SMOR3S
02-01-2011, 02:32 PM
Hey everyone on the coL community. I want to first start this thread off by saying hello. My name is Kevin I am 17, I live in Ohio and Gaming is my passion. To get to the point of this post, so I won't end up making this about 10 paragraphs long, I was wondering what approach should I take to get to that next step in my career.
Let me start off with explaining how and why I started competitive gaming. This might be easier for everyone to understand from where I am coming from. I started gaming at an early age, around 5-6 at the earliest. The first console I could remember playing was an N64. The first game I played on it was Ridge Racer (The Original) I fell in love with this game immediately, it was something about the fast past game play and the way the cars moved around the track that made me like the game even more. Now if your wondering how this falls into place with the competitive gaming aspect, well i'll explain.
So its currently the year 1999, I am 6 years old, and found a new obsession, which is gaming. The benefit of this game that probably made me want to compete at the least was the fact that it had 2 Player ability to do split screen head to head racing. So I had a sister, she's about 3 years older than me, being the older sister that she is, she thinks she can always boss me around. My way of countering that was through gaming. When we started to fight over anything, we would just take it to the console and play it out. We did multiple games, Mario Kart 64, Golden Eye, Perfect Dark, Ridge Racing, you name it, anything that had a 2 player mode to it we would compete at.
Fast forward to 2006, I am now 14, I am quite sure I was in the 7th grade at this time. Now don't get me wrong I wasn't the most social, popular kid in the school, but I was very open minded, intelligent and no matter having a click or not, I still had a love for gaming. My nights after school, I didn't hang with friends, go out and have fun. I would stay at home and play video games from 3:00pm - 11:00pm, go to bed, wake up at 6:30am, go to school and repeat. Now this was ok at first, until I started skipping school a lot, this lead to all types of problems such as probation, court and all types of issues..
Now I am in the 9th grade Its around 2008. Our family moved about an hour away from where I lived previously. This was good because the previously town that I lived in was very small and had no gamers at all. I still went to public school in this new town for about a year or so until I was home schooled, but i'll get to that part soon. I finally invested in a laptop, and had a pretty big group of friends that played PC games. I bought a laptop, because I would always go to there house and play with them. I was introduced to a new game called Counter Strike Souce. Now at the time, I wasn't that big on FPS games, I did play some COD4, but mostly I played King of Fighters on the PS1 , and DoA 4 on the Xbox 360.
Now this is were the whole competitive scene steps into place. I finally bought CSS, after installing the game, I didn't know much about it to be honest. At first I went into a few lobbies and got wrecked hard. But after a while my skill started to progress. I found out about something called "scrimming" later on that year. It was surprising that people gamed this seriously. Probably scrimming on CSS, and watching CGI, and CGS was the main reason that I wanted to compete at this level of gaming.
I wasted a good 2 years on CSS trying to be something. I gave up on that game now, but in the time that I played CSS, I still played DoA 4, KoF, Grid Racing, Forza MS Series, SSF4 and so on. To this day I keep practicing, and hoping I can get some where to compete at a higher level of gaming. I am not some kid thinking that I can take gaming seriously just to get paid. I understand every aspect of professional gaming, from the sponsors, to traveling. I have that responsibility and mindset to were I know I want to do this for a good while.
The conclusion of this thread would have to be, where should my next step be. I understand that the decision is ultimately mine, but honestly I am confused on what direction to take. Probably I fell this way because it feels like there are no opportunities to take. I do want to possibly go to Pax East or some other big events and show that I have what it takes, but until then I need to decide what direction to take. Because one wrong decision can change your life forever.
Thanks for listening to what I have to say. I chose to post it on coL's forum, because I respect coL that much to were I feel that the community will understand from where I am coming from. If anyone has any experience being in this situation where they are trying to break out from the rookie position of gaming let me know I would appreciate it. Any advice from anyone is more then welcome. ^_^
Let me start off with explaining how and why I started competitive gaming. This might be easier for everyone to understand from where I am coming from. I started gaming at an early age, around 5-6 at the earliest. The first console I could remember playing was an N64. The first game I played on it was Ridge Racer (The Original) I fell in love with this game immediately, it was something about the fast past game play and the way the cars moved around the track that made me like the game even more. Now if your wondering how this falls into place with the competitive gaming aspect, well i'll explain.
So its currently the year 1999, I am 6 years old, and found a new obsession, which is gaming. The benefit of this game that probably made me want to compete at the least was the fact that it had 2 Player ability to do split screen head to head racing. So I had a sister, she's about 3 years older than me, being the older sister that she is, she thinks she can always boss me around. My way of countering that was through gaming. When we started to fight over anything, we would just take it to the console and play it out. We did multiple games, Mario Kart 64, Golden Eye, Perfect Dark, Ridge Racing, you name it, anything that had a 2 player mode to it we would compete at.
Fast forward to 2006, I am now 14, I am quite sure I was in the 7th grade at this time. Now don't get me wrong I wasn't the most social, popular kid in the school, but I was very open minded, intelligent and no matter having a click or not, I still had a love for gaming. My nights after school, I didn't hang with friends, go out and have fun. I would stay at home and play video games from 3:00pm - 11:00pm, go to bed, wake up at 6:30am, go to school and repeat. Now this was ok at first, until I started skipping school a lot, this lead to all types of problems such as probation, court and all types of issues..
Now I am in the 9th grade Its around 2008. Our family moved about an hour away from where I lived previously. This was good because the previously town that I lived in was very small and had no gamers at all. I still went to public school in this new town for about a year or so until I was home schooled, but i'll get to that part soon. I finally invested in a laptop, and had a pretty big group of friends that played PC games. I bought a laptop, because I would always go to there house and play with them. I was introduced to a new game called Counter Strike Souce. Now at the time, I wasn't that big on FPS games, I did play some COD4, but mostly I played King of Fighters on the PS1 , and DoA 4 on the Xbox 360.
Now this is were the whole competitive scene steps into place. I finally bought CSS, after installing the game, I didn't know much about it to be honest. At first I went into a few lobbies and got wrecked hard. But after a while my skill started to progress. I found out about something called "scrimming" later on that year. It was surprising that people gamed this seriously. Probably scrimming on CSS, and watching CGI, and CGS was the main reason that I wanted to compete at this level of gaming.
I wasted a good 2 years on CSS trying to be something. I gave up on that game now, but in the time that I played CSS, I still played DoA 4, KoF, Grid Racing, Forza MS Series, SSF4 and so on. To this day I keep practicing, and hoping I can get some where to compete at a higher level of gaming. I am not some kid thinking that I can take gaming seriously just to get paid. I understand every aspect of professional gaming, from the sponsors, to traveling. I have that responsibility and mindset to were I know I want to do this for a good while.
The conclusion of this thread would have to be, where should my next step be. I understand that the decision is ultimately mine, but honestly I am confused on what direction to take. Probably I fell this way because it feels like there are no opportunities to take. I do want to possibly go to Pax East or some other big events and show that I have what it takes, but until then I need to decide what direction to take. Because one wrong decision can change your life forever.
Thanks for listening to what I have to say. I chose to post it on coL's forum, because I respect coL that much to were I feel that the community will understand from where I am coming from. If anyone has any experience being in this situation where they are trying to break out from the rookie position of gaming let me know I would appreciate it. Any advice from anyone is more then welcome. ^_^