Only the best could walk through those doors. But that meant nothing. We had to go into that hotel and prove we were the best of the best.
We had forty-eight hours—from Friday evening until the end of Sunday—to prove we were worth something. We could enter as unknown scrubs and leave as legends, though that was unlikely. Because these guys were good.
For the first time ever, we were behind the scenes of our digital universe: the Pro Gamers League. The forum posts where players were seeking out hotel roommates, fans were seeking extra tickets, everyone was trash-talking rival teams and making predictions for the pools, sharing highlight videos of past events to build the hype—all of it revolved around this place. When all the top streamers told their fans they would be offline for the next couple of days because they’d be out for PGL—so get hype—they were talking about this PGL. The focus of the entire e-sports scene of North America was cast upon my city. I had spent many weekends glued to my computer screen watching these tournaments. Finally, I had arrived on the set of one.
Chase, Mason, and I stood in awe for a moment before walking toward our arena. We walked past the first two arenas, because the gamers behind those banisters weren’t our people. The first was the fighting-games arena, where the players clustered around televisions, two opponents front and center, ten spectators hovering behind. They only used old, bulky tube monitors for fighting games, because flat screens have an input lag of up to twenty whole milliseconds. The players themselves were unknowable, vested in big hoodies, some veiled in sunglasses and blocking out the room’s existence with a big set of headphones. Their arena was the twenty-first-century version of an arcade, full of a cacophony of punches and slashes and kicks and body slams, played by a seemingly indifferent set of stern faces.
Then there was the shooting-games arena, where players had to shout above the sounds of grenade explosions and assault rifle bursts to coordinate as best they could in the chaos of the crossfire. Good shooting players were all speed and precision—respectable but not our people. We kept walking.
In the back of the event floor, with thirty-two high-powered PCs, where only one strategy game was being played—the Astrobloc arena—that’s where our people resided. We were the nerds of the gaming world. Yes, that meant we were the nerds of all nerds. Astrobloc was our e-sport—a complex 4 vs. 4 real-time strategy game that requires the players to have as much in-depth knowledge and strategy as a chess player while moving their hands on the keyboard and mouse with as much finesse as a violin player, a game so immersive and addictive that, in the half year since its release, it had become the most popular e-sport in North America.
I had sparred with probably half the guys hanging out behind those banisters, yet I had no idea who was who. I might have been making eye contact with someone I had flamed in a random ladder game, or someone who had flamed me. The only faces I knew were of the tippy-top players. The first one I recognized was of the kid emerging from the back row of PCs, just twenty or so steps away from me. His face was undeniable, with his iconic blond hair gelled and styled to perfection. He looked as good in the flesh as he made his units look on the maps. And it was a punch in the gut knowing this seventeen-year-old kid was two years younger than me yet already a superstar, the number-one-ranked player on the North American ladder, the guy who caused fans to make posts saying NA could definitely produce talent that could compete at an international level, who was single-handedly carrying his team, Zer0 0ut, to several PGL finals and giving the Antimatter dynasty its toughest competition yet.
Chase tugged on my shirt and said, “Tim. Look. It’s Bouncer.”
“I know. He’s sort of right in front of us.”
“Let’s go talk to him.”
“What?”
Mason and I both looked at each other, wondering what Chase was thinking, if we should have told him he was an idiot, but already he was off. We watched in awe as our Asian friend, almost a whole foot shorter than Bouncer, walked up to them. He went with the same approach he always took in the game, the aggressive no-hesitation approach—the one to pounce on opportunities before considering the risk, leaving Mason and I behind before we could even realize what he was doing.
We caught up to him and, like the good teammates we were, immediately backed him up. Mason pulled out his phone to record video and announced, “Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, the first encounter between EsoHawk and Bouncer in the physical world.”
That got the attention of Bouncer and his teammates. Bouncer said, “Oh yeah? You’re Hawk? I’ve played against you on the ladder—a bunch of times.”
Then I came in, like an interviewer between two champs in a boxing ring. “So, Hawk, if Bouncer and his team make it to the finals against Antimatter, do you think he has a chance of beating them?”
