eSports For A New Generation

Current competitive Smite player, Jordan Parsons gives the low down on how to get involved in eSports and how to grow a successful team.

The world of eSports is ever growing and with Sky Sports and ITV sealing television rights, the sport is about to explode.

Getting involved is easier than ever, with the Electronic Sports League (ESL) and Faceit offering keen players routes into professional gaming.

As a Competitive Smite player for over a year, winning multiple tournaments at a variety of levels and pushing into the challenger circuit with Rising Above (Formally Veritas), there are few better people in a position to guide you into the world of becoming a pro player.

Develop Your Skill

First of all you have to get good in a game. Making or joining a team shouldn’t enter your mind until you are in the top 25% of the player base and this is easily checked by your rank in that game as an example; in Overwatch this can be seen as Diamond division or in Smite at least top gold.

After you have achieved the first step, you will have inevitably met people who you think are on a similar skill level to you. These are the people that should be contacted in making a team, or potentially you may even be asked by someone else looking to make a team.

The amount of people who want to get involved but just don’t know how to is staggering.

Last year in ESL, over seven million players took part in 12.5 million games – at 90 thousand tournaments around the world. (Source: https://play.eslgaming.com/uk)

Once you have a team and are getting better on a personal skill level, now begins the hard part. There will be countless late nights working together on team synergy and learning exactly how each other player functions. There’s also the trust you need to develop with your team members.

Do not expect results instantly as from my experience it has taken over a year to get the team to work together and make the riskier plays that win games.

Finding The Competition 

But who do you compete with? The ESL are a company that organise events and competitions for cash in 50+ eSports.

With professional admins and judges they are the entry point for the majority of teams looking to get their foot on the ladder. However there is also Faceit, whom provide leagues and tournaments for teams looking to work on their consistency and getting ready for the Pro Circuits.

Each team will progress more with every defeat and should constantly look to improve.

A great way to improve is Theorycrafting and understanding the mechanical side of the game.

Working out mathematically the advantages and disadvantages of everything will help to understand how hard to push and when to play it safe. Understanding the game as a whole will put the team leaps and bounds ahead of others whom rely on second sourcing.

It sounds boring but there will be at least one of you on your team that will love this side of it.

Improve Improve Improve

Secondly video footage is a great way to improve, and should be scrutinised at every opportunity to help each other improve.

Analysing how you operate as a team is essential as it encourages all members to understand how they operate individually and as a team.

I cannot stress this point enough as without this we would have hit a glass ceiling. Below is a video that highlighted our errors and enabled us to progress.

No ‘I’ in Team

Just remember you are a team, and you must work as a team. Hatred or bias towards each other must be put to one side and a level of objectivity must be achieved – you are all working towards a common goal and that goal alone is difficult enough to reach without personal differences getting in the way.

The highs and lows are part of the parcel that comes with being in a team.

Just never give up, and always strive to improve.

Warning Video contains explicit language

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