If you had told your parents 10 years ago that your dream was to be a professional gamer, chances are they would have either laughed you out of the room or had a serious talk with you to make you reconsider options. Now, becoming a professional gamer is no more uncommon than wanting to become a professional athlete, it is more attainable than ever before and can give you an exceedingly high income if you make it to the big leagues. However, how can you get there? Here is what you need to know about how to become a professional gamer.
Pick a gam e
Like all games, start at the beginning, work through different types of games and get experience in different settings, you’ll find a lot of very good gaming sites. These could be first shooter games or multiplayer online battle arenas. If you don’t excel at one already, this is a good way to find where your current strengths lie. Once you have found you are good at, pick that one and start working.
Platforms
Once you have chosen your game, have a look at the platform you are currently working with. Is it up to standard to help you get to the big leagues? You don’t want it to be leggy or freeze when you are playing, so an upgrade may well be due. Make sure the game you want to play is available on the platform you have chosen. As you are going to attempt to become a professional, you are also going to need an exceptionally stable and fast internet connection, make sure this is available.
Watch pro players
Like anything in life, you need to have a good grasp of how it works to be able to excel at it. It is worth watching professional player’s videos and seeing how they play the game, studying gamers like this can help hone your skills and give you ideas as to how you can play.
Find your short falls
To become a pro player, just playing the game isn’t enough. If you find yourself struggling with a particular aspect of the game, then this is something you need to work on as it can be exploited as a weakness later on. Give yourself tasks instead of just playing the game, work on these short falls and keep practicing until they are no longer aspects of game play that can result in death.
Join the community
So you’ve chosen the game, upgraded your platform, watched the pros and you are actively working on your in-game skills. Now it is time to join the community within the game, all pro players are parts of online communities, so you will need to be too.
You can’t play alone, as you won’t get to experience how teams are developed and work together when you join a community you will hear different points of views, strategies and different ideas. Make friends with other gamers and build your own team that can help one another achieve their goals. These are all vital components of becoming a professional gamer.
Practice
The practice is not to be understated, keep practicing, either with tasks that you are working on or in gameplay. Practice, practice, and more practice! You can’t expect to make it to the professional table if you don’t put the work in.
Join a league
National tournaments are often organized to take place after gaming leagues, these are often seasonal, but you give the chance to explore how you feel in a high-pressured environment and maybe even get a chance to enter into the national if you do well. You can join leagues for all types at all levels, so make the most of the high-pressure environment and see how tournaments work.
Anger management
It is easy to think that you are going to sign up to the game, practice, work on your skills and then smash all of your opponents out of the park, sadly life is seldom that easy and you need to prepare yourself for the fact that you are going to lose, and you are going to lose badly. When this happens, you need to learn to keep your composure and not through your headset out the window or begin abusing fellow gamers. You can also look at how you lost and then work on these areas and develop your skills so that it doesn’t happen again.
Finding balance
Whilst it may be easy to want to quit your job and start your dream today, you need to make sure that it doesn’t become your entire life. Online friends are amazing, but you need to make sure that you keep up with social interaction and normal life outside of your gaming. It can be a struggle to pull yourself away from your computer or console, but just going outside and having some fresh air can help reset you.
Becoming a professional gamer is not an easy task, you can apply all of these points and still not quite get there, but if you work methodically and practice, you are giving yourself a fighting chance.