When esports ends

It’s 2005 and 19 year old Scott Bednarski is working his regular shift at Bunnings when he gets a phone call. It’s his manager.

“Can you get time off next week?”

“Probably.”

“Good, ‘cos you’re going to Singapore.”

Scott recalls running through the store telling his bewildered workmates he was flying overseas to play video games.

Two years later and Scott is just one month into a new job when his Counter-Strike: Source team gets the call to head to Malaysia for the Asian region qualifiers of the inaugural Championship Gaming Series. Once again Scott needs to get some time off work.

“My boss said no,” he says.

“I called in sick on the Friday. We prepped on Saturday and played on Sunday. Come Monday I was still in Malaysia. I didn’t even call my boss to say I wasn’t coming in.

“I was just planning to see how it went, I was just so excited to be overseas again. We qualified, we came 2nd and were told we would be paid salaries [to play in the first season of the CGS television series]. It was one of the best days of my life.

“I told my boss I would not be coming back to work.”

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Scott was fortunate. Most professional gamers don’t get to quit their jobs, especially in Australia. The money simply isn’t there. But playing games competitively at a national or international level can be as demanding as a full-time job even if the financial rewards aren’t there. Pro players sometimes have to make tough choices between pursuing their gaming passion and securing their future, but regardless of their decision their gaming exploits can profoundly shape their subsequent careers.

Josh Edwards was a prodigious nine year old who had already conquered DOOM and Quake by the time a group of older family friends introduced him to a new Half-Life mod in the late ‘90s.

“I was already doing speed runs for DOOM and Quake, doing the rocket jumps and all that stuff, before speed running was really popular,” he says matter of factly.

“I was hanging out with a few family friends at a barbecue one day and they suggested we have a LAN party. I’d never played Counter-Strike before. But sitting down at CS beta version whatever-it-was for the first time it just felt natural to me. I just picked up the game in a heartbeat and was beating these guys who were 9-10 years older than me.”

Not too many years later Josh was part of the same CS: Source team as Scott Bednarski that got the nod to go to Malaysia for the CGS qualifiers. Unlike Scott, however, Josh made a different choice.

“That year [2007] was all about me trying to decide between recognising gaming as a future for me versus doing my final year of school,” Josh told me.

“When the CGS offer came through--the CGS was offering a US$35,000 salary as well as travel all around the world--I was already three-quarters of the way through my HSC year. And I had to choose one.

“That was tumultuous for me. I guess it did cross my mind that “hey I could make a living off this.” It's not just going to be one tournament and a quick buck, you get salaried even if you lose.

In the end Josh chose to finish his HSC.

“Looking back now I feel I made the right choice, because of where I am now in my career. But for several years after that choice it still weighed heavily on me, I’m not gonna lie.”

Although he continued to play at pro and semi-pro events in subsequent years--his last appearance at a tournament came in 2014 at ESL in Cologne where he played Battlefield 4--Josh’s decision to prioritise his studies enabled him to secure a marketing job after graduating. Now a sales and marketing executive at PC hardware vendor Viewsonic, he’s been able to draw on his gaming expertise in his post-gaming career.

“I started at BenQ when they were a consumer display company. Now they’re better known for their gaming products. Viewsonic kinda poached me because they want to move into that field too.

“I’d fulfilled that bucket list goal of playing in an overseas competition. Since then I haven’t played in a fully professional team.

“Having said that my career is heavily tied to gaming. I’m supplying monitors to events, sponsoring teams, sponsoring streamers, and that’s where I like to put my effort now.”

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The overwhelming majority of pro and semi-pro players tend to have two things in common. They start their career young and that career doesn’t last very long. The typical player is already competing by the time they are 18 and has likely moved on to other pursuits by their mid-20s.

Jared Krensel was something of a late bloomer. He knew about competitive gaming, and throughout his school years he’d visit internet cafes to play Counter-Strike, Dota and Warcraft 3 against his friends. But it wasn’t until Starcraft 2 in 2010 that his interest in competitive gaming was fully captured, thanks to the ease with which Youtube and other similar services made it possible to watch other players perform and compete.

“Everything was just so accessible,” says Jared. “I started watching GSL (Global Starcraft League) and it was just an incredible production. It was a pretty eye-opening experience.”

