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How Do You Play Video Games Professionally?
Noah De Aces • 2022-08-02
Dylan Carnahan:Okay, so your name, you know, we talked about this earlier, but your name, you go by Blanks. I mean, how did that start? Are you just like Forgetful and like Cap Guns? Like what's goin on there?
Noah “Blanks”:Actually, yeah, that's exactly kinda how I got the name. I'm kinda, in my friend group, I'm kinda like the Forgetful. I guess maybe kinda did see one, and so they kinda gave me the name Blanks after a little while, and it just kinda stuck, just kinda rolled with it from there.
Dylan Carnahan:You just took that into your gaming persona?
Noah “Blanks”:Yeah, yeah. I mean, before that, it was like, you know that cheesy first gamer tag that everybody has? Mine was like Darkside 1580, you know? You know? Yeah. But yeah, it's Blanks now. Change it up.
Dylan Carnahan:With like the lowercase X, uppercase X on the front and beginning?
Noah “Blanks”:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Username taken.
Dylan Carnahan:You know, let's start with your journey in gaming. Let's go all the way back to the beginning, so to speak. So how did you first begin playing video games?
Noah “Blanks”:Actually, I wasn't originally allowed to play very many video games growing up. And I think that's kind of why I got attracted to it really quickly when I was exposed to it. But yeah, I grew up really without playing video games. Parents were kind of like, no, we want you outside. And then eventually my older sister's boyfriend came over with the Xbox 360 and he stomped out me and my cousin on Halo Reach. That was the first game I ever touched. So yeah, it was honestly the first experience gaming I lost really bad. And I think that's why I wanted to get back on it. And so he let me on his Xbox eventually played a couple of online matches. And I remember calling him over. I'm like, yo, I just got like my first kill, dude. He was getting hyped for me. So that made me excited. Made me want to keep going with it.
Dylan Carnahan:And so you have like this first exposure, not really allowed to play. And then how do you go from that to someone that, you know, ends up playing competitively?
Noah “Blanks”:I think, like a lot of it comes from playing competitive sports growing up. The game that I was really first started playing competitively was Call of Duty. I kind of, I moved, I originally lived in Wisconsin growing up. And when I moved down to Missouri at the beginning of my freshman year of high school, I didn't have very many friends. And I was part of the football program, but didn't really care for the coaches there. The program was kind of going downhill at the time. So I was like, okay, I'm just gonna give this gaming thing a try. That's what I was really interested in at the time. I'm like, I'm gonna get a little bit better. Maybe at Cod, I was playing a couple like UMG matches, just like private match stuff. And I wasn't very good. I didn't grow up playing Call of Duty. And so I was actually like really below average at that. But around that time is when my main game now, Rocket League, that went free to play on PS4. And that like early entry into a new game that nobody had really mastered yet, kind of let me grow with other people instead of just getting destroyed every match on COD.
Dylan Carnahan:So you kind of always had that kind of competitive nature, right? And you're saying, hey, like this is just, I'm casually gaming, but I can apply that same competition level to gaming.
Noah “Blanks”:Yeah. And it really helped because Rocket League on their launch, they had a ranked system in place. And that just automatically just kind of makes it competitive from the jump. Most people play competitive. There's not a lot of unranked players in the game that I play. And yeah, I just wanted to get to the next rank. That was always my goal. And then kind of once you get towards the upper level of that, then you can enter tournaments for like cash prizes and stuff like that. And I thought that was really interesting. So.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. So for those of listeners that kind of aren't aware of kind of how gaming multiplayer works is traditionally, and you can jump in here, Noah, at any point, right? You kind of have like your quick play, right? Where you can just hop on and just matchmake and play with other people. And then usually depending upon the game, much as you mentioned, Rocket League was one of those that already had it built in or baked in kind of that competitive game mode where you can play. And I think you play 10 games, you get a placement rank, and then, you know, win a game, go up and rank, lose a game, you go down and rank, right?
