ForwardSlashDownPoke

I would just get a competitive title and play online at first.

Yeah they all talk smack; it's part of the game. Ever watch pro-Hockey? That's all they do is fight and talk smack. If the mics were hot in pro-football, you would hear the smack talk constantly. It's not different with e-sports or online gaming. There's females watching the stuff, and some of the dudes literally want to discredit you, ruin your life, and embarrass you for the rest of your life on the internet. That's how ruthless the sports industry is and just how it works. I have been blessed to get the better end of the deal and rack up 56 competitive gaming #1 ranks and a bunch of world records, so I'm satisfied, but still going for more. That's what I said in the other topic: Alot of the WORLD CLASS level stuff, not just casual or mid-tier e-sports or physical athletics, is psychology, mind games and head games. The head games destroy some people, or kind of how a Triple H, Brock Lesnar or a top WWE/Pro Wrestler walks out to the ring as a heel in the arena with all the fans booing and smack talk; it literally just rolls off their back. And that's not a saying, it really does just mean nothing to them. Their mentality is entirely different in the WWE. They adore their fans, and they are there, as well as paid, to entertain the people that they appreciate. So they are obviously very large and tough men (that often know how to fight or grapple for real), who happen to be very convincing actors. So they just act like a bad guy and understand that they are working up the crowd intentionally. E-Sports isn't identical to that metaphor, but you can have the same level of very nasty hatred, even when you're a great person. Sometimes smack talk is actually a legitimate technique that can be used to break down your opponent mentally as you're engaging them, which gets them to second guess themselves, but usually while you're beating them. In tournaments, it is often not allowed however.

It just comes down to fun at first. If you play a competitive title for just a couple hours a day and are having fun, that can lead to getting good, then ultimately playing in tournaments for money.

There's a ton of fraud. It has been endless based on what I've seen.

There's only a handful of people that get promoted to that level, and let's just say that those people are generally aligned with a certain type of ideological thinking, and I'll leave it there. It's not related to skill entirely. Some skilled people get the promotions, other highly talented people the system tries to squash. In the next 5 to 10 years, the e-sports industry will either be one of the largest international crime syndicates on the planet, or it will shut down in major areas, or it will downsize back to the way it was 10 to 20 years ago, or it will boom.

So the methods for cheating and exploiting a video game are endless, like I said in another topic, but they are not un-beatable by any stretch of the imagination. This may sound extreme: But arrests just need to be made. If people are going into a tournament involving thousands or millions of dollars -- heck, even over something like $500 dollars in some jurisdictions is considered grand theft -- and rigging the tournament; that's actually pre-meditated wire fraud which could also involve some conspiracy crimes if 2 or more people are involved. The idea of leaderboards not being accurate is more of a myth these days, because developers have tightened up on them, but if you have any questions on any game; you're welcome to ask. Understanding how the leaderboards work can take extensive knowledge of the game, but keep in mind these things: 1) Frauds can be easy to identify, therefore you would just ignore them if they take over something like the top 5; meaning the 6th guy would be the legit number 1 rank. The several top people on the leaderboards (something like top 6) on a game called Geometry Wars had something like 500 quintillion plus points; which is hacking and fake stats. Not sure why grown men want to see their name at the top of a leaderboard holding a phony world record; but to each their own. 2) There's also different gameplay modes. Some may be hacked; others are not. 3) Many games have All time, weekly, monthly or even daily leaderboards. The smaller leaderboards can be tougher to clutch on a highly competitive title, are generally UNHACKED, and often hold more value if the all time leaderboards are hacked. 4) Stat tracking on a piece of paper outside of the game is unnecessary because the game does it for you, and if you are playing without cheating, the tracking is in fact going to be accurate. If you know of a case where this is not so, you're welcome to bring it to my attention as I'd be interested. But the deal is just because someone else is cheating doesn't mean that stats are registering improperly for legit people. The issue is just that the cheaters stats may outweigh legit people. Sometimes people will spend years cheating and you can still overtake their spot, which is satisfying.

Like I was saying: There's relatively lax regulation (if any in some areas) on E-Sports, which is why there's been international criminal investigations into communities like counter strike, and the list of corruption goes on... and on... and on... and on... It's quite frankly outrageous. Perhaps you can share with me how to share a simple link (are we allowed to do that on here?) Karl Jobst is a good youtube channel that exposes fraud and some of the cases are downright outrageous. The newest one on there involved a player that did a fraudulent speed run at the world's biggest speed running showcase event called Games Down Quick (or a summer version of it, or whatever). His fake speed run was given the green light after raising $25,000 dollars to do it as it was his second run and most players only do one. Not only that but his run was accepted, promoted, and even added to the list of world records on speedrun.com. Very disgusting. Anyway: With the lax e-sports regulation, as I said before, there is likely a case by case situation with different e-sports "teams" where they might have backups in some cases. With big games that have 5 on 5's, so far as I understand; there is really just the 5 people. These people are young so nobody has really died prior to a tournament and if they did, then it would likely be a DQ or event would be pushed back.