Chase shrugged and said, “Let’s just keep it real. He’ll need a more solid mech game to have a chance against Antimatter.”
A look of shock and confusion spread across everyone’s faces, even Mason’s and mine. One of Bouncer’s teammates laughed and said, “You’re really criticizing Bouncer’s mech game right now? Who are you again?”
“I mean, let’s just keep it real. He’s good. But I know the mech matchups. He’s got some weaknesses. Antimatter will find them.”
Bouncer said, “Let’s one v. one. Mech. Badlands. No objectives. We got another game in our pools, but at the end of the day, let’s go.”
“Deal.”
They shook hands, and both smiled. There was an understanding between them that they both lived for this kind of trash talk. Even if they never got around to playing the game, the challenge itself had planted the seed of rivalry. So if they came across each other on the solo ladder, they’d have something to chat about. As we walked away, Mason and I just about knocked him off his feet. I said, “If he follows up on that challenge, you’re gonna get crushed, and everyone’s gonna hear about it.”
His automatic response was, “I can beat him.”
Mason and I laughed. But his face remained stern long enough for us to realize he wasn’t joking. He actually thought he could win toe to toe with Bouncer. Not that it mattered. We were never going to come across him, not in the tournament or in person. We had to focus on our own games, the amateur pools.
Our last teammate, Barkley, showed up late. By the time he arrived, the pool arrangements had been announced, and we had already retreated to our room and started an in-depth search of any vague amount of intel we could find about our opponents. If we could figure out the setup they usually ran or their favorite unit comps or what strategies they tended to lose to, we would go into our matchups with a slight advantage, or at least a confidence boost.
The main point was that we were trying something for prep—or I was trying to lead us through some prep. Chase was the most out of touch for any preparation discussion, as he was lying on the bed, watching videos of Bouncer playing 1 vs. 1 games against his fans, studying every nuance of his setups and movements on the map. This opened up the arguments again, with us saying, “You have no chance against him. It’s Bouncer—literally the number-one-ranked player on the ladder. He’s probably forgotten about the challenge already. Even if he hasn’t, he might not have time to play you.”
But Chase just said, “Dude, I can beat him.”
He swore he had figured out a few tricks that none of the top players were aware of. I wouldn’t have been surprised if that were true. No one takes head-to-head games seriously. Astrobloc is fundamentally a team game. A 1 vs. 1 makes about as much sense to play as it does in basketball or soccer. Sure, it displays some kind of mechanical skill, but without the teamwork element the game is too simple, for most players at least. For Chase, all those subtle details about the slightest differences in unit placement, which units to focus fire on, landing the perfect amount of damage so as not to waste shots—those were the aspects of the game he obsessed over and could talk about for an hour while the rest of us struggled to pay attention.
The next morning, we brought our keyboards and mice down to the arena, palpitating from an obscene amount of energy drinks, and Chase had no idea what the plan was, didn’t care one way or the other what we were going to play. He casually said, “You guys coordinate your stuff. I’ll play my game. We’ll win no problem.” For him that meant playing his precious blood mech—mech units with blood runes—into anything and everything, and he refused to negotiate; thus, without him coordinating with us, none of us really knew what the plan was. We played almost as chaotically as solo players in the clown fiesta of online games—a place more formally known as the North American solo ladder. Team games in a tournament were supposed to exhibit a much more sophisticated level of play, but we had yet to practice even ten hours with Barkley added to the team.
Even so, we went into the pools without much of a sweat. We had a style these random teams couldn’t figure out. Chase played DPS, which stands for “damage per second,” the role that is responsible for pushing units up the middle lane and summoning titans that have a high damage output but no defenses. That’s where my role came in. I played support. And while most support players have presence all over the map, I stuck most of my units right next to Chase, giving him shields and healing effects. Mason was on resource, playing around the bottom or right-side lanes. He had to make the nimble, rapid-firing units that could burst open the patches of minerals for workers to retrieve. He provided the fuel for the whole team to keep building units. Then there was Barkley on objective, making all the bulky powerhouse units, trying to capture orbs. If he failed to pick up enough shard—and he usually did—we would have terrible upgrades, and our late game would suffer. But that wasn’t an issue. We just won our games before the late game ever mattered. We won all our pool matches, only dropping a couple of games throughout all of Friday.