Noah “Blanks”:Exactly. Yeah. I suppose I should consider our audience here. I'm kind of, whenever I'm doing, I've done a couple of interviews before and it's just like, most of them are gaming audience, but I'm excited to talk to Kenny, your group.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. So just kind of approach this as layman's terms, right? So going back to, you know, your journey, right? In high school, you kind of pick up on the idea of playing video games competitively. How does your e-sports career begin and go from there?
Noah “Blanks”:Well, at the time, I was actually, I actually didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to gaming. I was, I had first started going to college when I started playing a lot. And on top of that, I was working a full-time job over at Cerner. I don't know if you've heard of them, but.
Dylan Carnahan:I worked there.
Noah “Blanks”:Oh, really? Well, I was just, I was an intern there, part of the Solutions IT department. We worked on PPM. I don't know if you've ever used that. But anyway.
Dylan Carnahan:Small world, small world, by the way.
Noah “Blanks”:So I was working there. I was going to night classes. And then by night, I was just kinda playing Rocket League with me and my buddy. And at this point, we were going to community college. We were going to MCC over in North Kansas City by Maple Woods.
Dylan Carnahan:Alton Community College.
Noah “Blanks”:Exactly, yeah. So we were going there. And at the time, we played a lot, but we didn't really enter into any serious competition. But then there was an announcement from Rocket League that came out. They blasted all over their Twitter that they were going to have a collegiate Rocket League series where any school, any team from around the country, as long as you were at the collegiate level, could apply with all these other teams and compete. And then it would narrow it down to a group of 12. They would go into a playoff bracket. And then the winners of those brackets or the highest placings would get scholarship money directly deposited into their account and it would help pay for their schooling. And we're like, okay, that's awesome. And so we joined and luckily me and my teammate there found another guy at the college that played Rocket League. And so he joined up with us. We played for actually like a year, got pretty good placings. And then we get a call. It's from Missouri Valley, which is maybe like an hour and a half from Kansas City, kind of right between Columbia and Kansas City, I guess. And they said, hey, we're starting an e-sports program and we would love to offer you guys to come and play for us on scholarship. And we're like, okay, yeah, like let's do it dude. Let's make this real. So we moved out, went to Marshall, Missouri for a little bit. We were playing for the Vikings over there. And we were only there for a semester. To be honest, the experience wasn't great. I had really good experiences with all my professors. It was really just the dorms, honestly, they were kind of run down and we really appreciated the scholarship and the opportunity, but I looked at my roommate one day and I'm like, we gotta get out of here. We gotta get out of here. Because our dorm was like all cinder block walls. And then the ceiling was, all those like drop in tiles. Well, like half of those were broken and you would like hear like the pipes creaking and we were right next to the parking lot. So anytime somebody parked, lights were shining in our window in the middle of the night. It just wasn't good. And so we just grinded our ass up, man. We were at Missouri Valley and we dedicated ourselves like fully. We were playing maybe six, seven hours a day, streaming the whole time. And our goal was to get to a higher college level. And so, yeah, our semester there, we got pretty good placings and pretty much the same process. Got a call from Mizzou. We went down, we toured the facility. They were starting a whole new program. They were getting sponsored by MSI to put up a whole gaming facility, sponsor PCs, headsets, all of that would be supplied. We would have an area to play. It was gonna be awesome. So got invited there. Our scholarship for them was room and board and then competed through the rest of my college career and went to MU for two years. Just graduated in Mac, so.
Dylan Carnahan:Awesome. Yeah, that's quite a journey. I know I'm familiar with Missouri Valley. I played baseball at Avila University. So they're in the same conference or at least we're at one point. A lot of grind there just to keep leveling up. Right? So what are you doing now, currently?
Noah “Blanks”:Well, after graduation, I focused a little bit more of my efforts towards the Kansas City Pioneers, which is the organization I'm a part of right now. That relationship started maybe halfway through my collegiate, I guess, eSports career at Mizzou. That was just kind of a natural connection that happened because the Pioneers were blowing up and our program was getting bigger. We're both gaming organizations, so we partnered on a couple of projects together. One of them was more on the business side, less on the competing side. They took me on as an intern, as an event organizer, finding fundraising and throwing together tournaments, stuff like that. I was involved with them on the backend, on the business side of their org. They additionally signed me on as a part-time content creator for them. That's what I'm doing now. That's really all I'm doing in the gaming space.