I actually don't like fighting games as a genre overall and found many of them to be quite boring, but I accidently got very elite at a couple, and I've always followed the Mortal Kombat series (from start to finish) at a casual level. Street Fighter 4 and 5 are good, MK11 is decent, Injustice 1 is good (part 2 has too much spam and teleports), some Tekken games are good, the Fight Night games were good, alot of the Smackdown vs RAW and/or Smackdown games were excellent, obviously WWF No Mercy was fun, some of the UFC games are great, Smash games are alright and the newest Killer Instinct is obviously excellent -- despite the fact I haven't taken the time to get good at at. The Marvel/Capcom stuff I never got in to because I've always saw it is overly flashy and intimidating with some of the stuff you can do. That dovetailed with the fact that we have to save the trees and never include manuals with games these days makes it difficult to learn those games without extensive study. I can take some of the fighters I'm good at and explain technical stuff to a lay person, but when you look at all the motions, combos, set ups and tricks of a Marvel game -- it really falls back on the developers for not properly teaching people how to play their own game using baby steps or laymans terms. I understand the theoretical and technical mechanics of advanced space travel and time travel more than I do Marvel versus Capcom 2. Kind of a metaphor here, but some of the most advanced physicists can go on History channel and explain time travel to the average person. It has to do with a theoretical model (involving light), or what is more or less considered to be the confirmed model -- which has to do with time slowing down if you are near an object of extraordinary mass, such as a black hole. Example: If you were to park a space ship outside of a black hole (which has infinite mass I think), you could theoretically spend just a few hundred years there then come back to earth later with thousands of years or more having passed. How do you do a Marvel versus Capcom 2 combo? I have no idea.

You think the enhanced version of Mortal Kombat 3 (Trilogy) is better than 11? Interesting... Are you a pro at MK3/Trilogy/Ultimate? I suppose there is the fact that people couldn't lag switch in offline Mortal Kombat Trilogy tournaments back in the day, whereas 1 or 2 out of 10 matches in MK11 ranked is a cheater often using some sort of toolkit or lag switch...

Well I have alot of experience with professional gaming, e-sports, and things in that area, so if you are interested in expanding, I have something like 56 competitive gaming #1 ranks, several world records, my own web site, etc. I think I could help you craft your team into something better. There's nothing wrong with pursuing what you're trying to do, and mobile gaming is actually I think the biggest market even beating consoles, is it not? But if I were to give some polite criticism, I would recommend trying to focus on having your system more beneficial for the players than yourself and charging them no money at all to enter tournaments. That alone will build clients and, if done properly, will bring people in. Why not play a cell phone game in a tournament, for free, to win money?

Streaming is hit or miss. For a novice, moderate, or lower level elite player -- streaming is actually a bad idea because it exposes your style, technique, setups, position, and skill set to some of the most advanced professionals on earth whom of which take all they data and put it in to the cloud and save it in a database to break down in case they have to face you in a paid tournament (or just in a situation where they want to embarass you). If you are one of the most dangerous video game competitors in the world, and area that I've gotten to on a few games, you can stream just to show off, or you can take it to the next level and stream entirely false technique that the other pros will bite on, and even have some of your buddies pop into the LIVE chat to ask you some fake questions and just give literally all fake answers. Even the most advanced professionals on earth will bite on the latter setup if its done convincingly. But virtually every single top player on some of the games that I play rarely stream these days, and virtually always delete their internal game footage that autosaves to the games systems (so other people don't break down their tech as easily). 8 to 16 hours per day of proper training is likely within a legit range if you plan on winning the big stuff, but there is other stuff involved that I won't reveal here. But you have to do stuff other than just game.

Anywhere from a few hundred dollars to the involvement of a prize pool of $40 million dollars.

Alot, yes. I wouldn't call them famous though. Many of them are rather disrespectful, and I never really cared how the public viewed them.

There's not really stardom to competition on games. Some people, like the Japanese fighting game player Daigo, just pop into tournaments -- whoop people -- then quietly leave without saying very much at all.

Nope. There are virtually endless techniques that frauds use to cheat, but they are not unbeatable. It's really laziness on behalf of law enforcement and e-sports regulatory agencies. When money is involved, it is a crime.

Karl Jobst on YouTube exposes them all the time, but he goes after Billy Mitchell very often who I am personally still undecided on to be honest. There are some pretty pathetic people on that channel though, but I can't figure out how to post links.

No question about it. I broke the World Record for kill count (which equated to a #1 Rank in the World) on one game, and have a reputation for maximum casualties/wins and etc. Not bragging, but TC asked. Answer is everybody should be. Competition is good for you and keeps you sharp. If you're playing a Gears of War game for fun and go zero and thirty five, what was the point? There's strategy two it at a very advanced level, though. If you implement the proper strategy, a high kill death ratio is actually not the direct target, but instead a side effect of properly playing the game at a solid level. If you are playing Gears of War Team DeathMatch, the goal is to kill the other team and don't die. If you implement that strategy at an advanced level, your K/D will be high as a side effect of just trying to win.

