Published: October 15, 2008 05:01 pm            

Wrona ‘Rippin’ into gaming circuit

Many teenagers in Zionsville play video games in some form, but only one is a pro.

Zionsville Community High School senior Eric Wrona is on the top-ranked Halo 3 team in the world, and has his sights set on the 2008 championship. He joined his team, Str8 Rippin, over the summer, and it’s been a perfect fit.

Most pro gamers are older — like his three 20-something teammates — but 18-year-old Wrona has skyrocketed from absolute obscurity to become one of the most feared Halo 3 players on the Major League Gaming circuit in just a few short months. He is the first player in the circuit’s history to win two consecutive events.

“I have more of a run-and-gun style, while my teammates have more of a strategic take to it,” he said.

Before October he only took part in one tournament with Str8 Rippin, an August victory in Toronto against 256 teams that earned his team $20,000. He also took home a share of the $20,000 purse in the July tourney in Orlando with his previous team, Triggers Down.

Wrona, whose screen name is “Snipedown,” finally saw his winning streak snapped during the Oct. 3 through 5 MLG playoffs in Dallas, as Str8 Rippin fell to his old squad Triggers Down in the championship round.

His team’s trip to the tournament title was more than enough for Str8 Rippin to maintain its No. 1 ranking heading into the 2008 MLG National Championships in November.

Halo 3 is the third installment of the highly-popular Halo series, which is made for Xbox 360 gaming consoles. It’s a first-person shooter game, and is largely regarded as the gold standard for the genre. The game’s one-player storyline centers upon a futuristic, interstellar war among humans and alien races.

According to gaming magazine IGN, Halo 3 was the biggest-selling game of 2007, and remains one of the most-played multi-player games on Xbox Live online.

Wrona has played the games since 2005, when he got interested in Halo 2.

“I played a lot my freshman year — probably more than I should have,” he said.

When the series’ latest version was released in 2007, Wrona began looking into what it would take to enter a tournament, but his mother Cinda wasn’t sure about traveling across the country to join the events.

“He broke us down this year, and we let him pay for himself,” she said. “This has just bloomed into something we never expected.”

He and his first team, Ambush, came onto the scene and lived up to the name. Ambush burst onto the scene with a seventh-place finish out of more than 200 teams at the April tourney in New Jersey, and the entire Halo 3 world took notice. From that point, Triggers Down picked up Wrona, and he really made noise with the July victory.

Then in late July, the top-ranked Str8 Rippin had a member drop from the squad, and Wrona was asked to join the team, which is sponsored by Dr. Pepper.

Wrona certainly needed some bigger competition. He said his friends typically don’t play with him because he’s just too good.

“I like to play with my friends, but they invite me over to watch,” he said. “They aren’t able to compete with me at all — they’re all really supportive of me though.”

His meteoric rise has earned him attention from places one might not associate with video games. The ESPN network brought cameras to the Wrona household in late September, as Str8 Rippin and another highly-ranked team convened to prepare for the Dallas event. The ESPN piece previewing Str8 Rippin’s Dallas tourney can be viewed at www.espngameup.com.

Wrona doesn’t know exactly how long he’ll continue as a Halo 3 pro, but he anticipates another few years on the circuit. For now, though, he’s still a high school student who participates in extracurricular activities like tennis and choir, and like most seniors, he’s making his college plans for next year.

He’s thinking about colleges like Purdue, Indiana, Ball State and Kentucky. He wants to study business, and thinks it would be cool to work for a video game developer. That’s a long way off, but he’s already getting some professional experience in the industry.

        

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