MVP.March: “The Philippines has what it takes to reach the next level.”
Before winning the Asian championship title, South Korea’s DotA 2 squad captain Park Tae Won was already a professional gamer back in his home city of Seoul.
At the eSports Festival 2014 held at the SM City Cebu Trade Hall, the buzz for event revolved around the International e-Sports Federation (IeSF) 2014 Asian Championships that pitted competitors from across Asia vying for a piece of the total prize pool of P430,000 in five different games: DotA 2, Hearthstone, Starcraft 2, Ultra Street Fighter 4 and Tekken Tag Tournament.
But the main draw for the weekend was the DotA 2 Asian Championships that brought teams from Mongolia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea and Thailand to compete with homegrown Filipino teams.
Known in-game as MVP.March, he traveled to Cebu together with his team, MVP.Phoenix, to compete in a video game tournament — an all too common occurrence for March. According to March, ever since MVP.Phoenix started gaining popularity outside of South Korea, trips outside of their country have steadily increased.
The MVP.Phoenix captain along with his four teammates represented his country as he battled against 6 other nationalities and seven teams for the coveted title of Asian Dota 2 champions. The title included a cool $5,000 purse, invitations that include accommodations to the IeSF World championships in Baku, Azerbaijan in November.
After barely making the play-offs in the Asian championships, the Koreans stormed through their semi-finals opponents — team The Prime from Indonesia — by using their trademark aggressive style of play that focuses on destroying enemy structures and outlasting enemy combatants in the field. They met the Filipino team MSI-EvoGT from Manila in the finals of the Asian championship. An action-packed best of three series saw the Koreans edge out the Philippine team in three games.
LIFE OF A GAMER
In an interview, he described his life as a professional gamer as a cycle of, “Wake up, work out, eat, play games, eat again, play games, sleep and repeat.”
“We didn’t really think we would get this far,” said March. “When I started playing Dota 2, I thought I’d just put up a team and see where it would take us. We never thought we would be invited outside of the country.”
South Korea, known famously as the most “wired” country in the world and the country with the most progressive systems in place for professional gaming, has had a long history with professional video gaming ever since the Korean e-Sports Authority (KESPA), the body tasked with the oversight of the video game industry in South Korea, was established in 2000.
“In Korea, we had some problems with illegal sports betting and gaming addiction and so KESPA was really active in that time to help educate gamers,” describes March. “They really reach out and teach gamers what to do and really clean up their game so that we can have a more professional and lucrative industry.”
Part of KESPA’s drive to clean-up and bring professional video gaming to mainstream appeal is standardizing the minimum requirements to enter the industry professionally, providing job and living security for players and workers alike.
“We really believe in our team house system in Korea. It originally started in Starcraft days and then the rest of the other games used it over the years,” said March.
Korean gaming houses are one of the requirements put in place by KESPA in order to put up a professionally competitive team in South Korea. A gaming house functions both as the player’s training grounds and living quarters. Teams live, train and strategize together often for many months at a time. According to March, it’s the responsibility of team owners to file the necessary paperwork with the government, find a suitable gaming house and foot the living expenses of their players.
“The way our team house systems work, although you may not make any money if you’re a small team or if you’re just starting to join tournaments, you can at least live.”
March said that almost everyone in the e-Sports industry in South Korea enjoys a salary, especially if they are particularly skilled or popular in their chosen games.
“The most popular and best players sometimes have six-figure salaries. Yes, that’s in US currency,” said March.
“In fact, in Korea some players become celebrities. A lot of their income comes from endorsements from their sponsors,” he shared. “Samsung sponsors a team for League of Legends (another game of the MOBA variety) and I’m quite close friends with them. Before I flew over here, I saw them on TV endorsing Samsung monitors.”
