Reaching the upper echelon of any sport requires a mixture of determination, motivation, discipline and luck, and this particular combination is essentially applicable to every field in life. Be it a mass participation game like football or the relatively low profile sport of Malkhamb (a popular gymnastics form), the goal is to become the best, and that's never easy.
For competitive video gaming, better known as e-sports, it’s been a long journey for Indian participants. But the fruits have slowly begun to appear for the highly skilled individuals involved in the transition process of turning a hobby into a full-time job.
Similar to football or cricket, e-sports also registers millions of athletes attempting to turn professional at any given point of time. But if you’re among the lucky few professionals in a country of 30 million gamers, how much are you paid? What is the risk involved? Which are the companies available?
We won’t lie; e-sports is still in the germination process. However, if you’re an entrant within the community now, you'll see that we've come a long way from the garage tournaments which offered only mousepads as prizes.
You don’t even have to think that far back; the first salaries issued for competitive gaming in India were to professional Counter-Strike 1.6 team ATE Gaming and Dota 2 outfit Oblique Gaming. A stalwart within the community and one of India’s top current players, and also the captain of Team Brutality, Ankit Panth told Sportskeeda, “Previously when Ate gaming (Cs 1.6) or Oblique gaming (Dota) used to get salaries, they were somewhere around Rs 7,500 to 10,000 at the max.
“Though they got the money only for a few months, even that figure, at that time, was massive. No one could even think of getting paid.”
He added, “I’ll be honest with you, no one within the gaming community in 2006, or even till 2012 or 2013, thought about doing this for money. If there was money, it would’ve been an added incentive. Our goal was to become the best and represent the country abroad.
“Companies such as India Games and Cooler Master were the first to actually initiate salaries. However, it’s changed now.
“There are companies who are not only ready to pump in money, but also create brands out of players and make sure the community grows. This can directly be attributed to the growth of e-sports worldwide.”
For one of India’s best players like Ankit, the salary count can cross Rs 22,000 per month, with additional bonuses such as a gaming house; that eliminates all the worries for food, rent and electricity. However, the 25-year-old has taken a different approach to his career.
He said, “We are a player owned organisation; no company pays us any salary. Whatever tournaments we win, the money is divided among us. However, that is not the case with most organisations in India.
“We have been approached several times by tech companies for buyouts, but they have often quoted unreasonable demands, hence we never sold. The idea is to create a business around us and we become the brand once the e-sports boom hits. I’m sure 2017 will be a landmark year that way.”
So what happens when you lose a tournament? It's a sport; you win some you lose some. What happens to security then? Ankit replied, “Then we don’t get paid. For us, if there is a cheque at the beginning of a month from a tournament organiser, that will bring a smile to our face.
“However, when we lose it’s like a loss to us and the company. It's a game of high risk and high reward. We do everything, from getting sponsors to actually playing the game, so it's a different setup for us here at Team Brutality.”
An entrepreneurial venture is not for everyone; it requires a team of dedicated individuals who are ready to make it work. Teams break up all the time; similar to football, player transfers are common in e-sport. Team Brutality have changed their roster on multiple occasions as well, and Ankit assures me that running a team-owned company is not for the faint-hearted.
Current average industry salary is Rs 22,000
For the others, there are organisations such as Entity E-sports. The Mumbai-based gaming organisation has created a professional set-up which has been regularly dishing out player salaries for the past year.
Apart from a monthly stipend, the organisation also provides proper accommodation – usually far better than the houses they stay in – as well as an in-house cook and miscellaneous expenses such as night outs. For comparison, the most that an engineer gets as ‘job perks’ is a minimal discount on groceries – and that too with the same salary.
Team manager Sid Joshi explained how the system works, “The player salaries haven't changed a lot in the last 1-2 years. But a lot of other benefits have been added. For example, a team gave players X salary. Entity gives players a little more than X, but also gives them a gaming house, an in-house cook, high-end computers, miscellaneous expenses etc. So technically you could say the salaries have increased in a way.
“That being said, the salaries have increased almost three times than what players got in the early years of Indian e-sports.”
Entity’s professional outlook has taken the e-sports scene by storm. They recently did the double at the India Gaming Week by winning both the CS GO and Dota events.
Joshi added, “Right now the maximum salary cap is somewhere around Rs 20,000 – 22,000 per month. This is the maximum anyone earns here. The minimum according to me should be 10-12k. That is the bare minimum a person needs to survive.
“These numbers are kind of low but as of now in India, salaries are basically pocket money players get for their other activities. Once more sponsors/investors come in we can look at more stable numbers, where the players can spend on luxuries and still save after a month.”
To the naked eye, these amounts seem nominal at best. However, if things are put into perspective, the gamers don’t have to pay for anything but a lunch at a restaurant with their friends. A gaming house is a concept where team members stay together to build team chemistry, and have a single-minded goal towards becoming the best in the game.
Joshi said, “Entity is not the first team to get a gaming house, but I can say that ours is the best one so far. It is a beautiful 3 bhk house in a prime location with three internet connections and the best infrastructure ever given to any players.
“People have tried to set up gaming houses in the past, but they've always failed after six months. When you walk into our house, you know it's a gaming house. You can see mechanical keyboards, graphic cards, monitors just lying around in the house.
“Even though this culture is quite new, I think having a gaming house should be the number one priority on the list of any organisation. The advantages of having one are ridiculous. The players bond at a deeper level. There are barely any fights. Even when there are, they are very quickly sorted out.
“The players eat, game, watch movies, go out together, and the synergy that is created is something any organisation would want in their players.”
With expenditure being negligible, not to mention being paid to compete in something that's your passion, Indian e-sports seems to be pushing beyond the monetary reward realm. According to industry sources, with the entry of big players such as Ronnie Screwvala’s USports and Nazara Games, salaries will increase to as much as Rs 40,000.
Is that still not enough motivation to play hard and go pro?
