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I have been in the upper SC scene for nearly 10 years. I have watched players rise and fall during that time.
Idra - I knew Idra on west many years ago when he was switching back and forth between terran and zerg in a small team named [S.SenCe] At the time he was an alright player. Nothing very special maybe C level on iccup. But. He had a drive. A desire to want to be at the top. Over the years this passion and desire is what got him to where he went. It was through sheer will power and countless hours of practice that got him to where he went.
TT1 - This is one of the oldest people I know in SC. TT1 has been playing since near the beginning. I met him through a friend on the USWest server. Great guy, showed me around to all the different korean channels and where to find good players to versus. I asked TT1 to go on other servers to practice but he was dedicated to staying on the USWest to play against the gosu koreans. Many years later I found out that he got really good. Just like Idra it was practice and dedication.
I can go through countless others. Ret/FA and many other great sc players.
With exception to Ret everyone that I have known that made it to the top did it through willpower and consistency. If you really have the true drive to make it to the top then you will but do not lie to yourself and think you do. You have to believe it.
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I think it's a bad idea to work towards being a pro only in SC2. Your goal should be to become pro in all aspects of your life. As many people have pointed out, there's probably only 1-5 people in all of the Americas who are paid to play full-time. Plus a few more "of us" living in Korea. So there really isn't a guidebook about how to become pro yet. Almost all modern pros that get paid part-time either won something big like a top-tier national tournament (either BW or SC2) or were lucky to have connections with a venture capitalist.
So it's tough. But if you aim at being pro in life, and treat stuff like school, jobs, and relationships as seriously as you take SC2, you cannot fail.
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Hehehe, this influx of young starcraft players sure causes a lot of cute posts.
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On December 11 2010 04:04 Sanasante wrote:
I have been in the upper SC scene for nearly 10 years. I have watched players rise and fall during that time.
Idra - I knew Idra on west many years ago when he was switching back and forth between terran and zerg in a small team named [S.SenCe] At the time he was an alright player. Nothing very special maybe C level on iccup. But. He had a drive. A desire to want to be at the top. Over the years this passion and desire is what got him to where he went. It was through sheer will power and countless hours of practice that got him to where he went.
TT1 - This is one of the oldest people I know in SC. TT1 has been playing since near the beginning. I met him through a friend on the USWest server. Great guy, showed me around to all the different korean channels and where to find good players to versus. I asked TT1 to go on other servers to practice but he was dedicated to staying on the USWest to play against the gosu koreans. Many years later I found out that he got really good. Just like Idra it was practice and dedication.
I can go through countless others. Ret/FA and many other great sc players.
With exception to Ret everyone that I have known that made it to the top did it through willpower and consistency. If you really have the true drive to make it to the top then you will but do not lie to yourself and think you do. You have to believe it.
How did ret get tehre then?
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On December 10 2010 13:58 Idmaif wrote:ok, i know this sounds crazy to a ton of people, but i am halfway through my Jr year in highschool, and im working on getting good enough to be able to become pro right after highschool. and i know there are going to be tons of people who say "dont do it! its too risky!" or "your wasting your life" but this is what i am dedicated to do. let me start off by saying how good i actually am right now. so i have been playing for about 8 months, (since beta) and i have improved from pretty low bronze newbie to pretty high diamond because i am a very fast learner. but if i made that much of an improvement in 8 months, another year and half will get me a lot higher. so i am constantly working my way up to get closer to the top 200 where a few of my friends are. here is my profile http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/339086/1/iDreamadroid/so i am not the best in the world yet, but probly around rank 4000 in the US. and of course i will work my way up. so how do people actually start to make a living off of it? do you have to move to korea like IdrA and just find every little tournament plus GSL? cant you join a clan and get sponsored or something? i am just a little unfamiliar of the whole process of how this works. so any productive responses are appreciated, just try to leave out the criticism. but i know that Team Liquid is awesome enough to have less trolls than any other forum. also maybe remember the name iDreamadroid for future years ;D everyone starts somewhere
Oh dear god.
How does one become "pro"? The same as with anything else: make a living off of it. You are not "pro" if you're really good; you're "pro" if you get paid to do it and can live off of it. If you make money, but it merely augments your income, you're "semi-professional." Otherwise, you do it for fun or don't get paid, and therefore are an "amateur."
Honestly, if you want to become a professional gamer, go for it. Frankly, after high school would be the perfect time to do it if you're going to do it. However, you should be honest with yourself. Just because you really want to do it doesn't mean you'll make it.
I'm not going to step on your dreams, nor am I going to coddle you. Do it if you want. Have realistic expectations. If you don't try, you'll never know, and you'll always wonder what could've happened.
