KOCHI: What if we told you can spend all the time in your bunk playing your favourite video game and earn a good bounty for doing it? This is the kind of the far-fetched dream job for lakhs of youth who are rooted to their gaming consoles or computers whole day and sounds too good to be true!
But that is exactly what Team Brutality, a group of professional gamers based in Mumbai, has gone out and done. Formed by a couple of schoolboys in 2008, the team of five are now a force to reckon with at gaming championships across the globe.
The game they play is the extremely popular 2012 title Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), a first-person shooter in which a team of five tries to eliminate another five-member team using a wide variety of weapons like pistols, rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, sniper rifles, grenades, and knives.
“We spent around 8 to 10 hours playing the game online every day. During the week leading upto a major tournament, all five of us shift to a place together and play friendly matches against teams from places like Japan or Singapore,” said Ankit ‘V3nom’ Panth, founder and captain of Brutality.
Aakash ‘RiX’ More, who was the first to join Ankit in the team, Arun ‘Juventa’ Kandpal, Hasnain ‘impale’ Sayed and Aditya ‘Ad1’ Shah make up the rest of the squad. Like Ankit, all of them are professional gamers who earn around Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 a month on average.
“There are a few teams owned by corporates which pay gamers a monthly salary close to Rs 20,000 and a 50 per cent share of prize money they win,” said Ankit, who has had offers from several companies to takeover Brutality, but is still waiting for the right offer.
Brutality instead relies on sponsorships from top international gaming brands like Gunnar Optiks, G2A.com, SoStronk, and ZOTAC. “We are picky when it comes to partners. Around Rs 1 lakh comes in every month from sponsorships which meets most of our expenses,” said Ankit.
Apart from sponsorships, a significant money they make is won as prize money. They have already earned Rs 1.5 lakh qualifying as one of the eight teams from the country for the ESL Indian Premiership 2016 and if they win the grand prize, their purses will be richer by Rs 5 lakh, no less!
Around Rs 70 lakh will be up for grabs as prize money in Indian e-sports during 2016 and Ankit feels this has been a breakout year for e-sport in India. “More and more big names like Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Flipkart have been associating with the Indian e-sports sector,” he said. There are rumours that e-sports could make a debut at the 2024 Olympics and the United States has already recognised e-sports players as professional athletes. “It is a long way to go for things like that to happen in India, but there are campaigns asking Government of India to recognise it,” said Ankit.
For now, he is content that his neighbours and relatives no more question him for his choice to become a professional gamer. “They now see us on the news and like our social media accounts. So that is an improvement,” Ankit said.