Request one sentence summary.

Whine due to lack of real dedication.

And then the opposite. But h3i is still cool.

about as cool as a warm, soggy chocolate bar

Wetiquette of the swimming pool dictates that one must avoid at all times urination while within an active swimming area. On the topic of anal leakage, wetiquette is woefully inadequate.

zzz/10

move to stockholm and get active in the local scene. I really do not see your problem, you are 21. You seem to lack focus. Sure it is not easy, but only lazy people complain about lack of luck.

"Hey, just move there, easy!!!". Do you know what moving to Stockholm costs? I think I just mentioned not affording to even go there over a weekend.

What I've always wanted is gaming centre based leagues where everyone can play in regional heats to qualify for national finals. And not just once a year, how about doing it every week. Tournaments are fun but I don't think enough people get the chance to experience really good ones and get involved in our scene.

Hey actually now that this seems to be an appropriate topic, I have a few questions for you dear Sujoy.

You went to Cambridge University right? OK so I read that old magazine article about you (someone posted scans from the mag a few weeks back) and basically it presented you gaming the whole day and eventually how you got into progaming. Nice!! :D But at a top uni like Cambridge? There was time for that? How were your grades?

OK so you graduated from University, and then you went into progaming... Hell you were pretty much progaming whilst juggling your university responsibilities - can and do the two go together? And then instead of getting a well paying job with your cambridge diploma, you went into progaming - could you still live well by making money off something you loved doing (and did very well?) And how did you enjoy what you were doing at the university?

thx a LOT in advance for answering, hopefully ull be able to help me, a frustrated 17 year old trying to find a direction to follow in his life (although instead of gaming like u id pursue seriously taking up guitar alongside some serious study of genetics or whatever in whatever Uni and form some metal band and go crazy :D). the other thing i was considering was going into games design since thats smtg i might love doing... i dunno. what do you know about abertay dundee? all i know is that the Uni there has world leading diplomas in video game design / programming...

neways ill stop now thx :)

You probably could do pro gaming and university at the same time, even a tough course. But I doubt you would be able to have any kind of life at the same time. Personally I got my 1st in my first year and Cambridge has a weird system where they don't actually classify the final degree so I can claim any year of my degree as a final result. Because of that I didn't work very hard in the last two years. I had also gotten a great job guaranteed from a Summer Internship so once that was secured there was no point studying unless it was a subject I was interested in.

As for money, I was making something like £30,000 a year at JP Morgan but I also had my apartment on Broadway/66th fully paid for by the company and also expenses for food/travel and also first class tickets across the Atlantic every 3 months to visit home. So it was actually a really good job for a uni-leaver. If I had stayed with the company I guess I'd be project managing by now and earning 6 figures. However I'd also be working all day all week Mon-Fri with huge stress and having to travel into London on the tube every day. That stuff was driving me mad and also I'm the kind of person that doesn't like to work for someone else. I hate having a boss to report to. That's mainly why I decided to do my own thing.

I've not made a hell of a lot of money yet, but there's always been some plan to do something huge that might be financially rewarding. However I've had some bad luck in missing out on certain opportunities - the dot.com craziness, learn direct stuff in the uk, and so on. But at the end of the day I'm living comfortably, I do my own thing, and I still have a few different projects on the go that might one day make me rich. It's not the kind of life for everyone but I really enjoy it.

yeh, I know a lot of people and have worked alongside people in investment banks, particually canary wharf, morgan Stanley, HSBC, CSFB and it's not cracked up to be.

Sure they have nice apartments over looking canary wharf, nice clothes cars money and get to dine at Nobu (awesome Japanese) but they're owned and interestingly when I talked to a lot of them it's amazing how many of them were actually envious of other people in more ordinary jobs.

If you want to do something unique and rewarding, investment banks are probably the last place to achieve this:/

hmm very interesting story..

It popped some questions.

Your social life was ok? Or just work / learen / games?

Why don't you go for the money and the 'good' life that you could have had? ( Ok this is maybe rather stupid because I think money is important and that's maybe kinda stupid. My mum keeps telling me to just dont think that money is everything.. )

And you think gaming will get your further in life? Isn't it better to leave gaming behind you and maybe just play casual some games a week and have a job?

Please dont take any offence to this post!

thx m8

I didn't really work as hard as I should have for my last two years of university because of the gaming. I did have my social life at the time, my girlfriend would visit me or I would visit her every weekend and I was captain of a sports team also which took a lot of time, plus I used to work on the uni newspaper one day a week. Infact I probably ended up doing too much extra-curricular stuff.

