Source: Volkskrant
Anyone who has had anything to do with gaming lately will know that Fortnite is a worldwide phenomenon. The game, in which 100 men on a virtual island fight until only one remains, has proven time and again to be a huge success. For the very best players, gaming is not a frivolous pastime, but top-class sport with a corresponding income. Dave 'Rojo' Jong (21), the most successful esports player in the Netherlands, is well on his way to his second million.
Dave gets out of bed around noon. The top athlete lives on American time. And as befits a top athlete, he starts each day with a protein- and fibre-rich breakfast: oatmeal and hard-boiled eggs. A bite to eat, an hour of fitness, and then it's time for the workout. Dave likes to make comparisons with professional football, a future that the athlete also considered when he played meritoriously at the youth team of football club Hollandia in Hoorn. Training three times a week, and matches against the youth teams of Excelsior and Ajax.
It's like holding the high ground,' says Dave, taking a seat in the game room next to his bedroom, where an ultra-fast computer hums softly to control his equipment: three widescreen monitors, two keyboards, two cameras, a radio microphone and a mixing desk. 'If you practise that for a few minutes a day, you won't be as good at it as if you were doing it for a few hours a day.'
Fortnite: Build, Shoot, and Set Traps
And just like a professional footballer, training starts with a warm-up. In his case: shaking off the wrists, warming up the fingers, awakening the ability to react. Making Nineties, that is, building structures with ninety-degree angles - floor-slope-walls, floor-slope-walls - at lightning speed to propel your character upwards and above an opponent. He practices on long gangways with walls to the right or left, to move as bullets come from the side, and on platforms to shelter from overhead fire.
But then, through a crack in the door, Mother Mary, just silently appeared on the landing. Dave, do you have time for dinner? Asked a little later if it's not time for her wealthy son to hire a catering service, while Dave puts his fork in a steaming casserole of chicken-potato-french beans, she smiles. I like doing it. When he was still playing a lot of football I had to drive him around and I had a lot more work to do.'
When the chicken is finished, it's time for shooting practice. Red spheres and bars dart across the screen along random paths in a programme called KovaaK's Aim Trainer. Dave has to click on them with the mouse as quickly as possible. There is no embellishment, no beautifully designed game world; KovaaK's is the digital equivalent of a vending machine that shoots endless balls at a tennis player - but with a new ball every second. Training my hand-eye coordination,' says Dave.
Training, training, and training again. E-sportsmen call it 'grinding': making metres to become even faster, even sharper, and even more successful. To shave off a fraction of a second of your reaction time to a specific tactic of the opponent. The margins are small, in top sport, also in esports. Dave studies the recordings of his lost games minutely, like a football coach dissects the replay of a failed attack from second to second.
Training, training, and training again. E-sportsmen call it 'grinding': making metres to become even faster, even sharper, and even more successful. To shave off a fraction of a second of your reaction time to a specific tactic of the opponent. The margins are small, in top sport, also in esports. Dave studies the recordings of his lost games minutely, like a football coach dissects the replay of a failed attack from second to second.
Suddenly, a target shoots vertically in an arc across his crosshairs, the cross indicating where he is aiming. Pats, hit. A situation like that almost never happens in Fortnite, but I train for hours on it,' says Dave. Only one player in a championship final will jump over you like that. A hit or miss is the difference between zero and a prize of a ton or so.
At Kovaak's, which is deadly boring, Dave trains for an hour and a half to two hours. Every day. Fortnite is about responsiveness, but also about tactics, communication and cooperation; Dave can shoot well, of course, but shooting games are not his speciality. So he has hired Croatian gamer Serious, a top Quake shooter, for 60 dollars a session to coach him. Serious prescribes exercises, discusses his progress in reaction time and accuracy with Dave every two weeks via Skype, and adjusts the training schedule accordingly.
KovaaK's is followed by six to eight hours of Fortnite training every day, in a select company of top global players who are a match for each other. Dave doesn't learn much from playing against ordinary mortals; he makes them up in no time. Sometimes he does it just for fun, a 'public' game. He usually wins, too, against 99 other players. Occasionally, though, someone manages to shoot Dave dead. He chuckles. Sometimes I see them writing on Twitter a little later: 'Wow I just won from Rojo!