Dylan Carnahan:It's awesome. That's awesome. Given where you're at now, we'll take a couple of steps back here, kind of look at eSports in general. Again, layman's terms, how would you even describe eSports? What is eSports? You layman. How would you explain that to someone? I know it's like, especially if you go through your journey, I mean, I know in my time playing baseball in college, the addition of eSports into competitive programs, that's a real recent thing, and much as your whole story is shown. I mean, Rocket League, you have a new game comes out, early adopter there, early adopter at one college, early adopter at another college. So what is eSports?
Noah “Blanks”:eSports is honestly, it's naturally always going to be compared to sports. I think the form of competition, the brackets, all of the ways of competition are similar besides the physical aspect. I would say that a lot of gamers now are even incorporating workout programs to keep themselves healthy because healthy body is a healthy mind. I think it's really just ultimate form of maybe mental competition, I guess I would say.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, just competing virtually. Obviously, you want to keep physically in shape, especially if you're being really sedentary. We had talked earlier through a couple of games that you'd mentioned. Obviously, you play Rocket League, Call of Duty is a big one that a lot of people are familiar with. What are the most popular games that people compete in in eSports?
Noah “Blanks”:I would say in North America, it would be Rocket League would definitely be up there, but there's Call of Duty, League of Legends, Dota. There's multiple different types of games, but most of the viewership actually comes from Asia, mostly Japan, South Korea and China. I think maybe like 56% comes from Asia.
Dylan Carnahan:Really, of the viewership of these events? Of the games you mentioned, I guess we talked about Rocket League kind of having a baked in competitive system. I guess what makes those other games popular? Is it the same thing?
Noah “Blanks”:Yeah, it's exactly the same thing. I'd say all of the games that are played at the highest level in eSports and get the most viewership also have a ranked system built into their game.
Dylan Carnahan:And so they're kind of already tailored and primed for, I guess, competitive gaming out of the box, right?
Noah “Blanks”:Exactly, yeah.
Dylan Carnahan:Now, I mean, obviously anyone, as someone who's played Rocket League, Overwatch, COD, and played it in the competitive game mode, I guess what separates a casual gamer or someone that just occasionally plays competitively versus say an e-sports player?
Noah “Blanks”:I think it's just the amount of time dedicated, honestly, that and casual gamers, most of the time if you're playing, it's for fun. The biggest difference between the two is if you're competing in this and you're trying to make genuine money from it, you're also gonna be playing when you don't wanna play. If you play the game seven hours a day, there's definitely gonna be a few of those hours where you do not wanna be on the game and it does get mentally draining at times.
Dylan Carnahan:You're saying seven hours a day, let's run through what a typical practice, or how do you prepare to compete as an esports player? You're saying the one differentiating factor is really time and intent. So I guess, what does that look like for an esports player?
Noah “Blanks”:Well, the way that you practice as an esports player is usually there's scrimmages, just like any other sport set aside where you would spend two or maybe three hours scrimming with your team against other teams, just trying to form chemistry. And then all of the other time is going to be spent either going over VOD review with your team, going over film, pretty much. And then that usually takes maybe an hour a day. And then all of the rest of that would just be individual practice, going into ranked on your own and improving yourself as an individual.
Dylan Carnahan:And that's kind of like daily, that's kind of the same kind of schedule daily.
Noah “Blanks”:Yeah, I would say seven hours a day is a lot. That's mostly what professional gamers will do. Maybe more around five or six, but then they'll go through areas like prepping for tournaments where they'll be playing seven or eight.
Dylan Carnahan:Okay, so then you kind of get into like season, right? Where you have a different regiment. You mentioned earlier kind of in your story of like finding another teammate, right? So I know Rocket League, for instance, I know you have like 3v3, 2v2. Those are kind of main avenues in which people compete. How do you find like teammates for something like that? Like, especially if it's a big deal, right? I mean, it's only two other people you get to choose. Like, how do you find a good, you know, teammate?
