Tournaments, teams and getting noticed

Sponsors in the world of E-sports, 1 pillar of balance

As of late, tournaments have been popping up just about everywhere when it comes to the Starcraft 2 E-sport scene. The most recent one here is of course the IPL (IGN Pro League). This has its good and bad sides to it. It is great to have so many high quality tournaments around, with a very high production quality. The downside is that we as viewers simply don't have time to watch every single tournament out there.

But it is still mostly good news, as this means there are enough sponsors and generous individuals around to finance all these tournaments and provide some high quality streamed content for the community, and a ground for the community to prove themselves on as capable players. The relation between sponsors, the players and the community is so crucial if we as enthusiasts want the Starcraft 2 scene to grow out of proportion and become the next big thing.

You can even make a living out of being active in the E-sport scene in the current days, which is something that has long been considered as "downright impossible". Having an enthusiastic community and a great player pool, together with some great sponsors go hand in hand to make all the tournaments, streams, teams and LAN events possible.

So you think you can be a pro gamer?

Many players out there often wonder how they can become a member of a sponsored team. Most of the time, these players will start sending emails to well-known teams in which they state that they can play really well and wonder if they can join the team. 99.9% of them get rejected. The root of the problem being that only 0.1% of the players doing this actually have the statistics and a reputation to back up their claims.

There are definitely some basic rules that you should follow if you ever want to become a privileged player, and they all involve hard work, a tough skin and a whole lot of performance and motivation. Let's go over the basics before I start to elaborate on the different teams and what they offer, versus how to get in one.

I - The mentality
This is specifically true for players of a younger age, but also holds true when it comes to older players. First, before you even start daydreaming about being the next "Grubby" or "Nada", you  need to sit down and take a long, hard look at your own behaviour and mentality. You could even be a natural talent, but it does not matter if you cannot cope with dissapointment or bad days, or have a tendency to be extremely impatient. Be honest with yourself and write down everything you think might sabotage or get in your way at some point.

It is the most crucial step in the whole process, but is easily the most overlooked one. I have seen so many players get sabotaged by their own flaws in their mentality. Even some of the better-known players still suffer too much from rage for example, and it literally holds them back from being the best they can be. I wrote a big article solely about mentality a while ago, so if you want to get into the head of a true pro and understand how to deal with certain events and problems, you can check it out here. Of course the main factor that fuels your motivation to keep going is having fun with it as well! So by all means, enjoy!

II - Efficient training methods, quality vs quantity balance.
Everyone knows him, the guy that wants to become pro so bad. He ladders almost 24/7 to get to the top, yet he never seems to get any better. He is the guy with 5000 1v1 games played, and 4900 of them being in the same division of the same league. Never moving past the barrier. His train of thought: 'Playing en masse gives me the most experience so I will eventually improve and become a better player. Every top player trains a lot!'

There is some truth in his way of thinking. Practice does make better. But it has to be targeted practice, time invested into specific areas. Instead of just playing games and trying to just remember mistakes and not make them again, which might improve your play a bit, you should set your goal of the day in advance. Top players play an extensive amount of games, but they play them with a purpose.
The purpose can be something like: I have experimented with this new build, it worked pretty well in a custom game environment against my training partners. Now I want to go on ladder with it to test and adjust it versus all kind of strategies and different playstyles of others to finetune the flow and get a good feel for how I can squeeze out the most while relying on the thinnest timings possible.

You can also focus on mastering builds, comparing your benchmarks with pro players to see where you are at. Analyse your replays, which is SO IMPORTANT I cannot stress this enough. Most people cannot even think about taking a break during a ladder session to watch that game where they just lost horribly. But if you actually do it and write down absolutely every detail of that game, analyse it, write down everything you need to improve upon and then resume laddering, you WILL improve extremely fast.

Now you might say that it's boring or takes away from your practice time. The thing is, if you are not at the top yet, there are a lot of things you still need to work on. Better to start working on getting into good habits early. You don't want to have to change all your bad habits later on because it's a whole lot harder to get rid of them.
Once your play becomes really solid and balanced, you can shift it more towards actual play to improve on the nuances of the game. You no longer need to think about 101 things because 98 of them are on auto-pilot, freeing up your focus to use it on other things like keeping your macro top notch for 25 mins+ without getting exhausted.

III - Get involved with the community!
This is probably the most important one of all. Getting to know your way around in the community often leads to having great benefits later on. Wouldn't you love to be one of the earlybirds who knows when a spot opens up in a team, a new tournament is in the making or a new show is coming up. Use your twitter to get all the latest updates so you never miss out on anything.  One day it might just pay off when you are the first one to respond to something, or have a connection with someone.

If you are in fact a solid player, it also never hurts to just look up the websites of all the teams you can think of. Add them all to your favorites to keep tabs on what's new. Even read up on the team mission statements, and the sponsors behind the teams. Every bit of knowledge can help you at some point. This bring me to the final point.

Never miss a thing again!

IV - Team recruitment, talent scouts and tournaments.
A lot of the teams out there have their own way to recruit new players. Some of them have a talent scout that checks for any noteworthy player. They contact the players once sufficient data is gathered and have a brief interview to find out if the player fits the team, in terms of skill and mentality, but also personality.

Other teams organise tournaments of their own, where people can compete to win. Teams can just filter out the bad players and then make a selection out of the players that are left standing. It is an effective way of finding new talent. If you have every single team on your favorites list, you can often be one of the first to sign up if an opportunity like this arises.

Then you have teams that like to recruit based on performance overall. Haven't won any semi-significant tournaments? Well sorry but you are not the player we are looking for. These teams often either contact you after you start winning some tournaments and establish a name for yourself. Or they give you the opportunity to contact them and tell them why you think they should get you on the team.
Now if you read any of the above, you might do the smart thing and actually get to know everything about a team, their sponsors, their mission and all that good jazz. You have some good tournament results, you show them your interest and deep knowledge about the team, and that you are a down-to-earth person. Before you know it you are the new face of the team!


One of the pillars that Esports stands on

Without sponsors, a great community and a great game to support it all, there would be no awesome Starcraft 2 E-sport scene. We can only be thankful for the people that continue to invest into the scene, be it by drawing new companies into it and arrange for good deals in exchange for sponsorship. A good example being tournament organizers offering booths at LAN events for brands like Steelseries, where their gaming gear can get promoted and even sold.
Or the enthusiastic community leaders that invest much of their free time into promoting the game, writing articles and creating all this awesome streamed and nonstreamed content. It is the combination of these things that forms one of the strong pillars that the Starcraft 2 scene now stands on. I have no doubt that this trend will continue after seeing such an influx of new content and concerted efforts in the past 12 months. This is the golden year for E-sport. I have to close this off in a cheesy fashion: 'Hell, it's about time'

P.S. A youtube channel will be coming up soon where you can find interviews and replay commentaries so stay tuned!

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