I believe that Esports will play a big role in the media in the future, it will influence the industry but now it is not giving the real perspective to the masses in the mainstream media and I have the knowledge to say so.
I want to start this post by talking about my own experience in the Esports because I'm a semi-professional player in CS:GO who attended more than 5 international LAN tournaments in Europe and I have big plans to stay and work in the industry in the future. If I will not find myself as a player then I will look for something in the Esports media since its a big part of my life already.
I was not playing video games that often before I got introduced to the Esports.
In November 2014, I saw that my local TV sports channel was broadcasting a live stream of an Esports CS:GO world championship called DreamHack Winter 2014 and that caught my attention.
For the 3 days, I was watching the best players competing in the gaming event for 250 000 $, for me it was something new, something different from the classic sports.
When the tournament ended, I surfed the web to find something related to Esports and I have found most of the information that I put into this blog.
I was inspired by the fact of how big is Esports, how much bigger it will become in the future and how cool it is to be a pro-player.
So I started playing by myself and later was invited to different teams (including international teams) where I really experience both sides of Esports.
I will start with the positive sides of my Esports experience.
First of all, I have met a lot of good people with who I became really good friends besides the game. Secondly, I grew up as a player from a rookie to a well-known player in my own country with the help of these more experienced players. I have won many online and offline tournaments where I made good money just playing the game I love. And one of the most important things for me that I traveled to a lot of countries and saw many places by playing tournaments there.
Now I will talk about the dark side of my Esports experience.
The main issue with that is time management because the game requires a lot of individual and team practice. Since at that time I was studying in high school I had to mix gaming with studies. The second will be family problems, my parents as most of the others didn't like the idea when I told them that I wanted to play a video game that I love and make profit of it, mainly, because of the things that mainstream media told them about the Esports such as addiction and everything that I covered in my early posts but then when I won my first tournament and showed my parents that I may make money on that, they allowed me to play. But money was always a problem, mostly because for professional gaming I need a very powerful PC and gaming "devices" such as a keyboard, mouse, and headset which were costly and I still have to upgrade them each year, my parents helped me with that by buying everything I needed for gaming. The last problem is the health problems that I faced is that I damaged my eyes and right now I'm using a computer only with glasses.
Also, I have to mention the mainstream media and criticize it for the negative influence that it gave. It is mostly happening on the main TV channels when people who don't know anything about the Esports and video games talk about how bad it is for society while they don't have any knowledge to say so. According to that most of the adults and elderly people have negative thoughts on it, which later may cause bigger problems with their close people who are interested in the topic, as I said before because of the mainstream media my parents didn't like the idea of Esports and myself being interested in that.
To sum up, when I started doing this blog I noticed that mainstream media mostly talks about the negative sides such as health problems, addiction to video games while Esports media on the internet gives examples of how profitable is Esports and how it is growing with the massive sponsoring.
I want to start this post by talking about my own experience in the Esports because I'm a semi-professional player in CS:GO who attended more than 5 international LAN tournaments in Europe and I have big plans to stay and work in the industry in the future. If I will not find myself as a player then I will look for something in the Esports media since its a big part of my life already.
I was not playing video games that often before I got introduced to the Esports.
In November 2014, I saw that my local TV sports channel was broadcasting a live stream of an Esports CS:GO world championship called DreamHack Winter 2014 and that caught my attention.
For the 3 days, I was watching the best players competing in the gaming event for 250 000 $, for me it was something new, something different from the classic sports.
When the tournament ended, I surfed the web to find something related to Esports and I have found most of the information that I put into this blog.
I was inspired by the fact of how big is Esports, how much bigger it will become in the future and how cool it is to be a pro-player.
So I started playing by myself and later was invited to different teams (including international teams) where I really experience both sides of Esports.
I will start with the positive sides of my Esports experience.
First of all, I have met a lot of good people with who I became really good friends besides the game. Secondly, I grew up as a player from a rookie to a well-known player in my own country with the help of these more experienced players. I have won many online and offline tournaments where I made good money just playing the game I love. And one of the most important things for me that I traveled to a lot of countries and saw many places by playing tournaments there.
Now I will talk about the dark side of my Esports experience.
The main issue with that is time management because the game requires a lot of individual and team practice. Since at that time I was studying in high school I had to mix gaming with studies. The second will be family problems, my parents as most of the others didn't like the idea when I told them that I wanted to play a video game that I love and make profit of it, mainly, because of the things that mainstream media told them about the Esports such as addiction and everything that I covered in my early posts but then when I won my first tournament and showed my parents that I may make money on that, they allowed me to play. But money was always a problem, mostly because for professional gaming I need a very powerful PC and gaming "devices" such as a keyboard, mouse, and headset which were costly and I still have to upgrade them each year, my parents helped me with that by buying everything I needed for gaming. The last problem is the health problems that I faced is that I damaged my eyes and right now I'm using a computer only with glasses.
Also, I have to mention the mainstream media and criticize it for the negative influence that it gave. It is mostly happening on the main TV channels when people who don't know anything about the Esports and video games talk about how bad it is for society while they don't have any knowledge to say so. According to that most of the adults and elderly people have negative thoughts on it, which later may cause bigger problems with their close people who are interested in the topic, as I said before because of the mainstream media my parents didn't like the idea of Esports and myself being interested in that.
To sum up, when I started doing this blog I noticed that mainstream media mostly talks about the negative sides such as health problems, addiction to video games while Esports media on the internet gives examples of how profitable is Esports and how it is growing with the massive sponsoring.
I knew you were into sports, hockey especially, but I didn't know that interest carried over into esports as well. How long did it take for you to get your parents to come around and support you? Was it only after you won money for the first time? And do you think there is any merit to the typically American argument that video games lead to violence? I find this to be an interesting and developing topic that I really know nothing about.
ReplyDeleteThis blog is very interesting since I have zero idea what the Esport is and what is involved. I like the style of the blog, sometimes I am little bit lost because the background is quite disturbing. Before I started to read your blog, i wouldn't expect to have Esport involved in this major. Thank you this blog and thank you that you mentioned also the night part of this topic. In conclusion thank you for improving my knowledge and good luck on your path in Esport.
ReplyDeleteWOW ur blog is awesome ! As i am overwatch player i like the way u describing Esport it is easier to understand however, the heading is a bit confusing here it maybe better if u adjust the colour or background details but in general the topic is fascinating
ReplyDeleteHi, Ruslan. Although I am not a gamer myself I enjoyed reading about this topic. I think your blog is really powerful because you managed to touch upon a number of aspects related to esports - business, health, competition, your experience, etc. In all these aspects you go into detail and you use different tools to help you deliver your message, and all that without getting too carried away. GOOD JOB!
ReplyDeleteHey, thanks for introduction to such interesting topic, I used to watch some cs:go team games such as Kazakhstan’s “Avangar” or Danish “Astralis”, but have never thought about their roots, i mean electronic sports, form of competition using video games . Even if the majority of people sees e-sport in negative way, but in my opinion , e- sports is the direct example of how video games used properly.
ReplyDeleteI liked reading about your topic because I didn't know much about E Sports beforehand. I like that you talked about your own experience with e sports first, and also touched on a number of factors that influence it especially the media. I wonder if peoples notion that violent video games are harmful could have any impact on this as well.
ReplyDelete