Noah “Blanks”:Honestly, one of my teammates now was one of my best friends in high school. We started playing the game together originally, I think in either sophomore or junior year. So that would be like 2019, maybe. And admittedly, he was the one that introduced me to the game. We always flip-flop back and forth on who brought who to the game. But yeah, we started going to community college, competing together. And he followed me each through every single college, through every single step. And he ended up on the Pioneers with me as well. So him, I just kind of got lucky. He was one of my best friends. And we were always able to bounce ideas off each other, how to improve each other and stuff like that. But in general, I would say that most teammates find each other just in ranked playlists. Just because if you're playing at a certain rank and you match against other people that are around your rank, eventually, you're gonna find somebody that you just mesh with really well. And you just go into the text chat, which exists within the game and you message them and you say, hey, you wanna play a couple of games or hey, do you wanna jump in on some scrims with us later? Maybe we can try to get a team going and it's a yes or no answer. And if it happens, it happens.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, you're already playing against, you're already at that rank, so you're getting exposure to people around the same caliber. And so you're just naturally gonna kinda maybe run into someone that you may be able to team up with. So we kinda talked about the largest variable kinda being time here. And you had said a lot of people had reached out to you, but from your experience, how does someone get to compete at a college level? Are there showcases for people in esports? I guess, how are these college scholarships being extended?
Noah “Blanks”:The recruitment is mostly done through tryouts. So colleges will often announce like, hey, on this day, we're gonna run some tryouts. If you apply, we're gonna take this set of people and we're just gonna run a bunch of scrimmages with everybody. And usually the person or the people that stand out within that group will get admitted into the college and if they get accepted to the college, they're on the team. If not, boom.
Dylan Carnahan:Okay, so you're having like a formal tryout.
Noah “Blanks”:That's most of the time how it works. However, if you have really made a name for yourself while you've been in high school, because most of the people that get the most time to play, most of the professionals in Rocket League are actually younger than collegiate e-sports athletes. They're in high school. They're competing at the highest level in high school. And if you've made a name for yourself there, then it's most likely colleges coming to you to offer.
Dylan Carnahan:It has weight to it. Interesting. And how does that compare to say the professional level? Is it, it's pretty much the same, right? Maybe a formal tryout for a certain team. Maybe you have notoriety, you're a large streamer, you've been playing in a lot of tournaments. How, I mean, obviously, there's a tournament element to all of this. How is the college slash professional e-sports season structured?
Noah “Blanks”:Usually, there's open qualifiers, where any team can register, and it's just put into... All these teams are put into giant pools, where they go through a little mini bracket within their pool, and it'll put out one team who wins it, and the bracket just keeps narrowing further and further and further, until there's an ultimate qualifying tournament, where the highest places of those will be inserted into the Rocket League Championship Series, which is where professional organizations like Faze, Optic, Envy, all the big dogs compete against each other, and once your team makes it into RLCS, that Rocket League Championship Series, it's usually not very long before a large-scale organization will approach that team and say, hey, we want to sign you guys, we want to represent you, or you to represent us, rather. And yeah, that's usually how it works. Once you're in that Rocket League Championship Series, there's a series of splits, summer, fall, winter, spring. I believe the spring split is actually being played like as we speak right now over in London, so.
Dylan Carnahan:So, first off, this Rocket League kind of tournament, is that set up by the actual game itself?
Noah “Blanks”:Yeah, it's all backed by the developer of the game, most of the time.
Dylan Carnahan:Okay, and then, so it's divided into four seasons, right?
Noah “Blanks”:Yeah, exactly.
Dylan Carnahan:So, I guess my question would be, and this is just maybe not even with Rocket League in general, but is there even an off season? Because I know as like a baseball player, I mean, it's kind of hard to play baseball in the winter outside, right? But as far as like e-sports, I mean, technically it could be 24, 7, 365, right?
