Dear Esports Pro Player,

Dear Esports Pro Player,

I’m writing this in hopes of helping you and your career not in regards to how you practice or how you play, and I’m certainly not trying to give you any tips that help you become a better player in your game.

What I am doing, is trying to get you to understand that your playing days and the earning days that go hand in hand with those playing days should NOT be 100% of your focus. You need to ask yourself the following question… WHAT AM I GOING TO DO AFTER MY PLAYING DAYS HAVE ENDED?

Like it or not we live in a digital world now, and it’s easier now more than ever to make money when it comes to content creation. So with that being said why wouldn’t you want to try FURTHER and LENGTHEN your ability to make a living off of esports/gaming? I don’t understand this logic. Last year I was yelled at for saying that PRO COD players were responsible for the decline in viewership that the CWL was getting. I told every pro who would listen to stream and create meaningful content, build it and they will come.  Not many, if any were trying to build anything. No tournaments were streamed, no videos were made, hardly any content at all was created. Because of the lack of content, this left media sites with very little content to help create storylines that would have built hype going into LAN events.

Now is a good time to brag on Nadeshot for a moment… his playing days have been over for a while now, right? Because of content creation, you see him doing better than ever right? Because of content creation, he now owns one of the hottest and most valuable orgs in the world. Do you think Nadeshot owns 100T’s simply because he is a world champion at Call of Duty? Do you think he was able to raise capital to fund 100T’s only because he is a world champion?

Imagine where Nadeshot would be today had he not invested in himself and worked at creating meaningful content on a regular basis? I can assure you he would not be where he is today, and he would not have got the type of investment he did from the people he did had it not been for his content creation, and that is a fact. Matt is a smart guy, and I’m confident he would be the first to come out and say that being good at Call of Duty helped lift his career, he would also say that being on OpTic helped boost his career. He would also say that content creation is the most critical factor that enables him to still work in this space after his days of being a pro is behind him.

Fast forward to this November and a ton of pro players are streaming scrims and tournaments on Twitch and some are making YouTube videos as well. I see more and more players taking their long-form content = steams, and turning them into short-form content = short clips for Twitter and Instagram and guess what? The pros who are doing this are seeing the most growth overall on social, and they are earning more money than the ones who are not doing any content creation.

Now, if a pro player looks me in the face and says “Scotty, I hear you, but when I’m done being a pro player, I do not want to work in gaming and esports.” Then, I understand and wish them the best in whatever they plan to do after their playing days are over. However,… if you are a pro player and you want to continue working in gaming and esports after your playing days are over, and you are not creating content… then I hope you understand you are making life much harder on yourself then it needs to be.