We were going to play on Saturday. This was where games mattered. Win in the first round, and we’d be top sixteen. Get to top eight, and we’d be considered semipro. Make it to top four: official pro status, and fans would remember our names. Win it all? Well…that was just a dream.
Since we had another chance to put in a night of preparation, I told Chase we needed to coordinate a strategy for the weirder maps—begged him—because playing standard on those was impossible.
That was my belief, not his. He said, “Dude, I’m telling you planning doesn’t really matter until you get to like top four. Until then let’s just play our best.”
“Don’t you at least have a few counterpicks for the large maps?”
“No.”
“You’re going to play blood mech every game tomorrow, no matter what?”
“Yes.”
Indeed he did. And we had to learn the hard way that the round of thirty-two was a whole different league. Our first opponent was Raw Power Gamers—a name they chose just so they could abbreviate to RPG. Their name may have been terrible, but they played sharp and fast. They scouted and knew our game plan within a couple of minutes. They put meaty bio units all across their middle lane to stifle Chase’s early pushes. Then they upgraded to ranged units and poked us off the minerals and orbs, a slow, methodical starvation—the correct way to counter a team that puts too much into mech—not that they needed to play much of a counter, as mech was inferior on all the large maps anyways. We were out, left only with our arguments over what had gone wrong, though I didn’t say much. Chase was just going to note that he had managed to get the most titan kills and rack up the most damage by the end of the game. All anyone ever thinks about or brags about in this game is doing the most damage. We both seemed to understand it would be better to argue about preparation in a different medium, through online chats over the next couple of weeks. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to try another PGL event after this catastrophe anyways. Also, there was one glaring problem in the team that we both could agree on: Barkley was terrible and had to go, and that was the topic we kept between us for the rest of the weekend, whenever he wasn’t around.
Not that he really cared to talk about our supposed team all that much. He was still fixated on Bouncer, on making the 1 vs. 1 challenge come to fruition. His chance finally arrived on Sunday night, when the Astrobloc finals were played on the main stage. Bouncer and his team, Zer0 0ut, had made it to the finals against the legendary Antimatter squad. This was the second chance for the rising star to prove that Antimatter’s reign was over. Their encounter at a PGL finals last month had been a fluke, his fans said. He was still acclimating himself to playing on stage with his team and resisting the implosion of his nerves. There was an inordinate amount of pressure on him after all. He had brought Zer0 0ut from middle-of-the-pack status to their second finals. And Antimatter had a large and vicious mass of basement-dwelling fans who memed Bouncer to the ends of the internet. They posted shopped pictures with his face tacked onto comic book villains, while Antimatter were shown to be the righteous warriors basking in golden sunlight. The internet was not on his side.
We were so hyped for the match that we claimed the front-row seats an hour early, before the tech guys were even finished taking down the consoles for the fighting-games finals.
Chase said, “Alright, so we’re all hoping for an upset by Zer0 0ut, right?”
Mason said, “You just want him to win so that you can go on to challenge him and say you squared off against a PGL winner.”
“So I can say I beat a PGL winner. Right?”
Mason laughed. “Maybe. I’m not gonna be a doubter. But you do realize if he wins, he’s gonna have much more on his to-do list than play against some unknown ladder kid.”
“Hey, I’ll wait. At the very least, he’s not walking out of this room without me reminding him that he shook on the challenge.” Chase looked at me. “Tim, what about you? Who are you feeling here?”
I shrugged. “I could go either way. If Antimatter keeps dominating, then that means they’ve figured something out that the rest of us don’t know. If Zer0 wins, then the circuit finals will be more interesting.”
I just said all that so that Chase didn’t feel so ostracized. Secretly I wanted Antimatter to win. I wanted them to crush. They were so much cooler to me, walking into the arena with their slick matching black jackets and yellow-tinted gamer glasses. In the setup phase, they didn’t even seem to talk much. They had a method of picking comps and building such a calculated amount of defenses while teching up for the late game that one could say they had solved Astrobloc. Everyone else was in a permanent state of catching up to them. They made every other team look like four random players on the solo ladder with no voice coms, and they always stomped their way through any LAN tournament.