Jared was 21 and at university when StarCraft II released. He spent much of the mid-year holiday that coincided with the game’s launch playing online and working his way up the global ladder.

“It was so easy to find videos online that let you learn how to improve your play. I got sucked into that community pretty quickly and hooked on trying to understand the game and open up its complexity.”

He won his first tournament in early 2011. ”It was just for charity,” he recalls. “There wasn’t any prize money.” But he was hooked.

After that he played every tournament he could find. By mid-2011 he realised he’d been neglecting his study as the competitive Starcraft 2 scene really took off. He put uni on hold to commit to playing full-time.

“It was a big scary decision. I had no idea if I was anywhere good enough to be a pro. I knew I couldn’t focus on school because I guess I was somewhat addicted to Starcraft and at the same time I couldn’t practice as much as I wanted to. So I felt like I wasn’t meeting my potential in either thing. I remember talking to my girlfriend at the time and telling her I wanted to quit school and play video games. She said to go for it if you really want to.

“It’s that moment where you say I’m literally doing this fulltime, this is all I’m going to do. I’ve got to make money out of it, I’ve got to support myself, I’ve got to be organised, I’ve got to put all my effort into this. You realise you’re taking this crazy gamble.”

Jared’s gamble saw him putting everything he’d earned back into trying to get better at playing StarCraft II. He was scrounging for sponsorship dollars just to be able to afford to fly overseas to compete, and any winnings would go straight back into getting to the next event. After qualifying for a tournament in Korea, Jared seized the opportunity and paid a Korean team to put him up in their team house for six weeks so he could practice with them.

He’d been making some money on the side from coaching regular players who just wanted to improve their game, but it wasn’t enough.

“I just wasn’t making enough money. I was actually in debt to my friends and my girlfriend. In 2014 I spent a few months in Europe, qualified for some big events and beat some of the best players in the world, but I wasn’t winning any money. I came back after four months and had no money in the bank.”

Faced with the prospect of going back to uni and, in his words, getting a job at Coles, Jared decided to give gaming one more shot. He threw himself back into coaching, started streaming and making videos for Youtube, and was incredibly lucky to be offered the chance to commentate. In 2016 alone he was flown to Shanghai (twice), Taipei, Mexico City, Dubai, Valencia and Los Angeles to commentate various StarCraft II tournaments.

Despite his newfound success, Jared remains aware that his post-playing career is heavily linked to the fortunes of his chosen game, StarCraft II.

“I definitely want to stay in this kind of role,” he says. “But will I have to swap to another game? It’s  definitely a question I think about. Every game does have a lifespan. Blizzard loves StarCraft so I know the developer support is going to be there. Will it be the most lucrative game? I don’t know.

“StarCraft II is the biggest strategy game and there’s always people coming into the game or going back to it. And even if the viewers on Twitch aren’t that high, I know it has a huge Youtube audience. And that’s something I’m trying to crack. I’m learning editing, presentation skills, things like that. And so if StarCraft II goes away I feel I could move into producing content for Overwatch or any of the other games I enjoy playing. At least until StarCraft 3 comes out in ten years!”

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Someone who is well aware of how the popularity of a game can affect their career is Mike Abdow. A software engineer for the past twenty-or-so years, Mike works for a company that develops flight simulation software for commercial airlines, defence forces and other industries that need to train pilots. For Mike, who grew up playing flight sims on the Commodore 64 and PC in the 1980s, it’s a dream job.

For the past twenty-or-so years, Mike has also been Australia’s best Virtua Fighter player.

“It was like nothing I’d seen before,” Mike says of his first encounter in 1993 with the original arcade version of Sega’s fighting game. “Fully 3D, 60 frames per second, the animation was just unbelievable.”

At the time, Mike was attending the University of Technology, Sydney, just a few blocks away from the city’s then main drag for gaming arcades.

“It wasn’t unusual to rock up to the arcades on George St on a Friday night and find a crowd of people watching the game and waiting to play. They used to have Virtua Fighter 2 in a huge cabinet positioned behind the glass entrance to the arcade with the screen facing the street so spectators could easily see it. There were so many people trying to watch it that they couldn’t all fit inside the venue.”