As for staying in the high paying job. To be honest I had no time to spend the money I was making or spend much time enjoying myself. The nature of the work meant that my daily routine from monday to friday was just working and sleeping. There was no time for anything else. Then on the weekends I was almost too tired to do anything useful. What kind of life is that?

I'm much happier working in an industry that I enjoy being a part of. There are opportunities to make money but it's a lot harder. The nice thing is that the gaming industry is growing extremely quickly, and ESports is a relatively new concept so those people who are involved now at the start will be powerful in the future when it may be more lucrative and more mainstream.

Thanks! Very interesting!

Your right about that job i guess! :D

just didn't know you were this smart that you can attend Cambridge.

Well someone should do a i-view again with you, would be nice.

yeah it's mostly down to luck, sort of. but you have to be realistic, look at the situation your in, what are the odds of getting noticed, sponsored, boot camping with pro's etc. slim i'd say. unless your confident you can get a straight out qualifier win or perhaps finish among the top few, your going to struggle.

Absolutely right. Situation I'm in - (un)luck, yeah. I'm happy to take up the "struggle" though, because as I said this is something I love to do and also something that I (because of that?) am good at. Slim indeed, but there are a LOT worse players "up there" with only a fragment of my motivation. They got there because of contacts and have performed well some time because of having a good practise environment in form of bootcamps and highly skilled practise partners. Pretty much only still there because of old achievements, and sometimes that's old.

I just realized how much my gaming situation looks like my real life situation, heh. I was absolute top in SoF2, and there is nothing wrong with my grades from school and stuff, never behaved bad and had good attendance. In both though, I lacked the thing that REALLY matters - contacts.

Anyway, that was a lot of whine yesterday since I was really moody because of the missed DH/WSVG event that I so thought I would afford to go to until I got a good grip of actually how many buses I had to swap between and how much that'd cost... Not really happy about the two other comments here about "lack of real motivation" since that's like the only thing I truly and absolutely have, and "only lazy people complain about lack of luck" since I'm the one who fucking worked for free for half a year even without having to. Not really fun when you simply can't afford going over 20 hours by bus back and forth for half of the monthly income and have people call you "lazy/unmotivated".

Either way, if everything goes as planned, I'll have a month totally for my self in which I'll live in the usual poverty, and just practise practise practise. Just wondering how to get in contact with the people I want to since asslicking or buying my way in or anything like that is both not the way I want to get there, nor appreciated by those in the position, just annoying.

You know what? I've actually kinda been in your situation and unlike me, I'd go "all-in" if I where you.

I mean I'm from Luleå so I kinda know your problems with attending the events and stuff. Personally I've only been to one quailifier (for cpl asia 2000) after I had been playing Q3 for like 3 months (switched from qw) and placed 6th right after 1) trinidy 2) aim 3) voo (the old swedish q2 player ofc) 4) prozac 5) nutcase. That gave me some hell of a motivation to continue playing and so I did. Though the thing was that I only had my 56K modem and our phone bills were already too high so I couldn't really practice as much as I wanted.
I only played Q3 when I was at LANS with my friends but at that time there really was not competition for me to speak of. I ended up beating the shit out of everyone at every local lan I went to for about 1 year and still nothing new about better internet connections. Well, anyway... to make a long story short, I got ADSL -01 but my motivation was gone. Sure I was playing some Q3 now and then but I just couldn't find that motivation nor dedication I had in the beginning so I never really cared that much about improving my game and take another shot at some future event. Who knows how far I could have made it.

So what I'm trying to say is that, if this is what you want but you feel that you're stuck you should get your ass out of there asap. Borrow money from you parents for moving south, take some crap job and save up or something, just get out of there. Unless you start attending and doing well in every swedish online tournament in the future it's pretty much over already and there's not many of them atm afaik.

btw did you used to come to the lans in norsjö when lakerman and the other guys from swedish chefs used to come there? I swear I've seen you there, maybe not playing qw but q3 maybe? I could be wrong though 8)

Afraid I haven't been there but I know some of the chefs and speaking of LakermaN, I'm from the same town as boshman (from quakerstate) if you know who that is :D Hilarious that .mp3 TDJ & Croul made of him when playing laker :)))

Also unlucky, I should've been around earlier when Randlock was playing, surely there must've been something going on around here back then :o