They did so in this PGL yet again, and Bouncer failed to get his first big win, again.
When the match ended, Bouncer kept his head low while wrapping up his mouse cord and shaking hands with the Antimatter squad. He had just finished playing through a full five-game series lasting over two hours, his team’s best strategies getting squashed, while he had been the main shotcaller. The highlight clips were going to play up all the little moments he had failed. The forums would be stacked with posts from nothing but trash Silver players who thought they had any ability to criticize his misplays. They knew nothing of what it was like to play a game on that stage, in front of a crowd of a hundred people and a stream audience of thirty thousand, and yet they would make sure he knew their hive mind opinion. The last thing on his mind was carrying out a 1 vs. 1 against some kid he saw in ladder games now and then. Chase would have been insane to call out to him now. If Bouncer brushed him off, he would be forever smeared in the forums as that kid who kept challenging Bouncer to a 1 vs. 1 at a PGL event.
But Chase didn’t care. He had no sense of shame. He could only think in terms of winning or losing, and seeing Bouncer at a low point only meant he had a better chance of winning. From a far-off corner of the stands, just before the team exited the arena and was out of range, he stood up and shouted, “Yo, Bouncer!”
The whole arena just about went silent, with everyone wondering who was calling out Bouncer after a loss. Chase descended the stands and stood on equal ground with the number one player of the North American ladder. Their eyes met across the arena. The moment was so tense and prolonged that I thought a tumbleweed of tangled LAN cords might go rolling between them. Bouncer said nothing, just stared back at him.
Chase said, “How about that one v. one?”
Bouncer chuckled, probably thinking the audacity of this kid was somewhat respectable. “What’s it worth to me?”
“Whenever we’re in the same lobby on the ladder…loser always has to give up DPS.”
Now that was worth something. Chase and Bouncer both played DPS, which meant whoever had the higher pick order in the game lobby always took the role. The winner would never have that issue with the other ever again, would never have to default to support or some other role.
Bouncer nodded. “Deal.”
For Chase, there was another benefit if he somehow managed to win. Everyone at the event would remember him. He would become a known player on the ladder, and players would stop referring to him as “orange” or “blue” or whatever was his assigned unit color. They would call him by his gamer tag: Hawk.
They agreed to meet back in the arena in fifteen minutes, each with his gear bag slung around his shoulder and caffeinated beverage of choice in hand—Chase with an energy drink, Bouncer with coffee. By then, of the hundred spectators who had watched the finals from the stands, about ten hardcore fans stayed, all of them the same caliber of nerd. Normally two guys trying to hop on the computers after the tournament would be impossible, but Bouncer had enough pull with the staff to get the game arranged. Chase and Bouncer each took to a computer on opposite sides of a table. Mason, Barkley, and I watched from behind Chase’s shoulder, while the rest of the group stayed huddled around Bouncer. They weren’t staying to watch because they cared about the competition. They wanted to get a close-up view of how he moved his hands on the keyboard, to see if any of his hand movements or hotkey choices were similar to their own. They didn’t expect a shred of competition to emerge.
When the game loaded up, Bouncer typed the typical GL HF, and Chase waited a whole thirty seconds to respond with a gl hf of his own. I knew he resented typing it. He never typed good mannerisms in ladder games, not even gg. But he knew if he didn’t return a good-mannered chat to Bouncer after being granted a game, he might be excised from the entire gaming community.
There was a moment of silence, both in the game and with the small crowd watching. Astrobloc bears some similarity to chess. Both can have a rather slow buildup to action in the early game. Both are strategy games where the primary goal is to invade the opponent’s space. In chess, players are on a board with sixty-four squares. In Astrobloc, teams are on a map where the action begins and ends around three lanes—top, middle, and bottom. Terrain outside these lanes is accessible, but only later on, and there’s no way into the opponents’ base other than by breaking through one of the gates or with a few especially expensive flying units. In chess a player wins by capturing the king. In Astrobloc a team wins by pushing through one of three lanes into the opponents’ base and destroying their nexus—the most protected building in the center of the base.
