In late 2010, my friend suggested I purchase and play a video game with him, that game was Starcraft II. At that time, being a broke student I couldn't afford to buy it although I wanted it. I had heard about this game originally from reading a Cracked article about Starcraft in Korea. I found it fascinating that people actually played video games for a living, I knew that it existed in rare circumstances, years before when I was still in high school I remember downloading a video through Xbox Live of Fatal1ty, about how he had managed to get sponsorship deals and products because of his excellent performance in tournaments.
My friend decided to go ahead and buy me the game which was incredibly kind of him. I started to play and I was absolutely terrible, I had never played an real time strategy beyond the odd command and conquer campaign when I was younger but being determined I stuck through it and managed to get to the higher leagues. At this point, Starcraft 2 was exploding in the western world, LAN events such as Dreamhack and MLG were being established with Starcraft II and showing record breaking viewer numbers. I discovered through watching live events the YouTube caster community such as HuskyStarcraft and HDStarcraft. They were great at showcasing professional games of players as well as the tactics used. I started relentlessly watching and studying these games, trying everything I could to get promoted to the highest leagues in Starcraft.
In my personal life, I'd finished college and decided to start working for an IT Company called Fujitsu, this only lasted shortly. At that time I was immature, all I wanted to do was play video games all day. All my friends were at university and had one lecture a week, they had so much free time, it made me very jealous that I was working 40+ hours a week. So I quit, which definitely wasn't one of my best decisions. This is when I started to take playing to another level. I cut myself off from my real life friends, basically never leaving the house, even my online friends which I would play other games with barely heard from me because I was always playing Starcraft, I never thought I had a problem or was addicted because I was just having so much fun and It wasn't really impacting anyone else. I was always the one to ask my friends if they wanted to do something, they never really asked me so when I stopped asking, all communications seemed to just stop. My girlfriend never seemed to be phased by it, I was just now playing one game all the time instead of many.
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| A weekend away in London, Holly photographs me downloading Starcraft on her laptop. |
My friend who originally bought me Starcraft at this point didn't enjoy playing it, there was a huge gap between our skill levels and I think he just didn't have fun which is understandable. My search for new friends who liked Starcraft began. I checked the communities such as reddit/r/starcraft and teamliquid. I wanted to find people who would want to practice and to just talk about the game with. This was somewhat successful, finding social teams and chat groups to hangout in. Now I'm in master league which was the highest league except from grandmaster which is the top 200 players on the server. Everyone strived to get into GM, that's where all the big name pros were.
My attempts to reach grandmaster fail and the idea that i could potentially be a pro gamer in some capacity faded, I move on. I began account laddering to make some extra money, People would pay me just to play a few games on their account, it was insane. I never made any crazy amounts but It certainly helped when I was unemployed. On top of this I also coached Starcraft for players who wanted to get better, this turned out to be a greater source of income as id get consistent interest from players and usually have a high retention of "clients".
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| The team had a pretty logo - Credit to 3D-Gaming |
I was interested in joining a team, I've always dreamed of just owning a jersey for being on a team as silly as that sounds. Being nerdy and not outgoing I've never really had the opportunity, this is where 3D-Gaming comes in. I saw an add to join them, their requirements seemed reasonable and their website looked flashy, they certainly had my interest. I applied and joined, after a few practice sessions I noticed there was a lack of leadership, the current team captain was overly busy with real life stuff, after a few weeks of disorganisation I made a plea to the management of the site that we need a new captain, someone to organise things. I was eventually promoted and the first thing I did was start a second team which was the amateur team, here I would meet a great bunch of guys who were eager to improve.
The team management announced they were ordering their next set of jerseys and wanted to know who was interested, to my surprise I discovered we would have to pay for them ourselves which now that I think of it is obvious but back then It seemed as if the management had all these sponsors for the team and website but kept everything for themselves so I decided to pass on the order.
Whilst browsing Twitch Starcraft streams, I stumbled upon a man named Tobias who had zero viewers but didn't care and was just playing Starcraft for fun and enjoying himself, I watched him and gsave him a little advice, we spoke and followed each other on twitter and we didn't speak again for a while, I did this often, browse streams and find people to watch whilst I was bored, I still actually do this. I found another streamer who was more established and I would say equal skill level to myself called Wilko. After watching his stream for a while I discovered that he actually lives in a pro gaming house called the Ministry of Win. It was my dream to live in another country briefly, not only that but to do it hassle free and play video games! This will sound pointless to some reading but just being in a house with other people who have the same interest as you is incredible and was well worth it.
