ESports is rapidly gaining momentum around the world. Broadcasts with e-sports disciplines gather millions of enthusiastic spectators, sports arenas, given to the players ’performances, get hammered, and this seems to be just the beginning.
The great future of eSports
Already, the International Olympic Committee has recognized e-sports as a second-level sports discipline. And although this is still not enough to include it in the Olympic program, this may change in the future.
Imagine an Olympic computer game competition! But now it’s not so fantastic. Major tournaments and competitions in various computer disciplines already bring huge profits to both the organizers and the players. For example, the prize pool of the largest Dota-2 tournament this year, The International 2018 exceeded twenty-five million dollars, and the OG team that won first place in the tournament received more than eleven million of them.
In recent years, the prize pool in all disciplines has only continued to grow, and sponsors report incredible profits on products advertised by cybersportsmen. A career as a professional computer game player can bring in huge amounts of money and recognition around the world. So what distinguishes ordinary players from professionals?
Esportsman Life
The esports profession is a mystery to many. However, like any athlete, professional players in computer disciplines spend a huge amount of time in training and honing skills. You cannot succeed in any business without devoting most of your time to it - and eSports is definitely no exception.
For e-sportsmen, playing a game is the same job that you need to devote a lot of your time to. For example, professional CS players often train the whole team in separate training centers, where nothing can distract them from work. It happens that in them they live and sleep with their team, spending literally all day in training. However, eSportsmen cannot get used to this - tournaments are held all over the world and players have to spend a lot of time living in hotels in a foreign country.
How to become a professional player?
Many people come up with this question, because for many cybersportsmen are an example to follow and aspirations. In addition, the opportunity to earn and live with your favorite game - is this not a dream? However, everything is not so simple. Many of today's professional Dota players began to play it from early childhood, at a time when the competition was not as great as it is now, and the number of players was much smaller.
In 2018, hundreds of e-sports organizations operate around the world, which is very difficult to get into, because they offer decent salaries, long-term contracts and comfortable conditions. However, with persistence, patience and, most importantly, skill, nothing is impossible. Many cybersportsmen who now compete in international arenas and earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for their victories were unknown players who just played their favorite game very well.
Having risen to the very top of rating games, which are necessarily present in any e-sports discipline, there is always a chance to be noticed by one of the professionals and to be invited to the team. There are many such stories, and they are not something out of the ordinary. After all, where else to look for future e-sports stars, if not among the best players?
How are professionals different from ordinary players?
Of course, mainly any professional is distinguished from an amateur by skill, and this is the most important thing. But can any skill be learned with due persistence? Maybe. One of the main qualities in e-sports disciplines is reaction, mind, ability to analyze the situation and make quick decisions. All this can be developed with hard training. Now for everyone, games are available for training reactions and click speeds, thousands of lessons and tips from professionals can be found on video hosting sites, there are entire websites devoted to the intricacies of games, a whole industry is built around the training of e-sportsmen. And, nevertheless, not every well-playing person will become a professional player. So what's the deal?
Equipment for eSportsmen
It is believed that in order to play as a professional, the best equipment is absolutely necessary, that is, a keyboard, mouse, the system unit itself, and even a chair. This is partly true - it is impossible to play at a high level on a "weak" computer with outdated components. The rest is not so important. For example, for a mouse of a professional player, only high DPI, optimal frequency, grip comfort and additional buttons are mainly important. For the keyboard, it is a mechanical type of keys, not a membrane type, which helps to press it faster. Many e-sportsmen take to major tournaments, where everyone is provided with the best equipment, their own mice and keyboards, and sometimes even chairs, preferring to play on what they are used to. So the indispensable need for equipment is more a myth than a truth.
ESports Settings
Quite a lot in the game depends, including on the settings of the game itself. And this is not only about in-game settings, but also about what can be changed before the game starts. Few know about things like startup options. These additional options help to customize the game more finely than in-game settings - they change the general configuration of the game.
In CS: GO, for example, you can turn off the screen saver, allowing you to speed up the loading of the game, change the tick rate (the unit of sending and receiving data from the server per second), enable the old interface from the classic version of the game, force the game to use the mouse settings from the operating system, set the priority and the number of processor cores that the game will use, set the refresh rate of the monitor, and so on. How to do it?
In games installed in the STEAM system (this applies, for example, to both CS: GO and Dota 2), before starting, select the "Library" menu, find the game of interest there, right-click and in the window that appears select "Properties", then "Set launch options." The most important parameter for launching professional players is, without a doubt, the screen refresh rate. This is set by the -freq command with a number - professionals set 120. Such a screen refresh rate can greatly improve the smoothness of the game.