Minions are somewhat like the pawns of Astrobloc. They are simple units that spawn in packs of twelve, walk down their respective lanes, and attack whatever is in front of them. Players can’t even control the movement of these units. For the first couple of minutes of each game, while waves of minions spawn every thirty seconds, players are scouting around with workers and figuring out where to place their first defense towers.
The action starts to heat up when the midtier units come out—the bishops and knights of Astrobloc. These are the units players control, and there’s a massive array of choices across the five unit types. There are high-octane combat units for DPS players. Units with heals, stuns, scouting ability, and other utility effects for supports like myself. The heavy, hard-hitting units that break open the opponents’ barriers, smash orbs, and open up the map for objective players. Then there’s resource players, who sort of have to react to whatever the enemy is doing. They have to mass up a crew of workers to go out and mine minerals while their midtier units protect the workers and generally play defense for the whole team. Once the teams collect a decent amount of shard from the orbs, players can choose one or two of their unit types to upgrade with faster movement, high-damage abilities, spells, or whatever else a game designer can think of. Those basically become the rooks.
At the time, most players agreed that in a 1 vs. 1 mech match, after making flamethrower minions, the best choice for midtier units were marauders with missile upgrades. Chase, however, upgraded the armor on his flame minions. It was an odd move. Most of the guys spectating probably didn’t even notice, as he only had to sacrifice the cost of one extra marauder. In a pack of ten units, with another ten minions mixed in, one less marauder wouldn’t have meant much between two Diamond players, the top 1 percent of the ladder. But these weren’t two Diamond players. Diamond was low-Elo trash to them. Bouncer and Chase were in the Grandmaster league—the top 0.01 percent. At this level, every single shot mattered. Going off script to build an upgrade that most said was useless was a bold move. But this was a core part of Chase’s strategy, which he had adamantly lectured to us throughout the weekend. If he could manage the movement of his army with enough precision, keeping his flame minions in front of his marauders, the minions would absorb just enough extra damage to allow Chase’s marauders to outtrade Bouncer’s. Managing with precision wouldn’t be difficult. But against Bouncer, he needed to manage his units with perfection—which he did. With each wave of minions crashing into the battle, Chase’s minions outlasted. Bouncer’s marauder count dwindled down. Chase had seven. Bouncer had five. And Chase began pushing into Bouncer’s territory, toward his tower.
Bouncer uttered, “Whoa,” not with concern but more as a slight signal to the guys spectating that he was thrown off but not worried. He pulled back, behind the temporary safety of his tower. Chase pressed on.
He landed the first few shots on Bouncer’s tower. In a team game, losing the first tower means almost nothing. Having three teammates means there is enough variance in the game to regain momentum. But in a 1 vs. 1, whoever loses the first tower will lose all momentum in the push war. There is no way for a player—even Bouncer—to dig himself out solo. Already some of the kids around Bouncer started leaning in closer, and they started watching the screen more than his hands. A couple of brave gamers teased him, saying, “Oh, man, are you losing? What’s going on?”
Bouncer kept cool, saying, “It’s fine. It’s fine. Just need to regroup.”
He was going for a titan, the Astrobloc equivalent of a queen. Once a player completes every building required to make a titan, around ten minutes into the game at the earliest, they can summon one of five titans, depending on their unit type. Once a titan is chosen, a global message appears on the screen:
Once the titan is out, it has a unique presence; no other player can summon it. The players without one had better be on their way to getting one—or on their way to closing out the game in the next couple of minutes. When a titan first emerges, it can take down three or four midtier units on its own. But as it scales up more mana and gets two more abilities, it can take down six or seven without losing a sliver of health points.
Bouncer had Quarzenith—a blade-ridden goddess capable of stealthing and dashing forward, then striking with insane damage—somewhere on the map. Chase wouldn’t have much time to react. She could close screen-length gaps in one second and rip apart three marauders before even taking a shot back. But Chase had seven marauders on the map by this point, and he had plenty of resources for some upgrades. I leaned toward him and asked, “Are you going to get a titan? Goliath would be the perfect counter.” But he was too much in the zone to even acknowledge I had spoken to him.
