Stories about young gamers pursuing a career in esports are becoming more and more common, which isn’t that surprising considering a 14-year-old has managed to make 6 figures playing Fortnite. But one question that is always asked is how the parents would allow their children to drop out of traditional school to chase such a dream. Now, David Herzog has recently explained why he let his son, Jordan, drop out of school to pursue a career in esports.
Jordan, who is known as “Crimz” online and in Fortnite, spends anywhere from 8 to 10 hours a day playing video games while squeezing in a few hours for his online education. David has shown unrelenting support for Jordan, supporting his son by purchasing $30,000 worth of gaming equipment, suspending family vacations that would interfere with his son’s training, and even purchasing his son a Maserati with his gaming tag on his license plate.
Jordan was removed from school by his father to pursue a career in esports, with the father telling it as a path to fame, money, and prestige. “I’ve been breeding him for this,” David says, explaining his and his son’s decisions, with David himself having a long career in and about the video game industry, claiming to have been a “top-15 eBay seller in the world” by flipping video games. His current business also does considerably well by manufacturing and selling video game-themed merchandise and apparel.
David states that he foresaw the rise of esports before anyone else and put a controller in Jordan’s hands when he was 3. By 7, Jordan was proficient at Halo, and at 12, he had won money in a local gaming tournament. Yet, David wasn’t met without backlash for his decision to remove Jordan from school last year. If David was supporting and pushing his son for piano, tennis, acting, or any other career that takes years to master, he’d be praised, but “because it’s video games, it’s child abuse.”
Source: Boston Globe
