7. Kyle ‘Ksharp’ Miller (United States of America)

Ksharp is one of the cases in this list where only his play is not why he may have been greater, it is more than he needed to understand a particular mindset to accomplish such a feat. This may seem like cheating to suggest a player needed to think for himself or the game a different way, from a scale perhaps not constitute part of who they are, but I think Ksharp could have done He changed his prospects if he will actually be able to consider the election result of his career.

Reason movies online players racking up crazy kills adversaries lower level has never impressed me is that these moves simply do not work for players level elite, who lead the first you miss is the place where great player AK gets head your off. Who burst on the enemy you hit is where the elite players in the country again strafed the wall to get you out of your rhythm. It is also regrettable that the lack of people say that fans have no idea what some of the all time great players were able to practice online games.

Ksharp is probably the biggest player in Internet history, I think n0thing is up there too but was Ksharp language. Cal and scrims in games he routinely plays withdraw from most crazy and impossible, things that defy explanation. Now, of course, it is a component of the lack of pressure in these situations compared to offline, which is where the criticism of Ksharp will come in. In terms of raw capabilities, though, he is one of the most talented players to ever pick up a mouse and fire up CS.

 

Ksharp problem was that he not only refused to play the same brand of CS offline, but he also refused to fully accept the mantle of star players. In 2008, he was understood f0rest fragger star on his team, if fnatic was going to win a tournament then he will have to be topping it there and getting kills scoreboards difficult. Poles fought past when tactical teams more capable and better, it is because Neo was put incredible performances out of each individual game. Ksharp was never comfortable with the notion of being the star that all eyes are on him to succeed or fail.

This is manifested in his game that he would confine himself to some degree and his teams refusing to AWP. All clips online, apparently, show AWPing Ksharp’s amazing, a weapon he was born presumably to use. The only player I can even compare to his markeloff AWPing, since they both had an incredibly fast style still accurate, which is very rare in high level. But where markeloff embraced being a AWPer and led his teams to major titles using it, Ksharp often prone AWPing in offline big games, instead will route the “safe” and rifling and trying make an impact in this way.

If I could go back in time and brainwash Ksharp in buying a AWP every time he had enough money, taking up those positions aggressive he will be online and using weapons as a task or access die, ready to win the whole tournament or have his team bomb out earlier than usual, then I think we will talk about one of the best players more of all time, certainly in the conversation for greatest ever .

Instead, it went the way safer, had a beautiful career with some highlights of the great and ultimately is remembered for a lot of flashes sparkling, still not the same kind of dominance offline that a player his caliber should have been known. He is the only player not to make that mistake, AWPer shaGuar was another who will come back from AWPing when he felt less safe. The real dedicated AWPers have the mentality that if they lost the last shot and they will do next.

 

Thorin pretty much discusses the basics of how to be a journalist, make a name for yourself and other factors that relate. But when it comes to actually being a journalist for a site like GAMURS, not many people understand what they are getting themselves into.

I have seen many writers come and go in my time of writing because they didn’t make it instantly. If you want to be a journalist, you best know that you aren’t in for instant success. I have looked at my first articles and seen my vastly superior improvement, from my sentence structure to basic things like grammar, and still, I am far from being at a point I am happy with.

As a journalist, you need to be constantly improving your craft and your skill, while creating your personal brand. If you are one of those individuals who will sit down and not drive yourself forward, you will be eaten by those pushing forward; you need to have hunger to get to the front of the queue, to find your contacts, to meet those who were once your heroes, but now are the people you need to interview. The more you push, the more you will get out of it.

You have to be willing to do things that you aren’t comfortable with. And no, I don’t mean by investing waves of your money from the get go on podcasts and other ventures, I mean staying up ungodly hours to cover events in other countries, pushing yourself to reach a schedule of content and be sure to write daily, every day, and every waking moment. No matter how much you suffer from writers block or where you are, you need to be able to grab at any big news that comes up and be able to get it out there. You should strive to be one of the first to write on the subject and pray it gets noticed, it’s mostly down to luck at that point.

Now I am not saying this is the norm and what everyone has to do, I’m saying it’s what I do, to reach the highest form of content creation I can. At the end of the day, I don’t only consider this my job, I consider this a future. When I started, I didn’t expect instant success, I expected to have to slug it out, get out there, work for it, be brave and be considerate of my fellow writers who are also trying to get out there and pay bills as well as do something they love. I can’t express this enough.

I love being a Journalist

It isn’t something for everyone, but knowing I get to wake up and cover League of Legends for a living is pretty rad. So I implore you, if you seek the chances to prove yourself, this is the advice I would give to someone not just wanting to become an esport journalist, but a journalist in general.

