When people think about video games, they often think negatively about it. Many consider it some form of entertainment or look at it as a way of corrupting your mind. As a result, many professional gamers and gaming leagues in the world don't get much respect and recognition. In fact, many people would find the idea of trying to making a living by playing video games would to be completely insane.

However, just as baseball, basketball, hockey, football, and many other sports have their respective leagues, video gaming has its own group of professional players and a playing league. Although video game leagues have never been very popular, that may soon change.

Just yesterday, ESPN announced that it had entered a content agreement with Major League Gaming to start providing coverage on MLG’s pro circuit competitions and help host online video game tournaments.

Founded in 2002 by Sundance Digiovanni and Mike Sepso in New York City, MLG is the first North American professional video game league allowing only pro gamers to participate. Every year, MLG hosts a pro circuit where gamers create their own teams and play each other to see how well their team stands. The games played last season were "Gears of War," "Halo 2," "Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas," and "Shadowrun."

Like other leagues, MLG has contracted players and teams. "Halo 2" teams such as Final Boss and Team Carbon have three-year contracts with MLG for $250,000. Although this is nothing comparable to basketball players who get millions for signing contracts with the NBA, I think $250,000 is a pretty good deal if you're just playing video games.

Even though MLG isn’t widely known for the time being, it seems to me that MLG will become a very promising league in the near future, probably becoming as popular as NFL and NBA. When that happens, maybe people won’t think it mad to try to make a living off playing video games, and I may even try my hands at trying to be a pro gamer.