Have a back up plan. This is probably going to a university and attempting to do something more typical with your life.
gl hf ~!
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On December 11 2010 04:21 OutlaW- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2010 04:04 Sanasante wrote:
I have been in the upper SC scene for nearly 10 years. I have watched players rise and fall during that time.
Idra - I knew Idra on west many years ago when he was switching back and forth between terran and zerg in a small team named [S.SenCe] At the time he was an alright player. Nothing very special maybe C level on iccup. But. He had a drive. A desire to want to be at the top. Over the years this passion and desire is what got him to where he went. It was through sheer will power and countless hours of practice that got him to where he went.
TT1 - This is one of the oldest people I know in SC. TT1 has been playing since near the beginning. I met him through a friend on the USWest server. Great guy, showed me around to all the different korean channels and where to find good players to versus. I asked TT1 to go on other servers to practice but he was dedicated to staying on the USWest to play against the gosu koreans. Many years later I found out that he got really good. Just like Idra it was practice and dedication.
I can go through countless others. Ret/FA and many other great sc players.
With exception to Ret everyone that I have known that made it to the top did it through willpower and consistency. If you really have the true drive to make it to the top then you will but do not lie to yourself and think you do. You have to believe it. How did ret get tehre then?
Some people are born gods.
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I don't get why people always come with these drastic plans or ideas. It's not that hard to combine becoming good at SC2 with your school or work until you are at the point of trying to win GSL. If you have talent for this game and put in your hours post-school you will still become good enough to win $100 open tournaments and such to get noticed by the community and teams. That is how most of the top players start off and there is no reason to take a different approach.
Just play SC2, join some tournaments, do well, the rest will come later.
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I don't get why people always come with these drastic plans or ideas. It's not that hard to combine becoming good at SC2 with your school or work until you are at the point of trying to win GSL. If you have talent for this game and put in your hours post-school you will still become good enough to win $100 open tournaments and such to get noticed by the community and teams. That is how most of the top players start off and there is no reason to take a different approach.
Just play SC2, join some tournaments, do well, the rest will come later
This is exactly what you should do, you can become very good at starcraft and win some tournaments. If you get noticed and a chance to be a progamer then take it, if you don't get recognised or you aren't good enough. You won't get that chance and you can just go back to your education you've been working on in the meantime.
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On December 11 2010 04:30 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
I don't get why people always come with these drastic plans or ideas. It's not that hard to combine becoming good at SC2 with your school or work until you are at the point of trying to win GSL. If you have talent for this game and put in your hours post-school you will still become good enough to win $100 open tournaments and such to get noticed by the community and teams. That is how most of the top players start off and there is no reason to take a different approach.
Just play SC2, join some tournaments, do well, the rest will come later.
This. Sounds like very good advice.
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I'm going to be a little more optimistic than some people in this thread...
Becoming a "pro" in SC2 means you make a living off of it. Unlike, say, a professional basketball player, there's no established path to becoming a pro in SC2. A pro in SC2 makes their money pretty much through sponsorships, which means you'd have to make it onto a team. In the United States, you don't really "apply," or at least not to my knowledge. Instead, you have to perform well and then you may eventually get picked up by a team.
"Performing well" doesn't just mean being ranked highly on the ladder. You could be #1 on the ladder and you wouldn't be getting any team offers. Instead, you have to do well in tournaments. Probably the easiest way to get into the tournament scene would be to start with online tournaments, since you don't have to travel for them. However, eventually you're going to have to start making it to LANs, such as MLG. To do this, you're likely going to have to travel, and travel can get expensive since you'll be paying for it out of pocket.
Then, assuming you do exceptionally well in the tournament scene, you might be noticed and get an offer to join a team.
To get to that point, though, you need to practice. You can't just ladder a lot. Even if you're just laddering, you need to make a very serious and deliberate effort to get better, not just play a lot of games. Be on the lookout for practice partners that you can play with on a regular basis that can help you train.
Since you're currently a junior in high school, you're actually in a surprisingly good spot if you plan to try to make it professionally in SC2. Even if you have a busy schedule now, you likely have a decent amount of free time every night to play. But to actually train, you might have to give up some things that you don't want to give up. You almost certainly cannot get to a professional level by balancing 7 hours of classes, homework, SC2, AND a social life. There's just not enough time to train. When you get home from school, you're going to have to do your homework right away and then immediately start playing SC2. Very rarely will you have time for socialization or other extra curriculars, and this can have negative impacts on your friends and relationships.