Mike would be there every night for an hour or two. On Fridays he’d be there until it closed. The owner of the arcade would occasionally organise tournaments. This was Mike’s first taste of playing VF2 competitively.

But Virtua Fighter never took off in the same way that Street Fighter and Tekken did. The biggest annual fighting game tournament, the Evolution Championship Series (or EVO, as it’s referred to), has only included Virtua Fighter games in its playlist on three occasions--Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution in 2003 and 2004 and Virtua Fighter 5 in 2007. Mike finished 5th in 2007, netting himself close to $1000, enough to cover half his airfare.

The year prior, the World Cyber Games featured Virtua Fighter for the first time. They opted for the just-released PS3 version of Virtua Fighter 5, which was released without online play, a factor that may have limited its appeal.

“I turned up to the Australian qualifiers and there was literally no one else there,” Mike laments. “Such was the state of the game.”

When he got to the finals he found a tournament run under unusual rules by organisers apparently unfamiliar with the game. Despite player protests the event proceeded. The following year VF5 was back at the event, but Australia didn’t have a qualifying spot.

Unlike other pro players, Mike never had to make a tough choice over his career within and without games. That’s because he never had the opportunity to do so.

“I’m not going to say I have regrets,” Mike says. “I can confidently say I have no regrets at all. That’s partly because I’ve got a great job and I’m 100% certain that I’ll never earn through a fighting game what I’m earning in my job.

“So I won’t say regret, but I’m not too proud to say that I’m a little envious of the better represented fighting games. The latest Street Fighter and Tekken get a lot of exposure and popularity and with that a sense of legitimacy, like the game’s made it, it’s got credibility now. The last EVO was shown on ESPN, that’s huge. It’s not like when people ask me what I was doing in New York for a week? And I say, oh, I was playing a fighting game you’ve never heard of.”

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It’s 2008, a year after Scott Bednarski experienced the best day of his life. The Championship Gaming Series has run way over budget, one of the people behind it has embezzled millions, sponsors have pulled out, and the Global Financial Crisis has just hit. Scott and his team get an email saying it’s over.

The team basically dissolved on the spot. They couldn’t continue playing. The money had run out and they had to get jobs. Scott found himself unemployed for two years. He knew he couldn’t be a professional gamer any more but he still wanted to remain relevant and part of the scene. He ran his own team for a while but it didn’t pay the bills.

“I had no proper skills,” he says. “I had played video games straight from school. I had worked at Bunnings for 2-3 years, played professionally for a couple of years and then was unemployed for two years. [With that as a CV] it’s really hard to find a job.”

He eventually found a gig as a labourer and worked his way up to managing a scaffolds yard. Then, a gaming start-up he’d known for a while finally secured funding and they invited him on board as a consultant. He now works full-time at XY Gaming, a platform where gamers can compete against each other for real money. The CEO is someone Scott used to play against years ago.

///BOXOUT

Ella Leung played for one of the few all-female competitive teams in Australia. She played Counter-Strike: Source and CS: GO with Vox.Eminor, a team managed by Scott Bednarski.

She describes herself as someone who doesn’t want to do anything unless she can give it her best. Unlike many other players, she never found the choice between gaming and her career particularly difficult.

“[Gaming] was serious but I never thought that it could be a career,” she says. “I was at university at the time so I always had something else in mind. It was always a side hobby for me.

“I’m a pharmacist now at a hospital and I do find myself thinking, maybe I could stream on Twitch or maybe I could commentate. But it takes so much time. If you’re gonna Twitch you gotta Twitch every night, you can’t be an overnight sensation.

When she was playing, Ella would spend 4-6 hours every evening practicing with her team. Since quitting she says the lifestyle change has been dramatic.

“It’s a lifestyle sacrifice if you want to play. You need about three hours if you want to play three games and I just don’t know if that’s a priority for me any more. It’s very tiring and repetitive. It’s also punishing physically, because you’re spending so long just sitting there not really using any of your muscles. I feel like a lot of people just game and don’t really take care of themselves.

“Just the other day had the opportunity to jump into a game--we had five girls online for the first time in forever. I think it was my first game in about a year. I just decided to take a break and I’m enjoying that break.”

This article was first published in the PC PowerPlay Technical Handbook 2017.