Noah “Blanks”:Yeah, I mean, there's no travel. There's usually not really any injury unless you've really been playing a lot and you get carpal tunnel. I've known a couple of people that have to go to physical therapists to work on their hands. But other than that, it's really just, it's really just easy to compete. You're all playing online. You can load into a match and knock a scrimm out with somebody across the country who's just as good as you are. So it's really cool in that way.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that's super intuitive. Going back to kind of say a collegiate caliber e-sports player versus say a professional e-sports player, I guess what differentiates the two outside of, you know, maybe time, I guess what's the learning curve difference there?
Noah “Blanks”:Well, I will say that there are people who are just naturally inclined to becoming really good at a game. I'm sure you've seen it in the sports you've played. Like you might just, for some reason, some kid just has it. He just, he's a natural. He destroys everything in his way. And a lot of these gamers, they're like that. And they kind of put themselves at the, just outside of the professional level. And then a lot of times with a little bit of a kick from coaches and playing with players that are better than you are, they will make it to that level. But that being said, I think it's a lot of just being wise with your time and being wise in the ways you practice. There's a lot of people that if you don't approach practice with the right mentality or with the right mindset, then other people are just gonna develop faster than you are. And so I'd say like IQ genuinely does play a big factor into how good you are at the game. I mean, at the end of the day, it is kind of just a mental battle, you know? And so, I mean, ways of thinking and how you approach the game and practices can be helped with coaches, but usually the naturals will rise to the top.
Dylan Carnahan:And you bring kind of coaches up. So I guess, you know, so to the uninitiated, I mean, eSports may be a little bit of a fringe thing, right? And then an eSports coach, let alone, is like kind of another ways out there. So I guess, what are some of the main roles of an eSports coach? Are they, I mean, they're not playing, right? Are they just helping you review footage?
Noah “Blanks”:Yeah, there's actually several different types of coaches. It kind of depends on the eSport you're playing, but usually there's analysts. And then a lot of teams actually recently are picking up a, like a mental coach, like a behavioral- Exactly, yeah, eSports psychologist. And that's becoming really common. I know Optic picked one up like a couple of years ago. They kind of kicked off the whole thing, if I remember right. But yeah, just being able to keep your guys mentally in the game and help them bounce back from kind of adversity, it really helps things out a lot.
Dylan Carnahan:What, from switching off kind of the behavioral aspect of a coach, right? Keep a morale high, grounding people. As far as the analysts go, I guess what are some of the rules that they're kind of fulfilling?
Noah “Blanks”:I guess in Rocket League specifically, a lot of it comes, I mean, it always comes down to how you work with your teammates, but there is actually a website that a lot of coaches use called ballchasing.gg, which is where, this is kind of hard to explain, but what you would do is you would take your saved game file, so a competitive game you play, you would save it and you would upload that file to the website and then that website takes the game stats, your positioning throughout the game, how the game was played and it breaks that down into multiple different segments between your team, you as an individual and it gets really in depth. It comes down to your average speed, your average boost used as a player. There's a heat map that shows what players spend the most time in certain places around the map. If you're mostly on offense, mostly on defense, that kind of stuff and that really helps analysts break down where your team is struggling and just work with you to improve and fix it.
Dylan Carnahan:It's interesting. Yeah, of course, obviously it has to have Gigi at the end of it, right?
Noah “Blanks”:Yeah, of course.
Dylan Carnahan:You know, given the, you brought up kind of the mental aspect of e-sports, that kind of lines up with the next question. What is the greatest challenge an e-sports player faces?
Noah “Blanks”:For me personally, it was, not to get like too dark or whatever, but I think being inside and playing for that amount of time has, it takes like a certain toll, especially on your social life, because if you're working and you're going to school and you're playing video games all the time, it really doesn't leave very much time for you to hang out and socialize. And I'd say that's something I definitely struggled with while I was in college. I didn't, looking back now, I didn't network enough. I didn't hang out with my friends enough. I was definitely spending too much time inside and that took a mental toll for a while, but I found a lot better balance kind of towards the end. And I think things are finally regulated. And I think another challenge that a lot of gamers face is just being unhealthy in general, that kind of lifestyle, just sitting inside and not being active, it can lead to some kind of depressive mindsets in a lot of gamers. And I think being able to work with your diet, like plan a diet, plan a workout program, keep yourself healthy, make sure you're going outside, make sure you're spending time with friends, that'll actually help you play better at the end of the day. That's what I discovered. And kind of going back to the coaching aspect of things, a lot of the coaches that get hired on to esports teams now are physical fitness coaches.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, incorporating kind of other dynamic, right? Much as you pointed out. And that's interesting. Yeah, I guess it's the opportunity cost, right? You spend a lot of your time doing X, this being playing video games, then you lose out on Y, right? Now, going back to kind of our conversation earlier about kind of that you brought up kind of viewership of eSports, what do you think is like the typical eSports watcher? Like who watches eSports? And what makes them want to watch other people play video games?
