How I earned money though 'coaching' video games
If you're an avid fan of any sort of competitive multiplayer game, chances are you've seen advertisments for online lessons offered by top dogs of their respective playerbase. The idea seems ludicrous to most people, but why should it? Many people invest money on bettering their skills, even if it's a simple recreational activity. Certain hobbies (such as shooting at a gun range) have a mandatory instructor, whether it be safety reasons, or simply just difficulty in picking it up.
To get anywhere in poker, plenty of people are willing to fork over tons of cash in 'poker school courses' or hire personalized instructors to watch over their matches. The same applies for chess, yet skeptics scoff and poke fun at professional gamers and the fans that follow the growing giant that is 'Digital Sports', or 'eSports' for short.
However, my post today won't be about whether eSports is legitmate or not. Many other people far more experienced and involved in the scene, have covered said subject all around. To touch on that quickly, like it or hate it; It takes a lot to be the very best at anything in life, and that includes video games.
No, my blog is about being one of the very few people who teach dota for money, how I got there, and what it takes. For starters, here is a summary of my DotaCoach Profile, a popular platform where I get most of my bookings for lessons!
My fee of 9.50 USD an hour may shift a couple of eyebrows here and there, but there are people who charge as much as 20 dollars an hour, and perhaps even more shockingly to you, a large amount of people on a waiting list for a coaching service that costs 50 dollars an hour, courtesy of popular youtuber and dota personality PurgeGamers
But why you ask? The answer is simple: getting good in Dota is hard. Really, really hard.
This combined with video gamers generally being lazy, lead them to believe that is the 'get rich quick scheme' of skill that will bring them to the top. All but the most casual of dota players struggle and strive for a top ranking, yet so many are belted into mediocrity and are frustrated to no end. Why do you think there are so many compilations of video gamers losing their shit and going absolutely bananas. (besides them being sad, deprived and or immature) After all, video games are primarily a source of stress relief.
This isn't just a special case for dota either. There are well established teaching platforms for Counterstrike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, Overwatch and get this; even Hearthstone, a freaking collectible card game!
Secondly, the 'teachers' have the credentials to prove it. My shiny matchmaking rating of 6102 might not mean much to most of you, but I stand within the top 99.87th estimated percentile. This means I'm considered one of the best, standing with 1300 players out of 12,239,287 active players last month. I've personally stopped trying to 'climb the ladder' about a year ago, while most of my 'colleagues' are leagues ahead of me in rank, some of which also particpate in tournaments in addition to teaching.
Coach ImmortalFaith for example has a 1072 higher mmr than me, which puts him at a whopping 99.98th percentile as one of the top 150 dota players worldwide and nearly 5 times the amounts of total bookings I've had.
People pay me, and other coaches money because we are able to help them make progress much better than they ever could. Dota has an extremely steep learning curve, many mistakes/shortcomings that a majority of the playerbase makes goes unnoticed. It's not to say that it's impossible to get to the top on your own, considering that's how most of the coaches are here, but it helps immensely to have someone with experience beyond yours to hand guide you, to exactly where and what you need to be doing.
This is the end of my introduction to a life of a 'video game teacher'. Are you interested in more? Am I completely insane? What should I write for part 2? Please let me know what you think in the comments.
On that note, here are my old students who've had something to say about my lessons. Thanks for reading friends, I hope you've found this eye-opening or at least slightly interesting.
Hey there really enjoyed your write up!
I got a couple of questions for you:
Did you ever or do you still consider going pro?
Can you make a living from coaching?
Who is your favourite Dota player?
Would love to read more from you!
Greetings
Hey ggorwell, great questions there friend.
I did a couple years ago when the scene was relatively young, but my stary-gazed eyes faded, when I considered the other ugly prospects of pro gaming most people ignore. Could I really stand playing dota 6 hours a day? What my chances of finding 4 like-minded individuals with no foundation to play with?
Locking yourself in a room, living together and getting angry at 'friends' for months on end, just grinding strats raw practices, (also probably forced to play some garbage hero I don't even like) it just all doesn't seem or look very fun. What if I'm still looking at shabby 'prizes' like novelty headphones or keyboards after a year of that? I'm skilled enough to be a pub star, but I don't think I have what it takes, or at least the tolerance to go pro.
Yes you can make a living, but it is extremely taxing. My voice died out frequently as I had to be talking all the time. My students were from all kinds timezones, which led me to doing lessons at odd hours sometimes, like 4 in the morning. Hence why I've taken a break from it and why I took on students at my leisure to begin with.
My favourite player? The one and only Arteezy
thanks for your response!
Edit: some reformating
Thanks for answering! Yeah I think if you "must" play every day for many hours the fun aspect will be going away pretty quick.
Looking forward to read more from you here on steemit!
You can also elojob your way out of poverty, haha.
Really good players that work with boosting companies make about 1,5k dollars/month playing like 3 hours a day or so. I didn't make as much because I wasn't that good and I wasn't in any company, so it was harder to find clients.
It's a sticky messy road from there too, as enticing as it sounds to crush players and get paid for it, there's too much ruskies, smokes, and mirrors for my liking. Coaching lets me stay involved in dota without playing (which I'm still too burnt out from)
This is fascinating. I had no clue you could get paid to do this.
Many generations ago, the nobles would be able to pay to be trained by experts in their fields, which gave them an edge over the peasants. Fencing, other combat, literature/reading, and military tactics ... those were some of the things they would pay gold to learn.
Nowadays, it looks like things are different. You're still teaching tactics, only it's a bit more digital. And I doubt all of your clients are loaded, but there are definitely parallels (loose parallels) that could be drawn.
Neat stuff!
Odd comparison, but I see what you mean. Thankfully in our digital age, resources are everywhere for those keen to learn, just gotta know where to look.
Unfortunately, it also sometimes does mean the wealth and spread of misleading or inaccurate information, such as old wives' tales circulating around facebook or popular social media.
Fuck I wish they had these coach things back in the day when I played dota, I could have smashed them as I played all day every day, had 6000+ mmr and played as a sub in minor tournies.
Back then it was all word of mouth, there were nothing like that as far as I knew at least.
When was that? My first lesson was roughly around mid 2015, when the site was already a couple of months old
I started playing a few months after it's release back in 2013, and stopped (in general) probably around early 2015...so I guess I was simply a little too early.
I always wanted to get involved in eloboosting or coaching LoL back when I played it a ton, but I was never THAT amazing at it. The highest rank I ever got was Diamond II, and websites were specifically looking for master tier/challenger tier players.
Was there ever anything like GameLeap for LoL? It follows online poker school formats, with courses and paid videos for a monthly subscription, instead of a personalized instructor