the Ryanator
Clemson, SC
Male, 23
I played two entirely different video games professionally for multiple years. That is, I traveled around the country often on a sponsor's dollar and competed in video game tournaments for money. I believe I can provide good insights into professional gaming. If you want to know more just ask!
I'm now lead developer at LiveNinja an internet startup that I will shamelessly promote here.
They react positively but, mostly more of a polite positive than anything. Most people don't understand and I rarely go beyond explaining yeah I was super good at games people would fly me around the U.S. to play tournaments. My girlfriends knows I used to play professionally but, I don't think has a good sense of what that meant.
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Asians definitely are over-represented and do well. The exact level of Asian domination varies a lot depending on the game.
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I didn't play many games when the controllers were that simple so I'm missing out on the nostalgia.
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There are a few methods, I'll list the ones I've seen work there are probably more I don't know about. 1) Get a local sponsor. I've seen a few lan centers throw a tournament with the prize being a trip to a major tournament, tickets and some other expenses covered. This isn't exactly the best sponsor, but if you aren't that good they are a reasonable stepping stone. The main problem being that they are unlikely to stick with you. 2) Join a sponsored organization. This really depends on what game you play, but if you are good enough or noteworthy enough you can join a top team and they'll likely sponsor tournaments. These often come with a group to practice with and most of the top players in will know the organizations that sponsor lots of players for their games, so you get some reputation although, it's not always good reputation. 3) Get a corporate sponsor. Companies like to sponsor people in everything competitive. Again you'll have to be noteworthy and good but, if you reach these thresholds perhaps win an online tournament or something else of note it is possible to get a corporation to directly sponsor you or your team.
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I've seen three routes of people being disqualified. 1) You can be disqualified for an annoying technicality, for an example at the mlg national championship pro teams can't have roster changes but, this detail isn't very well advertised. 2) You can be disqualified for bad sportsmanship. A while back a top Starcraft 2 player killed all his units without really trying to win. He was already out of prize contention so he didn't want to waste his time but, the tournament host make their money by broadcasting those tournaments so they wanted a game and banned him for a month from that tournament series. The community was fairly split on whether the ban was deserved. 3) For cheating and basically really obviously not legit stuff. People have been banned for having modded games that give them an unfair advantage. The worse case I'm aware of is in South Korea there was serious game rigging going on where players worked with online gambling sites to coordinate games they would purposely lose. All the players involved were permanently banned and legal access was also taken against them.
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It varies depending on what game you play but, googling something like "[your game name] tournaments" will probably get you the information you are looking for. Most tournaments have an open session so you can start playing competitively with no connections then if you do well in a popular game you can look for sponsors.
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Carpal tunnel is pretty common among PC players. I think the general plan for preventing it is just good posture. For the players who get carpal tunnel there is a surgery that allows for pretty quick recovery.
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