So I’ll be honest, when pro gamer comes to mind I begin to think of an extravagant lazy lifestyle. Like, up at noon, tweet to a few people, play your favorite video game all day, eat some amazing food with all your money, go to sleep, and then repeat the next day. Sorry sorry, that is until they can go to their next tournament, take a nice vacation around the country to wherever that tournament might win, and get a nice chance at winning thousands of dollars while playing that favorite video game of theirs. Right?
Wrong…
Okay, so maybe it has its perks, and it’s a fun job, but that could be said about a lot of jobs out there if you really give it a good look! These gamers have schedules like any one else does. They have a routine, and sometimes this routine can become dreadful and I’m sure their favorite games can sometimes become miserable.
Take TSM (Team Solo Mid, top League of Legends team) for a second; Reginald is the team owner and manager. The rest of the players are paid by Regi and the TSM franchise. This means they are on the schedule that is set for them. Now this schedule may be different than a professional COD players schedule, but it’s a schedule nonetheless. I’m sure Reginald requires each player to put guides up on SoloMid’s site in any given amount of time, and I also wouldn’t doubt it if he requires a certain amount of streaming/practice/scrims from each player. This is their job, and this is their schedule.
Below I will depict what a professional gamers schedule can look like:
A Typical Day for a Professional Gamer:
8:00-9:00am: Wake up and eat breakfast
9:00-10:00am: Discuss days schedule and plans with teammates and manager
10:00am-1:00pm: Play any scrims/stream or practice
1:00-2:00pm: Lunch
2:00-3:00pm: Go over video replays/discuss game play with teammates
3:00-5:00pm: Do any required blogs/guides or fan interaction
5:00-8:00pm: Stream/Practice
8:00-9:00pm: Dinner
9:00pm-Bedtime: Practice/Stream/Discuss with team
I was lucky enough to come across a blog on Team Liquids site. One by Liquid T’LO. This actually gave us some direct insight into this schedule we were looking for. T’LO actually posted his weeks schedule for us to have a nice look at! You can see this schedule below:
While this is just one professional gamers schedule, it does depict a lot. As you can see he does have a good amount of free time, but there also is a tremendous amount of SC2, which can also be labeled as “training” being that he named this document/schedule “training schedule”.
Some games, and some teams may prove to be less stressful then others, but the same thing can be said about jobs as well. Some are more stressful and hectic then others. That’s life. But, one conclusion we can take from this article is the fact that professional gaming is definitely a job.