At Kovaak's, which is deadly boring, Dave trains for an hour and a half to two hours. Every day. Fortnite is about responsiveness, but also about tactics, communication and cooperation; Dave can shoot well, of course, but shooting games are not his speciality. So he has hired Croatian gamer Serious, a top Quake shooter, for 60 dollars a session to coach him. Serious prescribes exercises, discusses his progress in reaction time and accuracy with Dave every two weeks via Skype, and adjusts the training schedule accordingly.
KovaaK's is followed by six to eight hours of Fortnite training every day, in a select company of top global players who are a match for each other. Dave doesn't learn much from playing against ordinary mortals; he makes them up in no time. Sometimes he does it just for fun, a 'public' game. He usually wins, too, against 99 other players. Occasionally, though, someone manages to shoot Dave dead. He chuckles. Sometimes I see them writing on Twitter a little later: 'Wow I just won from Rojo!
Full agenda
Dave's schedule is unfortunately full; he has no room for further commitments at the moment," read the email from Jane Tesar, Communications and Brand Manager on behalf of Team Lazarus, just after their Dutch recruit had gambled away his $1.1 million last summer. Suddenly Rojo was a celebrity in the gaming world, and in the real world David was surrounded by a hedge of managers and PR people.
These have since faded into the background, after the madness of the World Cup subsided, but for Dave, life has changed forever. Not so long ago, he was an ordinary boy from an ordinary family, living in an ordinary village, and like many other boys his age, often gaming. Until he finished high school in 2016, a gap year followed, and another gap year, and he gradually spent more and more time in front of the computer. 'My mother didn't agree,' he laughs. ''Is he now upstairs gaming again?" the neighbours sometimes said.''
These have since faded into the background, after the madness of the World Cup subsided, but for Dave, life has changed forever. Not so long ago, he was an ordinary boy from an ordinary family, living in an ordinary village, and like many other boys his age, often gaming. Until he finished high school in 2016, a gap year followed, and another gap year, and he gradually spent more and more time in front of the computer. 'My mother didn't agree,' he laughs. ''Is he now upstairs gaming again?" the neighbours sometimes said.''
In early 2018, he discovered Fortnite, which had been out for six months. Dave actually wanted to play another video game, but didn't want to lose the 30 euros it cost. So he threw himself into Fortnite; it was free. Fortnite has a system of amateurs, semi-pros and top players. Dave turned out to be a natural. He shot his way to the top level within a year and in 2019, he and his then teammate and 169 other gamers qualified for the World Cup in New York.
'Then we tweeted: hey we are still looking for an organisation. You can email us or send us a message on Twitter,' he says in his usual slightly flat tone, as if explaining how the washing machine works. 'Hold on,' he says, leaning towards the microphone and addressing a teammate in English. 'Yo Savage, they've got us listed against Ewroon, later. No idea who that is. Huh-huh-huh.' He continues: 'Well, and then Lazarus responded and he offered a certain amount and then I asked for a higher amount and they agreed.' Dave does not want to reveal the exact amount in the newspaper, but his salary is well above average.
'Then we tweeted: hey we are still looking for an organisation. You can email us or send us a message on Twitter,' he says in his usual slightly flat tone, as if explaining how the washing machine works. 'Hold on,' he says, leaning towards the microphone and addressing a teammate in English. 'Yo Savage, they've got us listed against Ewroon, later. No idea who that is. Huh-huh-huh.' He continues: 'Well, and then Lazarus responded and he offered a certain amount and then I asked for a higher amount and they agreed.' Dave does not want to reveal the exact amount in the newspaper, but his salary is well above average.
Top-class sport or pastime?
Gaming seven days a week, 365 days a year, eight to ten hours a day. Add to that the trips to tournaments in the US or Sweden, the attendance at gaming events that his employer Team Lazarus expects of him, and you could say it is a tough job. But Dave also does it for fun. Although, if he didn't get paid for it, he obviously wouldn't play Fortnite all day, he says. What would he do then? 'Other games.'
Now he gets up at the same time every day, goes to bed at the same time, eats the same breakfast, does the same warm up and the same training games. He drinks no alcohol, no coffee, no tea. Six days a week he works out, on Sundays he plays football with friends. At the latter, however, he does not want any spectators. Dave: 'I do understand that the reader will then see that I also do normal human things. But that is private.
With all that gaming, he has no time for more social activities, nor for further education or a relationship. A girlfriend needs attention, and I don't want to give it to her at the moment.
What did he do the other day when Fortnite was down for almost three days due to an update? Playing CounterStrike online with a bunch of friends.
Is Dave now an addict? A dedicated professional? A workaholic, even?