The advantage of rushing for a titan is that you have the opportunity to strike first. But the advantage to saving up resources and waiting is that you can react to what your opponent is doing and build the counter. Goliath, the cyborg ax wielder, is the usual choice against Bouncer’s titan. But Chase had a more gutsy counter in mind. He didn’t go for a titan at all. Instead, he used his extra resources to make striker mines and started an upgrade to give his marauders a shield bash, an ability that allowed them to dash into the fray and push back the enemy’s units. This created a nice barrier for his star ballista to start laying down shots on Bouncer’s tower. He seemed to have the ideal position. The only question was, Will he survive the strike from Quarzenith?
If Bouncer found the right window of opportunity, she’d demolish half of the units on Chase’s back line before going down—if she went down. If she did, Bouncer could pay her cost again and revive her. Within a minute she would be back on the field.
I leaned toward Chase again and said, “Yo, aren’t you going to get a titan?”
He just said, “Nah. Too early.”
That may have been true for most titans. But Quarzenith is designed for the player who wants to win quickly. She is a manaless titan, a wrecking ball with all her abilities ready for use right out the gate. I almost started sweating, waiting to see some kind of bullet-like unit flash on top of his back line units from out of the sky. Chase put two striker mines behind his cannon, but that seemed futile. Quarzenith can dash so fast that she could get out of their blast radius without taking damage.
As I wondered this, Bouncer’s play came to fruition. Quarzenith swooped in from the edge of the lane. She ripped through a wave of minions with three basic attacks, headed straight for the fragile units. She would have to take a couple of tower shots to get at them, sure, but titans have so much armor that the tower damage is negligent. She entered the strike zone of the first mine in her path, saw the familiar red glow that it gave off upon sensing an enemy, enough of a warning for her to dash forward before the mine locked on. She went straight onto the pack of marauders as they backed off, took down two, another to a sliver of health. The rest scattered back behind the tower, but she didn’t have to care. She could endure ten tower shots before worrying about health. Chase’s whole position was collapsing. The fan boys behind Bouncer were elated, or relieved rather, chanting, “That’s it! I knew you had this. I never doubted you!”
Chase focused every unit’s firepower onto the titan, took her down to half health, but that let Bouncer’s minions and marauders of his own to break into the zone. Chase was outnumbered. All his units had yellow and red health bars, while most of Bouncer’s were still green. And Bouncer’s minions and midtier units were crashing into the tower. It would go down within one wave.
But Chase had a reason to believe. Instead of spending his starting shard on a titan, he had sunk it into an upgrade for marauders, a shield bash. Within fifty milliseconds—I know how long that is, because that’s a decent ping time—of hearing the upgrade finish, he dashed two marauders onto Quarzenith at the perfect angle. She bounced back half a screen length. A knock back like this isn’t so harmful—but she landed on the center zone of an already hot striker mine, along with two allied units walking into the blast zone.
It blew up immediately, and her health bar vanished. She ripped apart into shrapnel. That is her passive ability, meant to give off one final gush of damage and take down enemy units with her. It wasn’t such a great ability when she was out of position, in range to finish off five of her allied units.
A dozen mech units melted into a miniature junkyard—Bouncer’s whole wave wiped clean. Everyone on both sides of the PCs erupted and awed. The titan was down.
“Oh my God, dude!” the guys behind Bouncer were shouting. Some were laughing. Others were so stunned they just stood with their mouths open. Bouncer was going to lose—no question. He had spent so much on Quarzenith and gotten little value out of her. A wave of upgraded marauders arrived to reinforce Chase’s territory. Bouncer’s units would be weaker, and his titan wouldn’t be revived in time to save his tower. His power spike had come and gone. That was it. The game was done. He typed gg and instantly quit.
Chase showed no signs of celebration. He just stood up and shook Bouncer’s hand, saying, “GG.” I stood there, still with a surge of adrenaline running through me just from watching. I couldn’t believe it. Chase, my teammate, a kid I played with on the ladder all the time, had just beaten the number-one-ranked player in North America. And he had done it swiftly, with ease, as if he had known all along he could win.