Noah “Blanks”:Most of the viewers, I believe, let's see, I had a statistic here. I believe that, let's see, as far as viewership goes, we sit kind of right, it's really hard to calculate just because games are streamed on multiple different platforms and getting all that viewership data is hard, but it's estimated that eSports is right alongside and like MLB, NHL level as far as viewership goes. And most of that age group is going to be 18 to 34. This is definitely like a newer generation kind of thing. And yeah, that's typically the age group.
Dylan Carnahan:Of who we're seeing watch these. And I guess, you know, as someone who, you know, participates in eSports, I guess, what is it kind of watching people that are able to play these games like a high caliber that's enticing, you know, especially as someone who played, you know, trying to kind of pick up on things from them or I guess, what I guess, how would you describe the entertainment value for that?
Noah “Blanks”:Honestly, it's the same thing as if you were to, if you played a sport growing up and you just see that being played at an elite level, it's interesting to watch. You want to watch the best of the best. If you know how your game is played and you play it a lot, and you see this guy who's just insane performing things that you've never seen before, yeah, you're going to be inclined to watch it.
Dylan Carnahan:Right on. Kind of just in closing, you know, what is the future of eSports? Given kind of your experience as someone that's kind of been an early adopter to a lot of these things, what is the future of eSports? What do you think the outlook is for it?
Noah “Blanks”:It's growing really fast. The viewership-wise, player-based-wise, and even from a gaming development standpoint, they're coming out with new competitive games all the time trying to take a tier one eSport spot, trying to get that viewership. And yeah, it's grown really fast, man. I know just from playing collegiate, there were a lot more college teams and college programs popping up around the country. And actually once I finished with Mizzou, and I had recently graduated Missouri Western, just up by St. Louis, they hit me up and they said, hey, we're looking for a coach. Would you be interested? And I had a lot going on at the time. I had a little too much on my plate, so I wasn't able to do that. But it just shows you that they're kind of coming up everywhere and they're looking for people to fill staff and faculty spots.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that's crazy, right? You kind of been at the kind of the cusp of the collegiate boom as far as having them invest in their kind of college programs. In closing, like how can people learn more about you and how to get involved in eSports?
Noah “Blanks”:I would say if you're a high school student watching this and you're looking to get involved in college eSports, efuse.gg is a great platform. It's kind of like LinkedIn for eSports. It's really used for any eSports aspect, I guess. If you're looking to meet with people who are in eSports and have similar interests to you, or you're trying to get in at the ground level somewhere, efuse.gg is kind of the spot. As far as me, if you want to connect with me, I do have a Twitch, blanks underscore RL, if you guys want to check that out. Otherwise social media is also blanks underscore RL. And the org, too, Kansas City Pioneers, KCP.gg. Check that out.
Dylan Carnahan:Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks, Noah, for coming on and kind of sharing your story and going over the concept of esports and giving everyone a nice little avenue to check out how to get involved. That wraps up our conversation with Blanks. We talked about how people as young as middle school can compete in esports professionally, the two types of coaches that coach esports players and the mental health struggles that come from competing. Follow Blanks on social media. Check out the KC Pioneers on their website to support our local esports teams. Do not forget to listen to Darrell Chism on Apple Music or Spotify. You can also reach out to Darrell if you're searching for an audio engineer or producer. Darrell does some fantastic work. And lastly, subscribe to the Simple Questions Podcast to get notified when our latest episodes are released. Thank you for listening, and remember to keep asking questions.
Noah “Blanks”:Thank you.