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| The Ministry of Wins gaming room - Credit to BabyToss |
I contacted the manager and began enquiring about me staying and everything seemed fine, It costs £500 to live there for 1 month, this included pretty much everything and seemed perfect. I'll write a more in-depth post on what It was actually like to live in a pro gaming house linked here. I came home and although I didn't practice anywhere near as much as I thought or hoped I would, I did improve, I still wasn't able to get to grandmaster but I could tell I was better. Being in the house gave me multiple contacts who are professional gamers and it certainly helped to put me on the map as being in the scene although the majority of people still to this day have no idea who I am.
I arranged a friendly clan battle between 3D-Gaming and Awesome Gaming a new team which was just established with a pro gamer called Fuzer, a Finnish player who actually stayed in the Ministry of Win and stirred up some drama during his short stay. His name was certainly known within the community after this. The team was managed by Tobias, so it was easy to organise the match. During the clan battle, I managed to defeat three of their players so we were up 3-0, the first team to reach five wins, wins the series. After beating their first 3 players they sent out their star player Fuzer, he beat me pretty convincingly and then went on to all kill our entire team. I felt like the rest of the team had no drive to win or practice, to put in the extra effort. It annoyed me at the time but there was no reason to be, Fuzer was much better than all of us and we stood no chance, I left the team after this which was pretty tough as I had made some good friends but I wanted to find another team who wanted to take things to the next level.
Shortly after announcing on twitter I'd left 3D-Gaming, I was contacted by 2 teams who were more like social teams and they weren't what I was looking for, then I had an offer from Awesome Gaming, the team with Fuzer on. This was the first team I had ever seen which actually had their players sign contracts and even paid salaries. Not just that, they were sponsored by CMStorm and provided a full free set of gaming equipment, going from having to pay for your own jersey to getting a complete set of gaming peripherals, a salary and opportunities to compete at international events with all expenses paid was incredible. This was unreal to me, so I jumped at the chance and signed the contract.
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| Credit to Awesome Gaming |
The saying "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." had always been in the back of my mind when joining the team. There was a common practice within eSports where new teams would prop up signing big name players, offering them big things like great salaries and expenses paid to international events, then after only a few months or even weeks, they would disband and it would become known that the team hadn't paid any salary or owed huge amounts, this has happened relentlessly within the Starcraft community over the years mainly due to the lack of contracts and even when a contract is signed, its more hassle than its worth just to get a few hundred euros. It seemed like every week there was a new story about how a team manager had stolen winnings from a player or sponsorship money that was meant for the players or even made the player pay out of pocket for their travel expenses with the promise of paying them back and never following through, this certainly did not give me hope for receiving any of what was promised in the contract.
The first thing I was watching out to receive were my set of peripherals. At the time, the way I saw it, I would either possibly be getting all this free stuff from them or most likely be without a team, so even though it took what seemed several months to arrive, I still waited but sure enough, it did in fact arrive. I made this somewhat awkward unboxing video for the team, a little bit of media for them to put on their site and show off to the sponsors, on top of this I was in fact receiving my salary, although sometimes a little late. In my contract I had incentives which increased how much money I would receive such as streaming for so many hours, how many games I play in total and how many matches I win in tournaments.
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| Credit to IGN |
Things had gotten settled on the team, I felt like it was a great place to practice, we all got along except for Fuzer who seemed to think he was a rock star by not attending team practice and barely even showing up for team league matches and certainly not taking them seriously, if you joined the team you wouldn't even know he was on it. Another player joined the team called BabyToss, she was relatively known within the community but for more of a social role. My first matches to play for Awesome Gaming came when we were accepted into the IPTL (IGN Pro Team League) and our first opponents were University of Minnesota who were a collegiate team. I managed to all kill them, this was the first time playing in front of a largish audience with the match being streamed by two different streamers and I was very happy about my result, our next match in the team league was against a team called SCA, I was unable to attend due to a miscommunication with my availability that week so the team went on without me, we were all killed and officially out of IPTL.