Anyway thanks for the tips, I'm afraid I can't borrow that kind of money from my parents but I am definately playing everything I can though. It's a bit unfortunate that I've had 5 hours of perfect time to practise today and only one of them I actually found some one to play against :( Don't know but it seems so extremely hard to find practise for some reason and yet other people seem to be practising all the time and when I reply to others searching they usually already got an opponent if I miss them by just a minute or something. Wondering if that has something to do with the "not being known"-thing aswell.

haha yeah I know boshman 8) I met him there once and goddamn... I've never heard anyone whine as much as he did. I was being called everything from "shafthora", "bögjävla fittnoob", "telecamper" and other funny stuff. I guess it's hard not fucking around with him when he's on a whining spree 8)

I dunno why it's like that, with finding decent practice nowadays. Maybe it's just the game... 8} I don't play Q4 but I do play CPMA once in a while and I have no problem at all finding someone to "practice" with.

Anyway, gl with everything 8)

lulea!
i know a few ppl at ltu :D~

Cool, too bad I don't 8}

whatever you do, don't rely on winnings, you need a wage, something stable, if you are/will be relying on mostly tourney winnings, don't bother.

also i think your being a bit ignorant by saying it's who your'e "connected" to, fact is most start of with poor jobs but once you got the experience you can move on and do what you want.

If we're talking IRL then I guess it could depend a bit on where you live and so on, 'cause trust me... Atleast here, it's very, very much about contacts. Some guy with shit grades can just know some one (relative or good friend) and that person will just "get him in". Some guy with good grades can have a personal hell trying to find anything since the previous "kind" of people already occupied all decent jobs. Doesn't really matter in my case though, can't say I would want a doctor/lawyer/whatever job more than I'd like elder care.

And also of course yeah, would need basic support, but if you see what I've lived on for the last year or two... $600/month, that is simply not awesome or unreachable in any way. And although it's the absolute edge on what I can live on, I'd _gladly_ do it if it meant I could focus on doing what I love. Tourney winnings and stuff - it's a bonus and a motivation to come fully prepared to every game and a perfect way to feel that you really _earned_ to have extra money sometimes.

all i'm saying is, have a back up plan. working a job as well would be a good idea, a part time job or something. view the job almost like your break from gaming. it will help you support yourself better and give you experience.

if gaming doesn't work out, your going to be at square one again. employers aren't going to be interested in your attempt at going pro.

I just have to ask - have you ever consider taking up poker? Or just give it a fair try? I mean if you're a competetive person there's not much that beats the competetive aspect of poker. Personally I've never been much of a gambler or card player before but then all of a sudden there were money on the table and I fell in love with the game instantly. It's the only thing I've found since I had my motivation up for gaming that comes close and quite frankly, it's even more thrilling and I enjoy it a lot more than playing FPS games nowadays. The more I play, the more motivated I get when watching my results going the way I want.

Best of all - you don't have to be THE best of the best in order to profit from it. You only have to be better than the players at the tables. And it's available 24/7 so no problem in getting some "practice" there 8)

Honestly, with the right amount of time and patient you could be making twice as much a month than you do today, in six months. You might not care that much about the money but if you like competition and if you become a decent player it's a pretty nice living imo.

Sure, some people might think you're lame and all but I can assure you that it's less risky and a lot easier than trying to go pro in gaming.

Just another tip. Nothing else 8)

You must be on IRC. Where!

astienastie in #promode 8)

Updated.

this text is really funny x)

ps: and please even if it hurts, get a life :-/

Hi, fuck off. Even if it hurts, get a clue. Ignored.

torzelan question

if you studied why is it so hard to find a job then?

I'm guessing because he can't move to an area where there are decent jobs because he has no money.

well then you should lend some and goto a area where there are decent jobs and in not ime you can pay back the money you lend =)

Because a bank would would lend money to someone unemployed for them to go to a new city in hopes of getting a job?

well im my country you can lend shit for everything so why not for that :]

And if you look for a job in stockholm ( you still live in ur crappy part of sweden ) And if you got one you move their.. To go there for a interview and stuff you can just get that money back from the company whi interviewed you. Atleast here..

Being in debt is never good regardless.

true, but needs to get out oof this shiot like he said.. :)

Not because you're defending me because I don't think you are (directly), but big thanks for like... thinking a bit further :/ Now if this journal could be bumped away so people who can't even comprehend the first sentence of it won't have to endure the pain.

Anyone who read this journal and thought they immediately had a good or witty answer, don't you think I've been thinking about it for half a year or so and thought about it atleast a hundred times before but had to dismiss it for some reason?