Well virtually every competitive game these days has an internal leaderboard that manually tracks your stats for you in the game itself, so you don't need to write stuff down. I manually kept a tally on a game that I was playing a while back where I collected two world records at the time, so I needed a very accurate count. But leaderboards are on every game these days; even Pac Man.

They're online, usually in Ranked, in just about every console game you can think of.

Certainly over 10,000 times; yes. Like the other guy said: You have no idea who you're playing online, and virtually all competitive titles that are active can have sort of a shark tank depending on where you are on the stat sheet and how their internal system/algorithm works (latter of which that can be rigged in some cases). I don't think there are generally contracts a "pro" player has to sign stating that they cannot play online, and even if they did, what is their management team going to do? Track their internet activity all day? All they have to do is go under a pseudonym to play online, making it very different (and in some cases harder) than physical sports, minus the UFC and the hardest of sports.

You don't even need a team, nor do you need to bother applying to one. All you really do is just register for a tournament and play. Good way to start is to just play people online, and if you're planning on playing in tournaments don't talk to anyone at all, unless you really know them or unless it's basic stuff. You really don't want to share any personal or competitive information with anyone because all of the competitive scenes are hard for new people. Good thing to try is simple achievement hunting or trophy hunting (same thing/different consoles), but before that comes fun. Most of the top level guys are having a blast in tournaments while they play. So fun comes first, then just go achievement hunting if you are new to competitive play because it teaches you alot of stuff about the game. Some stuff on youtube can be deceptive, which I won't get in to. If you are having fun with a game, collecting achievements, know the game fairly well, and do pretty decent online -- the next step is to understand how to assess yourself from an (objective) and realistic standpoint. Objective: Meaning forensic science that can be cross-examined by other people. In other words: You need to see video of yourself, try comparing it to online elites or tournament people (they're usually identical), and try not to develop a delusional opinion that you are a gaming God just because you had a few 30 kill call of duty games. It's similar to the singers that go on the american idol contest. When you speak, your voice always sounds different to you than it does everyone else, so sometimes a "singer" will sing to themselves, their family, friends, etc. -- and their friends will set them up to fail by being nice and telling them that they are a wonderful singer when they are terrible. Then you have to know the difference between online play and offline play. The vast majority of great competitors can do either of the two, and it depends on what type of server you're on if your skill online will be directly transferable to offline play. Competitive shooting games with dedicated servers are basically the same offline in tournament, so if you are good online it will be the same offline. But there can be small nuances even with dedicated servers, and definitely P2P stuff where you have to know some stuff is going to change online. Some tournament players, who are actually NOT CORRECT, claim that online play doesn't carry over, but that's false and it depends on: 1) The Game 2) The Skill Level of the Player 3) The Knowledge Base of the Player 4) and the Type of Server in Which Game is On It's my opinion that most games are actually easier offline, so dominating online play can actually be harder in many cases.

Yes, anybody can play and win. Half of the people winning tournaments are children (under 18). It's actually pretty easy and has alot to do with psychology.

It's actually alot easier than you think. It's pretty much the same thing as playing online, except against some of the most dangerous players you've faced online (such as top 100 guys/etcetera). Key difference between playing online and in tournament is just that the frequency of extremely skilled players is higher in **SOME** tournaments, but don't be surprised if you spend years beefing yourself up to go and win that big tournament and 20% of the players there are at the skill level of the people you body online very easily, because it can and does turn out that way sometimes. With some games it's a little like a club, where there's a small group of people that are all very good friends with each other who practically take turns winning big tournaments. Whether or not that is organized I won't speculate about, but it is a fact with some fighting games. All games are hard at first because competing at a world class level is very different from the way you saw some of the games being played as a kid, and it's intimidating at first. But virtually every single field of competition is the same, the highest level players bend and break the internal mechanics of the game to the highest possible standards, try to hide techniques they think will clutch them a tournament, and many of these competitors cozy up to the development staff to arrange title updates and patches if their level of effectiveness starts to dwindle. Payouts can range anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a 20 million dollar prize pool.

People do it all the time, but I never have. I think there may be ways to do it legally, but it's already been proven with multi-country investigations that some of the e-sports gambling is basically organized crime groups (which is obviously illegal). The crime groups pressure the younger players into throwing a match so the crime groups make a large amount of money and the players get a small slice.

It's obviously going to depend on what game it is and what game play modes are being played in the tournament. Some games do not allow backups or alternative players, meaning that if a player is a no show; their match is thrown in singles, a team match could be postponed, or outright given to the team as a result of a disqualification or submission. You can call up a company and ask because it's going to depend. There is very little regulation across the board in E-Sports, if any at all.