1. Start somewhere. May it be a blog posting reviews or writing for free, get your craft polished, get something for a portfolio, so when a job opens, you have something to show. 90 percent of people don’t get into journalism jobs because of this. You need to get on your own case and get stuff done.
2. Set yourself a plan and stick to it. If you have a series you want to do or if you want to write every day or so often, make a plan and follow it. If you feel you can’t do work one day, do the work in advance so it can be published. I can’t stress how important this is.
3. Practise re-reading your works. Don’t be satisfied with your first draft or rely on computer problems. A computer can’t pick up when you write “now” instead of “know.” Take it from my personal experiences, it’s haunting.
4. Keep pushing, get your contacts, go to events, say who you are, get business cards. Keep pushing for reviews and make a name for yourself. Develop a brand so that instead of you wanting to join, people want you to join their rosters.
5. Be prepared to be critiqued. Accept it, admit your mistakes and be honest. If you throw everything you are told to the side, you will never improve and your mistakes will be constant.
6. Be prepared to ask for help. People may not respond, but if you don’t try, you won’t get in this industry.

If any of you inspiring writers want help, you can contact me at any of the contacts below. I’m always willing to help new writers and will offer the best help and advice I can. All I ask is patience and if I don’t get back to you, I apologise. I might have been busy or it was thrown into my junk emails. Regardless, I hope this provides a better insight into esports and journalism as a whole.

The thought of an early access game being considered an esport can be really sketchy, but now that H1Z1 is fully released with a strong backing by the community, it has a lot of potential. Updates and listening to feedback by the community shows that Daybreak is ready to fix the error of their past to fix the game for the future.

Introducing the ranking system, along with having their Invitational showcasing big names in the community, H1Z1 looks like they might be pushing to make it an esport. Sure, the Invitational is just supposed to be for fun and to show off the game, but you can’t help but see how crazy good the players are. H1Z1 even helped a ton of streamers gain popularity, such as SxyHxy, GassyMexican, Trick2g and many others. The community is definitely big enough to warrant being an esport, it’s just a matter of time and dedication.

Pro Halo player Tyler “Ninja” Blevins won one of last years Invitational matches, winning $19,923. As of today, he is ranked number four on the H1Z1 ranked ladder and will be attending the Invitational again. This year, however, he said he has his sights on taking home the win on both rounds, which would net a lot more money given the prize pool is currently at $245,000.

Former pro CS player and huge personality on twitch Summit1G also plays H1Z1 regularly on stream, and he constantly speaks out about ways the game can improve and how fun it would be as an esport. The 2016 Invitational is allowing many people, like Ninja and Summit, to come out and show off the skills they have been practicing in order to take home a decent chunk of money. However, Summit has expressed concern with the Invitational, saying that “you can’t be taken seriously unless you let people bring their own mouse and keyboard.”

H1Z1 is a game that is incredibly easy to learn. The basis is simple: spawn, loot, kill, win. However, the skill ceiling for this game is incredibly high; the minute things that you have to perfect such as managing armor, helmets, bandages, positioning, recoil, gas and tactics all play a factor in how much you can learn. These are the types of things that separate Ninja and Summit from you or me.

An issue I would see with H1Z1 being an esport is that it would likely only be single FFA games as opposed to duos or five-mans. The FFA format would provide constant action, especially when pitting top players against each other, meaning the chances of lulls in the gameplay are slim to none.

On the other hand, with duos and five-mans, the game would likely be too slow as teams spawn farther away, firefights end extremely quickly with enough coordination and the map/spawns aren’t exactly built around a competitive multi-person format. Slow gameplay doesn’t make for a fun spectator esport.

The biggest issue that H1Z1 has is the game is just overall buggy and refuses to work at times. The official release of the game brought a slew of issues and crashes that sometimes make the game unplayable, whether it’s the game crashing when you die, not allowing you to see or gain rank in duos/five-mans, canceling healing items when entering or leaving a vehicle or not opening the game for no reason at all.

Until these issues are resolved, the game will likely be in a state of purgatory where it’s not quite an esport, but it’s trying to be. Luckily, the developers have stepped up their game since the release and are talking to the community about getting every game-breaking bug fixed so the game can be its best. Hopefully, they stick to their word.

With Echo Fox and Twin Galaxies pairing together to find the top players around the world to represent themselves in the Invitational, we already see esports organizations expressing interest in the game. While it may not mean that they are 100 percent ready to invest into it, it does show that the possibility may not be too far into the future.

We will likely see something similar to Smash Bros in that organizations will sign one or two players who will play in the singles format. Depending on how the game grows from there, we might see Daybreak make changes to duos and five-mans to allow it to be played at a more competitive level.