If you seriously want to become a pro after high school, I would recommend practicing hard NOW, but don't expect to make it pro right when you leave high school. When you graduate, take a year off (before going to college or getting a job) and spend that time training very hard. I'm talking 8 hours a day of deliberate practice (not watching VODs, reading build-orders, chatting about the game) per day. If you can practice that hard for months on end with no other commitments, then at the very least you'll be putting in the WORK needed to become pro. After that, it's just a matter of skill and luck.
Good luck! As long as you're doing what you have a passion for, you can't really go wrong.
P.S. - Remember...whenever you're serious about doing something, the time you need to do it the most are the times you don't want to do it. At some point in your playing you're going to get tired with the game and want to put it down for a while, or want to skip practicing for a bit to relax or do something "fun." You can take a short break if you want, but it's very important to get right back to it as soon as possible. Taking extended breaks has a way of adding up over time. Think of it like a job...sometimes you get really tired of it, but you still have to do it every day.
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I hear Idra is giving coaching for 150$ an hour, LOL.
Anyway yeah, finish your education first, Sc2 is not hard, not hard at all to become good at, just need a good computer, and more thinking than playing in my opinion.
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I think there are two things to consider here:
First: There is almost no way you will ever make decent money from playing starcraft... so if its about the money at all, which it is for you because your talking about being a pro because your a junior in highschool and scared that you don't know what to do, you have almost no chance. With starcraft you have to put in about 10x the effort for often no pay or 1/100th the pay of a normal job if you get really close.
Second: Even if you do put all the hours in that everyone else has told you to... thinking that if you want something bad enough you can have it... you might, MIGHT, get close... however nearly everyone that close puts in hours you prolly can't without getting kicked out of your house... and what matters at that point... is talent. If you can seriously think you have what it takes after having no indication that you are good whatsoever, you should probably start by finding that indication.
I really do not think you have any reasonable chance of this goal... I don't think I even have a reasonable chance and getting the top 200 was a breeze for me.. but as said before the first 80% is mad easy its the last 20% thats insane.
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On December 11 2010 04:54 Almin wrote:
I hear Idra is giving coaching for 150$ an hour, LOL.
Anyway yeah, finish your education first, Sc2 is not hard, not hard at all to become good at, just need a good computer, and more thinking than playing in my opinion.
It depends on what you mean by good, good enough to make a living off playing SC2 competitively is retardedly hard.
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On December 11 2010 04:30 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
I don't get why people always come with these drastic plans or ideas. It's not that hard to combine becoming good at SC2 with your school or work until you are at the point of trying to win GSL. If you have talent for this game and put in your hours post-school you will still become good enough to win $100 open tournaments and such to get noticed by the community and teams. That is how most of the top players start off and there is no reason to take a different approach.
Just play SC2, join some tournaments, do well, the rest will come later.
This is good, practical advice.
One step at a time, and you'll be fine.
Didn't meant to get into all the 'big picture, do what you love' stuff, but that's the old guy in me being nostalgic.
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On December 11 2010 04:30 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
I don't get why people always come with these drastic plans or ideas. It's not that hard to combine becoming good at SC2 with your school or work until you are at the point of trying to win GSL. If you have talent for this game and put in your hours post-school you will still become good enough to win $100 open tournaments and such to get noticed by the community and teams. That is how most of the top players start off and there is no reason to take a different approach.
Just play SC2, join some tournaments, do well, the rest will come later.
Sounds like the most reasonable advice on here. You don't have to put everything else on the backburner to work towards being a pro. Don't let your schoolwork and other life aspects slip until you have really proven to yourself that you can make it (such as by winning a lot of small tourneys etc.).
Even then, as most have pointed out, most "pros" have other sources of income. Another thing I haven't seen mentioned is the age factor..maybe most people don't like to think about that  . But even if you go "pro" there will come a day when your reflexes are too slow to keep paying the bills and you will be glad that you got your education and have something to fall back on.
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On December 10 2010 14:05 compscidude wrote:
i'll be realistic here.
you will have a greater chance if you stop school and play games from a younger age.
This was the case for Flash, one of the dominant player in SC history.
He started when he was 15, and big portion of his time went to practices.
If your motivated to succeed in e-sports, i recommend having your priorities changed.
Gaming would have to be your first not school, and by all means, this doesnt mean you
must drop out. But rather, you have to understand that doing good in school is not what you
would be expecting, given that you are motivated to succeed in gaming.
So my point is, set your priorities.
How are you going to spend you time?
Ignore this. Stay in school. If you can't get to the top 200 of the ladder while in school, then you can't make money with SC2 if you dropped out.
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On December 11 2010 06:03 TurtlePerson2 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2010 14:05 compscidude wrote:
i'll be realistic here.
you will have a greater chance if you stop school and play games from a younger age.