According to data gathered by Superdata Research — a digital goods research firm — the PC digital games market for the US alone increased by 18% for 2014, an indicator of the video game industry’s ballooning growth in recent years. In Korea, March says that more and more companies are looking to sponsor gaming teams in different genres to bag fresh celebrity advertisers for the 18-25 male demographic.
March recalled the time when he told his parents and friends that he was going to pursue gaming as a career.
“I faced some obstacles, but it wasn’t that bad. My parents were more open compared to older Korean parents,” recalls March. “One day, I told my father that I was confident that I was going to make it in the industry so I showed him exactly how much gaming is worth in Korea. I said that after I’m done as a professional gamer that I can still earn this much just working inside the industry and then he said yes.”
“Of course, he wanted me to finish university first,” laughs March. “That’s why I’m pretty old for a professional in Korea. I’m already 28. My family really wanted me to finish my studies first and they were OK with me playing games because then I can be studying on my computer and then relaxing by playing a game right away.”
“My friends weren’t even surprised. ‘You’ve always loved games so we’re not surprised you’re going to be a professional gamer,’ they used to say.”
With over 70 million people worldwide watching eSports over the Internet and televised games, March says that he will remain with the industry for the foreseeable future. In the past, South Korea made headlines when it showcased a professional match for Starcraft: Broodwar, a real-time strategy game featuring fictional spaceships, aliens and more, to a sold out crowd of 100,000 spectators in a football stadium.
During his stay in Cebu, March commented that the Philippines has what it takes to take professional gaming to the next level.
“There so much talent here and people are really into the game. I won’t be surprised if we get the next big teams from the Philippines,” he said.
Local team Arcanys Gaming from Cebu is among the rare breed of gamers who actually work professionally in the country.
Team Arcanys, who bagged third place in the IeSF Asian Championships in the same weekend, works and trains out of their rented office space on the 7th floor of the CFI cooperative building inside the Cebu provincial capitol grounds.
The team, sponsored by the Arcanys Software Development Company, is composed of college students and the recently graduated.
In a past interview, team captain Heinrich Abad said that they are unique in the Philippines as one of the few teams who also receive paychecks as professional gamers from their sponsor aside from the equipment support and branded merchandising.
“If you look at the popularity of Dota 2 in the Philippines, it’s actually much bigger here than in Korea. There are already some well-known teams in the Philippines and some of the talented players are living in Korea to join our leagues,” said March.
“With more support and help, the gaming industry here can be cleaned up too.”
In order for the Philippines to reach the next stage of competitiveness however, March says that special attention must be poured into improving the net infrastructure in the country.
“In Korea, we have a culture where people just wanted to have their stuff downloaded faster and more efficiently or else people would get impatient and not support the telecom companies that won’t provide that,” shared March. “So the government and companies really upgraded our internet. It’s what made us really get into games too.”
He added that the while there is huge fan support in the country for games, teams struggle to practice against international opponents because of the delay brought by less than optimal internet infrastructure.
“I felt really bad, you know, when I was queuing up for a ranked game in the tournament hall,” said March. “I had a ping of like 100ms. In Korea, that would have been unacceptable.”
“These teams from the Philippines are doing really well and are very strong with that kind of delay. Imagine how strong they would be with better internet,” he added.
THE ROAD TO LEGITIMACY
On the same weekend, representatives from IeSF unveiled their plans for the eSports industry in the coming years.
The Philippines recently joined IeSF’s ranks as it latest member country.
Their goal: To push for eSports’ inclusion in the Olympic games.
Stephen Hontiveros, Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) Executive director, was present for the unveiling of Inquirer.net and the Philippine eSports Organization’s website.
He said that he wishes that eSports can follow the trajectory of Chess which began as a mental competition before being treated as a sport recognized around the world.
“I hope that this will be included in the Asean games,” said Mr. Hontiveros. “The Filipino can show that he can excel in any field.”
Hontiveros said that the POC will be working closely with IeSF to legitimize eSports’ presence in the country and solidify its push for international recognition as an Olympic event.
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