CBS 46 WANF — Gaming has come a long way since the days of “Doom” and Super Mario Bros.”

As Guy Blomberg eloquently puts it, gaming used to have a stereotype.

“Your stereotypical, pasty white fat nerds in their parents’ basement,” said Blomberg, the Event Director of DreamHack Festivals in North America.

“It was kinda the geeks and the nerds, honestly,” said Todd Harris, the Chair of the Atlanta Esports Alliance. “We played dungeons & dragons, and we gamed.”

But now, gaming isn’t just cool; it’s an economic driver.

“Now, quietly, gaming is a bigger industry than film and TV,” Harris said.

This is why the DreamHack Festival at the Georgia World Congress Center is expected to pull in 40,000 people over the weekend.

“Atlanta is really the capital in the United States for these large Esports events. Console, PC, VR, handheld mobile gaming, and tabletop gaming, card games, board games, RPGs, miniatures … This is actually the longest North American show we’ve been running,” Blomberg said. [MORE]