EPTFirst off, let me introduce myself. I'm a 25 year old male with 1.5 years of entry level uni courses under my belt at SFU university in Vancouver. A couple months ago my scholarship ran dry and I had to decide whether to take out student loans and work my way through school. Instead of applying for loans, I moved into a cheaper room in a cheaper city (Victoria) and decided to do what I love for the next year. Play Starcraft 2.
I've loved RTS games for a long time. It all started one fateful day in 2000. I was in a Circuit City and picked up a copy of Command and Conquer Red Alert 2. That night I didn't get one ounce of sleep. To say my life changed that night would be an understatement. For the next 2 years, I played the computer for hours every day in total blissful ignorance of the online community. I could beat 7 brutal computers at once and I thought I was the shit. Nothing could prepare me for the surprise when I first clicked "quick match" and ended up in an online game vs a real person. These guys were fast, they knew how to scout, put on pressure from multiple different angles, and they built mobile armies which destroyed my mass static defenses from afar! I I had been wasting the last 2 years playing the AI while these hardcore gamers were training on an actual ladder.
Growing up, I moved every year so rts was the stable thing in my life. I couldn't take the people in my life with me when I moved, but my buddy list was always there. In 2003, I discovered http://xwis.net/forums/ Xwis made their own server for Red Alert when EA games stopped banning cheaters. These guys were like family to me for the next 7 years. I spent every waking hour online playing, bantering in the lobbies and, of course, on the forums.
In 2009 I was living in Canada illegally and couldn't work or drive so I started playing Red Alert full time again much to the dismay of my father and step mom who thought I was addicted to the internet. Day in and day out the only sound they would hear from my room was the clicking of the keyboard. I was good, really good. One of the top 3 players in a community which had slowly declined to a few hundred hardcore RTS gamers who played for respect more than anything else. Back then, I never imagined what RTS COULD be. I never imagined thousands of people cheering for Thorzain as he came out of his booth at dreamhack. I thought rts was just a pastime for introverted nerds like myself.
Enter Starcraft 2. It's a sad thing to admit, but from the moment I picked up sc2 I haven't played more than a few hours of Red Alert. Everything was better. Just a few of the things which totally astounded me.
1)Skinny nerds on TV being cheered for. Before sc2 came out, I didn't know "e-sports" existed.
2)Replays from pro gamers in POV with detailed tabs/wealth of readily available information. In Red Alert, the only form of replays was recorded vods posted on youtube.
3)Variety of strategies. Ability to play macro or rush.
4)Live streams and tournaments
I was hooked, but I was also 21 and watching my high school friends graduate. The pressure was on to do something with my life and I desperately wanted out of my house. So I moved to uni and sc2 took the back burner while I studied 10 hours a day at one the most competitive schools in Canada. I still had a dream of one day competing on a stage in sc2, but I only had 1 day a week to practice. So I watched my rank 1 diamond account fall into plat and tapped my fingers on my notebooks in class. In 2012 I got Masters and I was thrilled, but by that time I realized just how hard sc2 was.
Enter present day and most of you probably think I'm crazy. After all, top level grandmasters are retiring and losing their jobs left and right. Teams are closing and there are less events for casters. Incontrol recently said (paraphrased) "Don't quit your day job if you're in diamond. You have to be a top gm to have a chance." Yet, I love the game and I'm sure I'll regret it if I don't give it a try now. So I know the next year will be hard. I'll probably end up hungry more often than not and working shitty part time jobs to make ends meet. But that's the American dream isn't it? It sure is mine.
I'll be streaming and playing ladder 6 + days a week. That's the easy part for me. See ya online!
