EPTIn the year 2007, I had not even heard of competitive gaming, let alone nursed the idea of managing my own team. Having a background of RPG, MMORPG and other similar games at the time, I considered myself a gamer, but I had no experience with online gaming at all, except for 6 years on Runescape at the time. While walking around the video game high street store 'GAME' my uncle suggested I purchase Call of Duty 4. I was sceptical as it was a First Person Shooter, something i'd never been overly fond of in the past, but I gave in and added it to the pile of RPG's I was buying. The following day I began the campaign and thoroughly enjoyed it, despite the fact that I was being destroyed by medium difficulty AI!
Three months later, I was sat in the back of Biology class eavesdropping on a conversation between class mates about prestige and kill to death ratios. I hadn't a clue what they were talking about, but it interested me so I listened. Somehow I became involved in this conversation when I friend who knew I owned the game asked me what my KDR was. My mind went blank, 15 year old me didn't want to be ousted as an outsider with no Xbox Live!, so I lied. At the end of the class, several people had taken down my gamertag to play with me over Xbox live. I returned home and asked my parents if I could set up Xbox live that evening. They said no. Another 6 weeks of excuses on why I couldn't come on, until one day my parents and brother where going out for the evening. So I took my Xbox downstairs and plugged it into the router. The 2 hours I got to play were fantastic, I was running around the streets of Backlot firing my grenade launcher like a natural!
Over the next few months I got to do this several more times until my 16th birthday where I was able to purchase an adapter and have Xbox live in my room. This was what I consider the true begining of my competitive career, even though I wouldn't become invovled in eSports management for a good 2 years from this point. I began playing team tactical (3v3) and met 2 very close friends that I spent a good portion of my time with in this virtual battle zone. We played lots of public matches and eventually stumbled across the competitive platform 'Gamebattles', which we played some fun games on.
In November the next edition of the Call of Duty series dropped, World at War. I instantly feel in love with the game, and still consider it my favourite title in the series, despite it's heavy criticism. I carried on playing public and some fun gamebattle games, mostly 1v1's. I responded to a team recruitment post at some point probably 2-3 months after release. The players had impressive COD3/4 backgrounds and I was just the lowly noob on the team that they thought had some potential. They invited me to the team on gamebattles and we searched for a game so they could try me out. Game 1, we came up against another low ranked team and it was an easy win. However, my three teammates struggled, and I managed to carry the team to victory having higher kills than my teammates combined. I was confused and put it down to beginners luck. Game 2 came around and we were matched up against Team Xperience the current rank 3 team in the European league at the time. We knew it'd be a stomping, but my teammates talked a big game before it started so I went in with high hopes. Again I was able to keep a +20 or so positive ratio, while my teammates were all heavily in the negative. We edged out a win in Team Deathmatch, which was Xperiences trademark gamemode. Xperience were so impressed that they invited me to the team on the spot and accepted almost right away, not happy with the attitude and skill of my previous team.
This was another chapter in my history, as I joined this team and experience win after win after win. I was comfortably one of the best players in the team, despite having no previous experience whereas my teamamtes did. It was fun, but it was also much more serious and hectic than my previous gaming experiences. I still played for fun with friends, but I found it hard to turn off that winning mindset. Unable to build silly perksets and run around with RPG's, my brain just wanted to win and try my hardest each time. Sadly this was the begining of the end of my 'casual gaming', something that I still feel may have been a big mistake. I carried playing leagues and tournaments, and doing relatively well. Being a small game there was no money outside of the USA, and all I have to show for it are some old mousepads, which at the time was a HUGE deal.
Another year past and another COD released, this one had some connection to COD4, which I was also relatively good at. I tried to be competitive in this title too, but had much less success. Despite being about as good, I had set impossible targets for myself and on top of that, disliked the games casual features (secondary shotguns etc), so never really had much love for the game. I began to drift further away from my earlier casual friends, and tried and failed many times to get them into the competitive aspect to no avail. I was finally getting pretty good around 10 months after the release date and was playing for a team named Adversity, who were known for having a top 5 Halo 3 European team, which was the bigger of the console games at the time. September 2010 came around and I was faced with a difficult time, as I was moving away to University. I'd told everyone thing would be the same hopefully and i'd still be able to play. Oh how wrong I was.
Day 1 of University was a big day, leaving home, a long drive, new people, new experiences etc. The first thing I did was plug in my PC, and connect to the internet. Done. Next up turn on steam, failed. Hmm, strange, tried other games and application, some failed, some didn't. I asked around, and was told that the University internet blocked most games. I was dealt a heavy blow that at the time seemed world breaking. I had to leave my team, and instead moved to help the owner with managing the teams, as I focused on making friends, passing exams and getting drunk. A new chapter had begun.
This was my first management experience and I feel I excelled from day 1. We had a few teams I worked with COD4 on PC, Halo 3 on the Xbox360 and Fifa players. We had some limited success, I managed to get a sponsorship from the new peripheral brand Tt eSports, and I ended up running the brand myself. Around this time I went on holiday for 2 weeks and came back to find my partner had brought in a new team for a new game I had never heard of. Starcraft 2, we had a player called ArcaneWinds. I'd no idea what the game was, so I asked him for a run down and was given a history lesson in everything SC2 at the time, which was only just out of Beta. The game was good, and we decided to recruit a Halo player that was moving over to focus on SC2, and I was told he was decent. So sure, I took him on board. That players name was Samayan 'BlinG' Kay. Our first big LAN came around, an event in the UK called i40. I got a lift with a friend and met with our CSS team and our SC2 player BlinG. The event was magical, it was so big, so many gamers walking around and I instantly fell in love. The event itself didn't go so well for Adversity, our CSS team who were aiming for top 4, ended up finishing 12-16th, and sadly BlinG (who was still unknown at this time) was cheesed out by a Diamond protoss player called Nemesis in the ro32. Adversity became harder and harder to manage, and as teams left due to a lack of funds I was giving up hope on this eSports thing. BlinG was offered a spot at the Dignitas gamers search, and I told him he should go for it. Dignitas was the dream in UK eSports. They could do everything I wanted to do, and offered to go with him, sadly I couldn't attend due to being a poor arse student! BlinG won the event was offered a spot, which I was happy for him, but also a little devastated that our last star was gone. Then I was offered a lifeline. My contact with Tt eSports who'd given us our sponsorship wanted someone to come on and manage international teams for them, I jumped at the opportunity and moved to my first international team.
A wall of text I know, feel free to read and comment if you like, I'm keeping this more as a diary. I currently work at Mouseports, as well as an indie developer, so I want to keep this going into my hopeful successful professional career in the future.