You don't call someone who plays football all day an addict - certainly not if they're paid to do so,' says René Glas, associate professor of New Media & Digital Culture at Utrecht University. We associate computer games more with frivolous pastimes than regular sport. But there is a limit somewhere where a game becomes just work. If you are under contract to a team, and the goal is to win prizes, then your work is training. esports is somewhere on the borderline between work and play.
Now he gets up at the same time every day, goes to bed at the same time, eats the same breakfast, does the same warm up and the same training games. He drinks no alcohol, no coffee, no tea. Six days a week he works out, on Sundays he plays football with friends. At the latter, however, he does not want any spectators. Dave: 'I do understand that the reader will then see that I also do normal human things. But that is private.
With all that gaming, he has no time for more social activities, nor for further education or a relationship. A girlfriend needs attention, and I don't want to give it to her at the moment.
What did he do the other day when Fortnite was down for almost three days due to an update? Playing CounterStrike online with a bunch of friends.
Is Dave now an addict? A dedicated professional? A workaholic, even?
You don't call someone who plays football all day an addict - certainly not if they're paid to do so,' says René Glas, associate professor of New Media & Digital Culture at Utrecht University. We associate computer games more with frivolous pastimes than regular sport. But there is a limit somewhere where a game becomes just work. If you are under contract to a team, and the goal is to win prizes, then your work is training. esports is somewhere on the borderline between work and play.
Archery, chess and gaming
Much research has been done into the effects of gaming for fun (very briefly: online gaming can strengthen social and cognitive skills, but everything that says 'too' is bad). Little has been done to examine the mental and physical aspects of long-term gaming as a professional player. If there is such a thing as a spiritual mother of academic research on esports, it is Professor T.L. Taylor, a sociologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of several books on the gaming culture and industry.
She laughs when asked over the phone about the sporting content of esports, young boys in flip-flops sitting behind a screen - you can't possibly compare that to cycling or football, can you?
You have now named two of the most physically demanding sports', says Taylor. Moreover, prolonged competitive gaming is indeed exhausting. But there is also a range of Olympic sports that involve dexterity and are considered full. Archery, for example, or dressage. And why should we admire someone who practices eight hours a day to learn to play the violin perfectly, but not someone who can master an extremely complex computer programme?
She laughs when asked over the phone about the sporting content of esports, young boys in flip-flops sitting behind a screen - you can't possibly compare that to cycling or football, can you?
You have now named two of the most physically demanding sports', says Taylor. Moreover, prolonged competitive gaming is indeed exhausting. But there is also a range of Olympic sports that involve dexterity and are considered full. Archery, for example, or dressage. And why should we admire someone who practices eight hours a day to learn to play the violin perfectly, but not someone who can master an extremely complex computer programme?
Still from the game Fortnite, which is enormously popular with tens of millions of players worldwide.
Professional gaming, says Taylor, is a continuation of the age-old collaboration between man and machine to help the former achieve exceptional performance. A cyclist is largely dependent on the bike he is working on, books could be written about the aerodynamics of skating suits, and countless books have been written about the engines of racing cars. Taylor: 'Gaming is also about using technology to master complex systems. A gamer does with a computer what a chess player does with a chess board and a cyclist does with a bicycle.
The pressure is great, because the risk of failure is also great in e-sports: players are usually tied to the game they are good at, and these do not last as long as, say, the sport of 'football' or 'tennis'. If Fortnite's popularity declines in a year or two, your professional career is probably over (although it has to be said that Dave also played the football game Fifa to good effect). And it is already relatively short: at 25, your reflexes are so outdated that it is difficult to keep up at the top. That's why esports is teeming with (very rich) teenagers - you'd better hurry up.
The pressure is great, because the risk of failure is also great in e-sports: players are usually tied to the game they are good at, and these do not last as long as, say, the sport of 'football' or 'tennis'. If Fortnite's popularity declines in a year or two, your professional career is probably over (although it has to be said that Dave also played the football game Fifa to good effect). And it is already relatively short: at 25, your reflexes are so outdated that it is difficult to keep up at the top. That's why esports is teeming with (very rich) teenagers - you'd better hurry up.
Houses
This is Dave's world, and he likes to live in it. The million won, the tens of thousands of euros he has won in previous tournaments, all very nice of course. A tax lawyer figures out how to pay as little tax as possible on the top prize, and then he has the money transferred. He has no plans to buy his own house with his winnings.
