If you would like to know how to get in on your own eSports job (not just restricted to Starcraft 2) please click the show spoiler brackets below. It will be a long explanation.
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I found my jobs through luck. Literally, I made a reddit post detailing eSports jobs (casting, eSports community managers, etc.) and they sent me a message asking me if I was looking for that kind of work still. One thing lead to another and I got a contract to work for them as a community manager as I was coming back from Korea. I work for CM Storm at their headquarters here in Taiwan part time. The income is not enough to support me alone, but I love what I do. In the beginning I started learning Chinese because I wanted to meet my ex-girlfriend's parents and the rest is history. Using the skills that I have now, I was able to get ahold of WCS Replays from China and Tawian and casted them in English. What I advise you guys to do is, find the game that you love. If that game has an eSports scene in whatever country you love, learn the language of that country well enough to build up a fan base of natives that are in that country. People love a foreigner that will make an effort to really sit down with a book an hour a day to learn their own language - almost regardless of the country. In the course of two years, I have built up a total of 3,400 Chinese-speaking fans from both Weibo and Facebook.
First and foremost there are two major reasons why I work for TeSL, and I want you all to see this from a realistic perspective. 1) I had to come here and volunteer to work for TeSL as a caster. This means that TeSL has not helped me monetarily (but I love what I do none the less and I am gaining casting experience through casting World of Tanks for them) and 2) I was selected because I am a native English speaker. Adding to those two reasons, I have a degree in Chinese Language and Literature. I speak Chinese relatively well. Much the same way that casters in Korea would speak Korean relatively well. That also means there are casters out there on the planet that are already more qualified than me to cast World of Tanks, but the people in charge of producing this content do not see the idea of hiring those more qualified casters and flying them here - across continents, as something that would hold return value. That means I am cheating other casters out of a job opportunity without knowing it. As things are right now, I am consulted for nothing more than casting, my perspective of casters that I work with, etc. etc. I have no power or say in day to day affairs at TeSL. However, they treat me like a best friend. I love the crew to death there.
Since joining flash wolves, I also went to their training center. Since Kane arrived in Taipei, I personally escorted him from the airport to TeSL to wait for our coach. Our coach then drove him back to our training center in Taichung, which I have been to.
Photos since arriving:
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San
leenock
Me at the Flash wolves training house with coach and everything.
Left to Right: Kane, Slam, Ian, Vanilla (Rush, Terran player, not FW yet!), Hui, San, JoJo (AKA YouRush), Has
I can only hope for the best in the near future.
There are a lot of projects in the works right now that I want to talk about, but I cannot because they are sealed shut with NDAs.
I am teaching English as my staple job. With two years of teaching experience I will be able to find another job in Taiwan outside of this profession. I lost maybe 5 Kilograms since I first arrived here in Taiwan, but now that I have my teaching job I am fine. I will continue casting as a passionate expression of what I love, and to develop my resume.
When I came here and met a handful of some of my 2,500 fans, and introduced myself at a recent offline event, I heard a roar of applause. That's all I want. Not money. In the beginning I wouldn't have minded making minimum wage from casting, but looking back I was so naive. I have everything I want in life and nothing more.
P.S. Apologies if this blog doesn't look so smooth. To be honest, I went to bed last night at 5:00 A.M. and woke up at 8:00 A.M. to go to work.
EDIT: I just noticed I got teh Guardian portrait now. ^_^
EDIT 2: Taiwan finally has a Terran player!