In-game settings
Do not forget that you can change directly inside the game. In CS: GO, the settings for professional players are often the same. Esportsmen prefer to use low settings for graphics, leaving only shadows that are highly traced, which make it possible to see the enemy a split second earlier. Despite professional monitors with a large screen and high resolution, most of the players in CS: GO use a resolution of 1024 x 768 with black stripes, because you can focus more on the game and your eyes do not run apart if you need to look, for example, at the radar.
The sensitivity of the mouse is very important - everything is individual, but on average, most e-sportsmen prefer a DPI of four hundred points and a USB Rate of a thousand. In general, a similar principle applies to all games, and not just shooters. Low graphics settings that give the maximum response speed and do not distract from the game itself, a high refresh rate for maximum smoothness and a properly configured mouse.
Additional settings
In addition to the above, for professional CS players, and any other shooters, it is considered important to set up the scope. In CS: GO, the main team that is responsible for the sight of the sight is cl_crosshairstyle. This command determines what the style of the scope will be used. In addition, in the game you can adjust the thickness, size and presence of a point in the sight, the stroke around the sight and its size, as well as the color of the sight and its transparency. However, there is no unity among cybersportsmen - the sights of professional players are very different, some even change the scope settings several times a week, so its effect on the game is still minimal.
Binds of professionals
Binds are the ability to assign a specific action to a button in a game. And this is already really important. For example, every professional player of “Dota” without fail uses binds for all used items, which can be a maximum of 6 - without this, just nothing. CS: GO players use binds, for example, to buy weapons in the initial stage of the game and to quickly select the type of grenades. Esportsmen who have dedicated themselves to strategies use binds to control the army and divide it into important key units. Those who play MMORPG use binds for those abilities that did not find a place on the main panel, or for those that need to be applied as quickly as possible.
Thus, among in-game settings, binds are one of the most important parts and that is why there are always additional buttons on gaming mice - after all, what could be more convenient than clicking on a really important button with your main hand while continuing to control the mouse?
Little tricks of professionals
With success, fame comes to any eSportsman. And although it is very nice to be recognizable among players from around the world, this also has its drawbacks. For example, the games of professionals are watched. And if in CS: GO this doesn’t pose a particular problem, let them see for themselves, the main thing is reaction speed and the ability to shoot, then for Dota-2 players or similar games where the tactical component is also important, this becomes a serious obstacle. The same problem awaits the players in the strategy - preparing for a serious performance, such e-sportsmen often play only in hidden games with familiar opponents and coaches, or simply change their nicknames. Because of this, the nicknames of professional Starcraft-2 players who play on the tops of rating tables, for example, most often look like |||||||||. Thus, they hide from their competitors and work out strategies in rating games, revealing their identity only in tournaments.
What to do if skills are not enough?
As it became clear, being a professional player is not easy. Using the best equipment, imitating professionals and using their settings and binds, spending a huge number of hours in the game, you can never achieve the desired success. The competition is incredibly great, skillful players compete with each other around the world, and not everyone will become the best.
So what to do for those who want to touch the world of e-sports or start making money on it, but at the same time not as good at games as he would like? Here it is important to determine what the problem originally consists of. Esports are incredibly diverse, and anyone can become a part of this world with due diligence. Shooters are suitable for players with quick reactions and accurate sights, for those who know how to work in a team and analyze the situation - MMORPG or games of the Dota type, loners will find themselves in strategies. In the end, among e-sports disciplines there are games that require only intelligence and luck and do not require a reaction at all, such as card games. They also hold tournaments with large prize pools, and there have been cases when even children performed at such events!
Those who are not too good at the game, but savvy in the theoretical part, can become its commentators, analysts or interviewers, coming to every major tournament and meeting there with their favorite teams and players. A huge number of people work at tournaments and other events - videographers, journalists, electricians, computer scientists and many others. Recently, psychologists have even been hired for the most famous teams to help players deal with stress and better understand each other.
Game Betting
The industry of betting on them is always growing around popular games. Professional betting players can earn huge money by predicting the outcome of games, both large and small. This works the same way as betting on a regular sport - you can bet on the outcome of the game as a whole or on the occurrence of a certain event. The only difference from sports is that the result can be a little more predictable with the proper level of analysis. Many teams or players have long and long history of confrontations, and this makes it possible to predict the result a little more accurately than in classic sports, where the speeches and meetings of specific teams or people often occur much less often.
So, you can even become a part of the e-sports world without being able to play like professionals do. It is enough just to love the games and understand them - and any person will be able to connect their lives with this promising direction.