Page 73 - Sharp Spring 2021

Joshua Ostroff investigates the evolution— and endgame
—of esports
P erched before his high-end PC, Van- couver pro gamer Kurtis “Aui_2000” Ling is inside a clear soundproof
booth with his teammates. Across the floor of Seattle’s KeyArena, in a matching enclo- sure, is rival CDEC Gaming from Shang- hai. It’s early August 2015, and this annual tournament — The International or “TI” — has over $18 million USD up for grabs. The grand finals in the 18,000-seat venue sold out in minutes, and on day two, a DDoS attack delayed play several hours, further amping up the tension and excitement.
“There’s thousands of people outside and you can’t make out what they’re saying, but you can feel it. Like, you can feel the vibra- tion of the crowd cheering,” Ling recalls. “The booths, as good as they are, they don’t block out everything. It’s funny, sometimes the crowd will get really excited and you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m about to die!’ You’re trying to keep your cool and play your game, but it’s just all around you and it’s electric.”
“And if you win a game on that main stage, there’s nothing like it,” says the only Cana- dian to do so, smiling at the sense-memory of his then-team Evil Genius’s victory, or
perhaps his cut of the $6.6 million USD prize. “When you step out of the booth, it’s just an explosion.”
The venue, since renamed the Climate Pledge Arena, will soon be home to the NHL’s latest expansion, the Seattle Kraken. Everyone’s heard of hockey, but what about Dota 2, the game Ling was playing?
While Fortnite is a pop-cult phenomenon — the 100-person “battle royale” shooter claims more than 350 million players — Dota 2 remains a relative obscurity with 7.7 million monthly players. A 2013 sequel to Defense of the Ancients, an official version of a community-made Warcraft III mod, it’s one of the primary games in professional competition, alongside more mainstream bestsellers like Call of Duty, Super Smash Bros., League of Legends, and Overwatch.
But it boasts the biggest take-home — ac- cording to tracking site Esports Earnings, 29 of the top 30 pro gamers play Dota 2, with one $3 million-making Fortnite play- er breaking the streak. (This is due to the game’s unique fan-inflated prize pools, which have already pushed next August’s The International above $40 million.
Others, like Overwatch League — which adopted a traditional sport’s city-team model, including Vancouver Titans and Toronto Defiant — offset lower winnings with salaries and benefits.)
Currently on a break from competing and coaching, Ling is 28th on the all-time earn- ers list with just over $2 million, which, he shrugs, “sounds about right.” No wonder his parents weren’t upset when he abandoned studying sociology at UBC to go pro. But even though the global esports industry has exploded in recent years, with audi- ences tripling between 2012 and 2019 to an estimated 433 million worldwide, Ling is more circumspect. “You have to get really, really good and really lucky. It’s not easy.” he says. “Most people, I wouldn’t tell them to pursue this as a career option.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, of course, has disrupted the whole industry, albeit less than traditional sports, as in-person competition transitioned online and, for a few months, was the only game in town. In fact, Newzoo’s Global Esports Market Report found revenues actually grew to $1.1 billion in 2020, up 15.7 per cent year over >
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