EPTI've been a lurker for ~ 3 years, and while I do not play Starcraft anymore, I feel like this is the best community out there for gamers and I appreciate everything you guys do here.
A little context: I'm from a Battlefield team situated in Singapore, called [Bf.Nut], and we are one of the best teams in Asia. I've been in the team for close to 6 years now and I'm currently the coach for the Battlefield division.
I would like to share with you guys what (in my opinion) it means to be an e-sports athlete. I apologize for my lackluster writing, as I'm currently in the army and being 2 years removed from studying and school life in general makes your English dull, and I may not necessarily communicate what I really want to say properly.
Thank you for your attention guys, hope you guys like this!
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When people ask me what I do, I would always politely reply “I’m an athlete”.
I’m not an “athlete” in the traditional sense of the word. Yes, I do play a lot of sports and I do keep fit, but that doesn’t make you an “athlete”, in the same vein that lifting weights and working out does not automatically qualify you as a “bodybuilder”.
When I say I am an athlete, I mean that I approach my sport of choice with utmost professionalism and I treat it like a job. In this case, it’s gaming.
As a professional athlete in traditional sports, you stick to a training regime and you compete in tournaments. You might have a routine that goes a little like:
0630H: Morning run & breakfast
0800H: <insert skill-related training exercise>
1200H: Lunch break
1300H: <insert skill-related training exercise>
1800H: Dinner break
1900H: <more training>
2200H: Sleep
Rinse & repeat.
That’s where the similarities end for me though. As an e-sports athlete, while I do follow a routine, it’s not as strict and way more flexible than this. Mix in my work (NS in this instance) and you have a very erratic and disruptive cycle.
Most people have the impression that gamers lead very unhealthy lifestyles, and it’s very true for the most part. Gamers in general are the most active in the night, since they have real-life responsibilities in the day and they can only play at night. It’s not uncommon for us to play until 1 or 2 am on a normal day, and then we wake up early in the morning to tackle school/work/whatever feeling like a zombie, and you rinse and repeat. I’ll admit that this is quite unhealthy, but then again we don’t have a choice since we don’t get paid to train or to play.
Like most athletes, we face the same problems. I’ve been going through a rough patch lately, and it always seem to be the same few problems I encounter. The lack of motivation to train is probably the biggest one, and it happens to the best of us all the time. It irks me when people say that we are not athletes because we just “play games”. Yes, we may be just “playing games” but our problems are real and when playing games becomes your responsibility and job, it’s not fun anymore and that applies to almost anything as well. Casual gamers will never empathize because at the end of the day it’s just another game to them, and their performance does not impact them in any way except for their own egos and self-pride, but the risk of burning out is very real to me and I’ve been burnt out several times over the past 6 years.
When I don’t perform, I risk losing my roster spot. I risk losing respect from my fellow peers and my teammates who trust me to perform. I risk breaking my image as “coach of the best team in Asia”. I risk getting jeered at by my rivals and haters. But most of all, I risk losing faith in myself. As a player and athlete, your skills and preparation are all you got. A basketball player who grinds and works hard in the gym all day but goes out and have a miserable game will feel like his effort is all for nothing, and I feel the same all the time too. Even if I don’t have a bad game and have an “average” game, which to others might not mean anything, it still makes me feel bad inside because I didn’t reach the limit like I thought I could. In any competitive sport, being “average” is bad because it doesn’t win you games. A lot of players and gamers who try to make it as a pro get stuck in this cycle of mediocrity where they think it’s okay if they just maintain an average performance because it ensures that they don’t lose their roster spot, but what’s the point of playing if you don’t try to win?
I always try to tell myself it’s okay to lose because I can learn from it, absorb the experience and improve on my weaknesses. Losing is always going to be frustrating and it’s always going to suck, but it’s what you gain from it that matters the most. What happens if you lose motivation then? What am I training for? I’m not getting paid for this shit, so why am I still playing 6-8 hours a day? I feel like a bum sometimes when I think about how much effort I’ve put into this when my peers are leading fulfilling lives; studying and gaining new knowledge(as much as they complain about how dreary it is I think studying is more rewarding than anything in the world), earning big bucks investing, travelling around the world, dating (damn) and just in general leading more exciting lives than me. I mean, I sit at a computer all day and play some dumb game, and I call myself an athlete? Any sane person would laugh.
Then I remind myself that I’m actually the luckiest person out of them all, because I’m chasing my dream 24/7 and not many people my age can say without a doubt that they are chasing theirs too. I might not get paid a single cent, but I love what I do and I wouldn’t trade this for anything else. Money is always going to be a problem but if I have to work and play at the same time, even if I risk losing sleep and health over this, it’s worth it. There are going to be times where I feel like there’s no point playing and it’s just not fun anymore, but I’m doing this because it’s what I want to do and what I’ve been dreaming of since I was a kid. So until I get to stand on the big stage, holding my trophy up and wear my nation’s colors proudly, I will not stop playing. If you think I’m wasting my life, think again.
Because at the end of the day, that’s what being an athlete is about: chasing excellence and being passionate about it. The best Olympians put their bodies on the line to achieve greatness and become legendary, and just because I don’t necessarily push my physical limits doesn’t mean I’m not pushing myself to the maximum. Gaming is competitive, and you have to be absolutely focused mentally to excel, and that in itself is a feat that’s equal to anything a traditional athlete has to go through. We strive for the same things, which is to win and be the best, and there’s no two ways about it.
That, is what it means to be a cyber-athlete.
