the stock market in order to keep it always above the $150,000 he won. “I won quite a large amount of skins through CS:GO,” Kravitz said. “When I finally stopped playing at the beginning of ninth grade, I sold all of the skins I had collected for a total of just above $157,000.”