This was the case for Flash, one of the dominant player in SC history.
He started when he was 15, and big portion of his time went to practices.
If your motivated to succeed in e-sports, i recommend having your priorities changed.
Gaming would have to be your first not school, and by all means, this doesnt mean you
must drop out. But rather, you have to understand that doing good in school is not what you
would be expecting, given that you are motivated to succeed in gaming.
So my point is, set your priorities.
How are you going to spend you time? Ignore this. Stay in school. If you can't get to the top 200 of the ladder while in school, then you can't make money with SC2 if you dropped out.
Thats not true buuuut stay in school. Honestly the best thing you can do is do well in school and get into a good school and make some contacts. Then no matter what you do you'll succeed in life. Almost every single Pro first person shooter i can think of was ranked top in the world while still doing college(some took a break from college and did it in the off season and such). Theres always exceptions like i think maybe fatality. And it sounds like the same way with Star Craft.
Theres no reason why you cant do well in school (grade school/highchool) and still make it to the top in Starcraft(i slept through every class and did most projects in the class before the class it was due and still managed a 70 average(that was also with getting a 50 in english for my friend plagiarizing part of the final project worth 25% of our mark from freeessays.com....). Being that young and already deciding what you want to do is great. That means you have sooooo many years to go pro compared to someone like me whos 22. And if you don't end up making it you'll beable to get a good job and run your own team like jason lake did with complexity.(owned a real estate firm, decided to fund a counter strike team and is now 1 of the largest north american pro gaming teams and then sold his firm) So you can always be apart of the scene if some way if you want to.
Not to mention your young, i thought i wanted to be a programmer when i was 15 til i got to college and hated the people and the tedium and am now doing something different so no risking your future for something you may not want to do 5 yrs down the road by dropping out of school
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Try as hard as you want, but don't make any real sacrifices like getting terrible grades or dropping out of school. Remember you've been playing this game for 8 months, a lot of the pros have been playing for 10 years... honestly unless you really think you are some kind of sc prodigy I wouldn't give it too much thought. Play because it's fun, not because you want to be a pro. But like someone else said, you can't just play a ton of games you really have to THINK about the game and study it.
Good luck, you'll need it.
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On December 11 2010 04:30 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
I don't get why people always come with these drastic plans or ideas. It's not that hard to combine becoming good at SC2 with your school or work until you are at the point of trying to win GSL. If you have talent for this game and put in your hours post-school you will still become good enough to win $100 open tournaments and such to get noticed by the community and teams. That is how most of the top players start off and there is no reason to take a different approach.
Just play SC2, join some tournaments, do well, the rest will come later.
Look at Gretorp. The guy works a full time job and he still has his name in the "pro starcraft 2 players" book. You're definitely right about people saying they can't achieve a status because they don'/can't play as much. I have like 200 something ladder games, but I somehow happen to crush some 800 game players with ease. You have to really study the game and not just play it.
To the OP, you say you will be a lot better in another year and a half, but guess who else will be better? The pros, and all the other people wanting to become a "pro" and get their name in the spot light.
If you want to get noticed to play in top tournaments or something, laddering hardcore and staying in the high points list would definitely help, kinda like what select did.
but laddering wont exactly get you up there. streaming is a good way to get recognized, and basically just playing in online tournaments, and LAN ones. the TL SC2 opens every week are a good idea to. If you can get far in those then you know you will be on a stream with a few thousand viewers. Which is right because, select won what? the first two opens? that and having a top spot on the ladder got him noticed. then, he got far in MLG. you really have to dedicate your time on this.
Getting a practice partner and talking with him after each game helps SO much, and I know you've heard that a lot of times, but it works, especially if you talk on vent or whatever.
-And to school, I don't think you should drop out. If you're really serious about this and you know you won't regret in the future...at least get a GED.
I'm in high school as well right now, a senior, and I honestly sleep in EVERY single one of my classes, but im passing 3 of them(out of 4), and i don't study or put work into it. I honestly think you should just stay. High school is sooooooo easy(at least it was for me). And then this redirects to what I said and Nazgul said about having time. Just look at gretorp, not only does he have a job, but he can't "sleep in class" or anything, and he has to get a good rest at night.
On December 11 2010 07:44 OutlaW- wrote:
Nony says he practices 4~ hours per day. That's low. You just have to be effective in practicing, not just mass gaming.
This is also a good motivator, I myself would def say I do this.
good luck, and remember, there are thousands of people who want to become a pro like you  SC2 is a new game and you have a chance, there are people coming and going like flies
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double post  quote instead of edit sorry
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EPT