And since I'm posting anyway, Xeon... I don't get where you got the impression I thought stuff happened in that order because it's not, but this whole "whine-journal" is about having unfortunate conditions. Yeah, "we all had to work hard in the beginning", but seriously, would you have wanted to swap place with me and think it wouldn't have mattered? A quick look at your dignitas profile and all achievements tell me you got "known" in Q3. First 6 tournaments were national, and all 1st places were national. Why this matters and has relevance to the topic is violently apparent if we look at a map. Hint: Hungary's longest distance is west to east border, and funnily enough almost EXACTLY the same distance I would have had to go from my town just to get to the nearest fucking city organizing bus trips to Dreamhack. Which would be an additional equal distance added to it. And that's just the absolute minimum distance I'd have to go, and I don't think you live on the west or east border with all those LAN's being on the exact opposite side...

So please, if you care to comment at all, try to understand the situation first. I'm not just complaining because I'm spoiled or something, but because of the opposite. It's easy to talk when you've got the chance yourself to proove you were worth your position. Also, I didn't say it was anyone's elses fault they don't know anything about SoF2, but I don't think I'm disallowed to mention it just because of that?

First of all: I didn't bring myself up like an example... don't get me wrong. I was talkin about "those" players, I'm not gonna write names. But if you want to know, it wasn't easy at all for me to get to the position where I am right now.

But look... instead of using the energy to think too much about the bad things and to take examples from other people to compare yourself to them, maybe you should use your energy to solve the problems which happen to be a burden or setback for you. If you fail, you go on again and again... Nobody should ever give up just because something doesn't work out for the first try.

And man, if you can't manage to get to a LAN in your home country, well then I think you have serious problems. You should sort those out first.

Like, we're agreeing on every point there, so I don't really know what you're talking about. :)
Of course I'm trying to solve the problems. And believe it or not, not much "energy" went into writing this regardless of how it looks ;) I was really pissed and had to get it out somewhere, and I even warned everyone in the very first sentence. So. :x

I really don't have anything personal against you, so don't take anything as an offense... but I will express my opinion after reading your journal entry. So:

You seriously think that those famous/good players are like:

Day 1. Born.
Day 2. Got pro @ quake.
Day 3. Got picked up by a top team, and got supported.
Day 4. Got to events which were covered by the team.

?

No, most of (if not all) those players worked fucking hard to get where they are now, everyone of them had a tough time with gaming. And when they finally got to their team and events, they were in the position where people could say "they deserve it".
For most of us life is just hard. Yes hard. Hard work, hard weekdays, not always enjoyable weekends, managing to have a perfect relationship with a girl, and besides that we must even do better under all these pressure if we want to achieve something in gaming. You played SoF2 and you were good, and people don't care? Well... man, it's not the people's fault, it's yours and yours only. If you say you could be good enough in quake too, show it. Words are mostly useless, acts are much more important. Speculating by the scores of EC players, considering some praccy matches... Man COME ON. What the fuck? :) You aren't serious, are you?

You're future lies mostly in your hand, if you think that things are fucking up around you, you should move on with your life and make changes by yourself. Asking for a team on ESR to get to Dreamhack, well... What should I call this? You know what I mean? I think you do.

I suggest you should show something first in the quake community, and I'm sure if you are good enough, sooner or later a good team will ask you to join.
Until then, try to solve things on your own - like all the players do in the beginning.

Of course, I wish you good luck and I hope you're gonna find a team who can help you get to Dreamhack, BUT I strongly suggest you should build your own base first, before entering someone else's.

If people misinterpret half of what I write I won't do it anymore, my apologies. I don't agree with everything you just wrote either but I won't argue and I respect you as a player. Finally, the DH train is long gone and although this was mostly written in bad mood of missing out on the chance to play on LAN for once, it's only a little part of it. Anyway, speak to you all later some time.

Well I just basically responded to the actual, second part of your entry, and to the gaming related subject. The other part, I don't want to comment, since it is out of my interest.

<3 and good luck @ dreamhack

whine whine whine, completely agree with #31 Xeon

u said ur playin opencup?
then win it, get urself in a few other online-cups, if ur that good it should be no problem for you to qualify for eurocup, e.g. win premier division, like Xeon did last season....
and then sooner or later a team will query you, but like Xeon said asking for a team via ESR, very sad....

Oh how sad, oh how sad, you didn't get it, move along troll.