Gaming Tournament Plays to Sold-Out Cobb Energy Centre

A five person team, including a Georgia resident, brought home a computer game championship after a grueling weekend tournament at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, WSB-TV says.

The SMITE World Championship was an eight-team tournament which brought together gamers from across the world competing for prize money. Some of the gamers involved are professional, which means they are paid to play, WSB-TV reports.

During the tournament, matches were live streamed on the internet and featured play-by-play and color commentators providing analysis, just like in any other broadcast of a sporting event, WSB-TV says.

Each SMITE team is composed of five players, who each play as a mythological figure with specific skills and powers. Each team battled the other teams over a weekend of intense gaming until only two teams were left standing: COGnitive Prime from North America and Titan from Europe. One of COGnitive Prime’s members, ”BaRRaCCuDDa,” is the online alias of Cartersville’s John Salter.

COGnitive Prime took the first two games of the best-of-five series, VG24/7 reports, but Titan rallied to tie the series and force it to a decisive fifth game. COGnitive Prime won the match, and the series, and walked away with over $1.3 million in prize money split between the five team members.

“WE DID IT GUYS. WE ACTUALLY DID IT,” Salter posted on Twitter on Sunday. “WE WON A WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP FOR NORTH AMERICA. IM SO HYPED.”

Salter’s share of the prize money is roughly $260,000.

Watch highlights of the tournament below: