Adi Kurniawan

The Illusion of an eSports Athlete Adi Kurniawan Aug 9 · 5 min read If I had any spare time after work, the first thing I would do was picking up my phone. I would either play my favourite games or watch other gamers streaming their gameplay on YouTube. Besides learning how to play properly, I gradually learned that playing games could earn some money. Some of the gamers even won tournaments and got sponsorships. Some of them even bought a supercar from winning tournaments and streaming gameplays. I started to think that playing games would be a “game-changer” in my life. Little that I know that I was delusional at that time. Photo by Florian Olivo on Unsplash My appetite for the gaming industry was growing uncontrollably. You could say that I was “passionate” about gaming but now I realized that it wasn’t the right term. I couldn’t stop thinking about playing games all the time, even at work. Gaming was my priority at that time and all wanted was to be better at playing games. I didn’t hang out with my friends “physically” anymore, but I discovered new friends through video games. I became drowned in my fantasy of being a successful eSports athlete. One day, I gathered some friends to join a local tournament. The prize money was not that impressive, especially when I need to share the prize with my teammates. But I thought that it was a good start to try out my newly improved skills in real competition. You may have guessed — I was beaten and thrashed badly at my first tournament. There was always the first time for everything, I learned my mistakes from there and aspired to join other tournaments. However, my search for the first victory in my eSports career always ended up in failure. But that wasn’t even the worst part. My pursuit of becoming an eSports athlete made me neglected my actual duties. My performance at work dropped, I finished my work just minutes before the deadline, all the time. And when I’m done with work, I went back to playing games. I didn’t realize that my passion has turned into an addiction. I strayed further from family and friends, didn’t take care of my health, and kept losing on tournaments. I just couldn’t figure out what when wrong. In the end, I spent around 2 to 3 years, in this cycle, without any concrete results. One day I hung out with my friends from college. We used to play games together during our college days, but not anymore since they were all busy. There, one of my friends handed me his wedding invitation. When I grabbed the invitation I realized that my friends had progressed in their life. The conversation happened during that lunch made my day even worse. One of my friends told me that he was recently promoted to a manager in his company — a prestigious one. One of my friends also told me that he was just recently accepted by a company abroad. Everybody made some progress and I didn’t. When I went home, I sulked. I looked back at what I have done in my life recently and regret everything. I picked up my phone, looked at the app’s icon and started to think, “this was all a mistake”. This hit me hard, so hard that I drowned into depression. It took me several gloomy months of being depressed until I realized that gaming was not for everyone. Only some tiny fragments of gamers called the “elite gamers”, who were able to reap benefits from playing games. But it wasn’t for everyone. . . . So I was forcing myself to change. I tried not to play games at all and it was painful. The temptation of playing “just one game” was really hard to resist. Although it may seem ridiculous and absurd for others, this was one was difficult for me to overcome. My family and some close friends tried to help me by giving some advice. They told me I need to find a new hobby, I need to go outside and I need to do some exercises. The only problem was I just didn’t have any energy for that. One day when I was browsing the App Store, I came across some applications to record running activities. These apps could track my workout activity, gathered some statistics and even got some social features. Then I bought a pair of running shoes, tried running with these apps tracking my activity and the result surprised me. I could see my mileage, I could see my progress with each workout and ultimately, I could see myself making some progress. I started to think that it resembled a video game, where the main character trained to gain some experience and levelled up. From there I realized that the real-life was pretty much a long and never-ending RPG. I spent a lot of time to make progress in video games, but I didn’t do so for my life. My life is my own story and I am the main character. I gave up my dreams about being an eSports athlete because being the main hero in my own life was much more interesting. Not everyone can become an eSports athlete, but everyone can become a star in their own life. It was just a pity that I had to learn it the hard way. . . . Now I still haven’t reached what’s called the pinnacle of my success, but at least I make some progress every day. I still play games sometimes, but never had that spark of becoming an elite gamer anymore. What’s waiting ahead in my life is much more interesting than becoming an elite gamer. I found a new hobby, or in video games’ term, a new sidequest, that is writing. I spend my spare time writing my thoughts and feels great about it. I feel like I keep being productive in my spare time and still learning new things. Writing becomes a new adventure for me. For those of you who are thinking of pursuing a career in eSports, I’m not gonna stop you. I just want to tell you that it will take really hard work, a supportive environment and a little bit of talent. And the most important thing of all, never neglect your own life for playing games. Make gaming a reward after you achieved something in your life. Make it a prize for finishing your “daily quest”. As long as you can keep the balance, I believe you’re good to go. But if you keep failing, always remember that being an eSports athlete is not for everyone. There are other things that you and your talent can do. Good luck! Gaming Video Games Industry Esports Market My Life Story About Help Legal