The digital athletes of the future: Earning $1.6 million behind a keyboard
The digital athletes of the future: Earning $1.6 million behind
a keyboard
Clement Ivanov is one of the top Dota 2 players in the
world.
·
by Erin Winick
·
March 22, 2018
·
If you’ve never watched a game of Dota 2
before, you might be overwhelmed at first. You’ll see a screen full of animated
characters, special effects, and battles on battles. It can be difficult to
keep tabs on all the action.
Clement Ivanov, however, views the scene
differently. He sees each character as a pawn in a slow-moving strategy game,
similar to chess. “You can individually play each character, but there is
always one guy that understands its potential,” says Ivanov. “It’s not a
fast-paced game. Once you get to a certain level, strategy is more important
than the reaction times.”
Dota
2, officially known as Defense of the Ancients 2, is one of the most popular
games in the global arena of electronic sports. Last year’s premier
competition, The International, hosted by the game’s creator, Valve, had over
92 million online viewers, the majority based in China. While collectively over
509 million hours of play were watched, 465 million hours came from viewers
there.
Earning a
living as a professional gamer
Ivanov, 28, who is based in Estonia, is
better known in the professional gaming world as Puppey, captain of Team Secret. One of the top-earning Dota 2
players in the world, he went pro in 2010, and his career growth parallels the
growth of e-sports as a whole. According to E-Sports
Earnings, he has racked up over $1.65 million in prize money from 93
tournaments. The e-sports craze itself brought in $1.5 billion of revenue in
2017, according
to statistics company SuperData. Such games are even being
considered for
the 2024 Olympics. Consequently, the best players have rocketed
to celebrity status within that niche world. “This job is really a hobby and a
weird career overall,” says Ivanov.
Ivanov and his team’s professional
careers took off after their first win at The International in 2011. “Before
the competition, we were poor and not really doing anything,” says Ivanov. “We
went to this Valve competition, and we did well and we won. I can say, well, it
was all worth it. I didn’t even care what happened after that. It was worth it.”
Ivanov
is one of the lucky ones. Supporting yourself on prize winnings alone is
virtually impossible for all but a top sliver of gamers. Only about 500 people worldwide
have earned over $150,000 through prizes. Sure, sponsorships provide support
for players of some games, like League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global
Offensive, but this has yet to reach the levels seen in more established
professional sports. A few players have found avenues for earning money with
traditional sports institutions like the Philadelphia
76ers and the English Premier League, while other have turned to
offering subscriptions on game-streaming platforms like Twitch.
Going pro
Ivanov
has much more to do than just be one of the best players in the world.
While most professional athletes had trainers to help them gain the skills to
go pro, most gamers who have reached the professional level did so without
coaches or trainers. That means it’s up to team captains to give them the
training they missed.
In
his role as a captain, Ivanov’s responsibilities include recruiting team
members, coaching his players to refine their skills, establishing a balance in
the team, coordinating strategy, and—oh, yeah—playing Dota 2. And he is
exceptionally good at all of this. His leadership and guidance are widely
credited as some
of the best in the business.
While
there are varying paths to success as a professional gamer, as Ivanov puts it
bluntly, you just have to be really good. “E-sports is even harder to succeed
in than poker right now,” he says. “It’s similar for Dota, which has a very
small window for success. There are 10 million players, and about 50 are kind
of earning a good living right now. The others are in the middle.”
And
once you reach this top tier, your work is not done. In China, where
e-sports are a matter of national pride, expect to relocate to live
in a house with your teammates full time. As players switch teams, they also
have to switch cities and homes. Team Secret, on the other hand, lives together
for only a few weeks at a time before large tournaments, practicing 10 to 12
hours a day.
The
future of professional gaming
Ivanov
doesn’t see much change coming from the influence of technologies like
artificial intelligence and virtual reality. “Most of the things people thought
would change the gaming world haven’t actually changed it much,” he says. “I do
know a lot these AIs trained
in Dota also compete against players. It dominates the fuck out
them.” But since Dota tournaments are limited to human players, the dominant
AIs aren’t going to take the jobs of professional gamers anytime soon.
What’s
changing is the acceptance of the career path and the profile of the
professional gamer. “We don’t know how far a gamer can go with age and be as
good as somebody else,” says Ivanov. “We are getting to the point where some
competitors are two times older than the younger competitors.”
And as the players age, so does the fan
base. “People understand gaming is in our culture now,” he says. “It’s in our
communities. All of the 25-year-olds know about it. Mostly people over 50 are
the ones that don’t get it. But as time progresses, soon [the older
generations] will understand what we do too.”
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