Relations in the team seemed to be disintegrating with a lack of commitment to practice and activity. Players such as Fuzer and BabyToss never showing up to practice set a precedent within the team that affected everyone, giving us the feeling that we could do anything and get away with it. I myself skipped practice a few sessions but then management kicked Fuzer from the team due to his attitude and things seemed to improve greatly, I played in what would be my last online tournament which was the Bellenoir followers tournament. My team mate at the time Jagelius was also competing, he had the highest rank on our team and was undoubtedly the best player. The tournament started at 14:00 but due to several long lasting matches and a player deciding to play in another tournament at the same time, the matches were happening very late and I had to leave for a family birthday meal. The total prize for first place was $32 which would be the cost of my food where we were eating so I didn't try my best to win this tournament, I didn't even think id make it past the first few rounds but somehow I found myself in the quarter final, playing against Jagelius with only 30 minutes till I had to leave. I used some poor tactics to try and rush the games so I could get my loss over with and get ready to go out, I won the first game using a very unsual strategy which I liked a lot, the second game he won convincingly countering my rush which was expected, the last game I proxy 2 gateways and Zealot rushed which is one of the oldest and riskiest builds you can do but somehow it worked. Jagelius left without saying GG (good game) which is seen as bad mannered.
This put me in a very awkward position because I had expected to lose and would be able to leave but I was in the final, what do I do? I could miss the meal and play in the finals and hope to win an extra $16 or I could be happy with my second place and go see my family, I choose the easy option which was forfeit and go to the meal, If I could go back I would certainly stay and play the series. Because I forfeited it meant I was disqualified and any prize money I had was taken away and they changed the results so It said Jagelius beat me and he was now in the finals instead, it sucked but it was my own fault.
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| Credit to Teamliquid for the photo. |
At this point in time I had lost all passion to play Starcraft, I didn't enjoy the game and playing it was almost torture. In my contract I was told I would get an expenses paid trip to an event, at first I approached my team with wanting to compete at Multiplay iSeries which is a UK LAN tournament, it isn't known for being particularly good, always being plagued with poor management of their live events but I wanted to use my free LAN trip up before I quit Starcraft. The team seemed against the idea, the overall cost to get there and ticket didn't seem worth it for them and I felt like they were just going to say anything to get me from costing them money till the team disbanded. My only other realistic alternative was Dreamhack, its an event hosted around Europe but mainly in Sweden. The team Awesome Gaming was in fact based in Sweden and their intention was for the team to meet at Dreamhack Summer so, this seemed like my last hope.
Details were finalised and I had my application for the Dreamhack Starcraft tournament complete, I was the only UK player competing at the event and was pretty excited. A film crew contacted me about filming me before and during my games at Dreamhack, I agreed but they were unable to film me at my house within the few days before Dreamhack and decided to film me just at the event instead. I had a few weeks to practice and check out my opponents, after my group was announced. I decided to post on a local Facebook group which was for a Barcraft in my area but most people in the group talked about Starcraft eSports. I made a post with my groups and asked if anyone knew anything about my opponents and if they had any advice as this was my first LAN event, I received a hail of abuse which actually shocked me, It made me really dislike the community which I thought I was apart of. I was told I wouldn't win a single game and that I should go to iSeries first for some reason. I didn't really understand it, these weren't some internet trolls but people that I had probably met whilst at the local barcraft. I came away from the experience feeling pretty terrible and extremely glad I was leaving the scene after attending Dreamhack.
When planning my trip to Dreamhack it was an overly complicated venue to get to and seemed poor choice but from what I could tell, that's where they have it every year. My friend agreed to come with me on the trip and it was a lot of fun, I practised for about 2 weeks before the tournament and managed to win a single game in the whole tournament which was against Europe's best player at that time which felt a little good. I'm writing a more detailed write-up of Dreamhack which is located here. I came home from the event and shortly after, my team announced they were disbanding. I was a little sad but at least this way I could just fade from Starcraft rather than continuing to for-fill my contract. After quitting Starcraft, I started going to the gym, found temporary employment and over the next 6 months stabilized my life. Reconnected with my friends and family and my mental health improved greatly, being inside all day playing Starcraft really made me suffer, I have no doubt some people can do it without it affecting them but I'm not one of them.
After those 6 months, I have lost 23kg and felt much better about my life. I don't regret my experience with Starcraft, I certainly feel its become apart of me. When I look back I see all these opportunities to make a career out of it that I missed such as making content and streaming. What I could have done differently, it makes me a little sad but I'm happy. I've had a much better experience than some and I'm ready to move on with my life.
Tthanks for reading, that's it.
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| At least I finally got my jersey - Credit to aG |