I’ve traveled the world playing tournaments for a little bit. Won a few. Crashed out in some others…

The big conventions feel insanely cool. It’s like you’re in the game but irl. You are walking down the elevator of your hotel and it feels like just being in the game when you are surrounded by people that you with. It’s super cool having people come up and hug you and you go “oh who’s this?” And it often turns out it’s people that you have shared hundreds of hours with.

The actual competition I’ve always felt it’s all about who can play the least bad. As far as I could tell. Everyone plays worse on stage. For a multitude of reasons. At the end I was playing extremely chill and care free and it showed in the results.

Also something less obvious. Tournaments always developed their own meta. Which I always heard comments from people from home “why didn’t you follow this meta thing. Why did you play such weird strategies?”. It’s because truly if there’s a big competition going on. Everyone good is there. And it’s not even worth getting practice on the normal servers. You have to scrim over and over the people there and that develops its own meta.

Is it worth it? Uhhh. I’ll always cherish those memories. They were truly great years. But I would say for me nah. Not worth it. I’ve always wanted my career and life to be about some other things. And as much fun and surprisingly how well it all paid. I don’t think it was worth the many years I spent doing that and nothing else.

Amazing memories though.