Then I would also sit in a room gaming all day, just like here. Then it makes no sense to leave here. In time, he thinks, he can buy two houses, or three, and live off the rent when Fortnite is over. Maybe a fourth for himself. He has already bought a car, a Golf 7.
Then I would also sit in a room gaming all day, just like here. Then it makes no sense to leave here. In time, he thinks, he can buy two houses, or three, and live off the rent when Fortnite is over. Maybe a fourth for himself. He has already bought a car, a Golf 7.
Where does all this money come from?
A few thousand euros a month I do put aside, something like that,' he says gapingly, his gaze focused on the screen, when he is asked for the third or fourth time about his income.
Then he chuckles in unison: 'Look, a banana skin, that's super funny when you get killed by a guy in a banana suit, right?' Huh-huh-huh.
Yes, he would love to have a million euros in his account. Especially for later. But the money means above all that he can continue gaming full time, undisturbed. An education - well, that is always an option. Dave's mother Mary raises her hands when asked about it. I sometimes used to say: shouldn't you do something else? But he finished high school. He earns a lot of money. He does what he likes. He exercises and eats well. When Fortnite ends, he wants to continue in the organisation of esports. Or he can still go to university. I believe he will get there.
Then he chuckles in unison: 'Look, a banana skin, that's super funny when you get killed by a guy in a banana suit, right?' Huh-huh-huh.
Yes, he would love to have a million euros in his account. Especially for later. But the money means above all that he can continue gaming full time, undisturbed. An education - well, that is always an option. Dave's mother Mary raises her hands when asked about it. I sometimes used to say: shouldn't you do something else? But he finished high school. He earns a lot of money. He does what he likes. He exercises and eats well. When Fortnite ends, he wants to continue in the organisation of esports. Or he can still go to university. I believe he will get there.
Madness
It is important, however, that Dave does not succumb prematurely to the mental pressure. This is enormous in esports. Don't let a football player hear you say it, but Hennes Heijmans even says: 'Esports is perhaps mentally more difficult than physical top-class sport'.
Heijmans manages the gamers of Team Atlantis, one of the smaller esports organisations and until recently representative of Mitr0, the 17-year-old Dutch number 2 in Fortnite. Heijmans himself is 19 years old. You don't get any rest in esports; there is no low season and the game is constantly changing. Every week there is a new update, with new weapons, items, techniques and sometimes even game worlds. If you don't train for a week, you're way behind the competition. That's not the case in football.
Watch the documentary Beyond the Game, which follows, among others, the well-known Dutch gamer Manuel van Schenkhuizen, and you will see the traces of years of professional gaming. The Chinese player Li 'Sky' Xiaofeng threatens to perish from self-doubt. For minutes he stares motionless at the screen when he loses a championship, tears rolling down his cheeks. Swedish champion Fredrik 'MaDFroG' Johansson briefly teeters on the edge of insanity, having come to believe that his online success means he can sense things in real life before they happen.
When you've been gaming so intensely since the age of 13, and nobody talks to you, it's very difficult to return to the normal world afterwards,' he says in the film.
Heijmans manages the gamers of Team Atlantis, one of the smaller esports organisations and until recently representative of Mitr0, the 17-year-old Dutch number 2 in Fortnite. Heijmans himself is 19 years old. You don't get any rest in esports; there is no low season and the game is constantly changing. Every week there is a new update, with new weapons, items, techniques and sometimes even game worlds. If you don't train for a week, you're way behind the competition. That's not the case in football.
Watch the documentary Beyond the Game, which follows, among others, the well-known Dutch gamer Manuel van Schenkhuizen, and you will see the traces of years of professional gaming. The Chinese player Li 'Sky' Xiaofeng threatens to perish from self-doubt. For minutes he stares motionless at the screen when he loses a championship, tears rolling down his cheeks. Swedish champion Fredrik 'MaDFroG' Johansson briefly teeters on the edge of insanity, having come to believe that his online success means he can sense things in real life before they happen.
When you've been gaming so intensely since the age of 13, and nobody talks to you, it's very difficult to return to the normal world afterwards,' he says in the film.
Enormous growth
Beyond the Game dates back to 2008 - since then, the amount of money involved in esports has multiplied, and so has the pressure. At the same time, more attention has been paid to the welfare of the young and therefore vulnerable e-athletes. The biggest teams, which often house their players together in luxurious villas with extensive training facilities, are pulling out all the stops. Mental health coaches who previously worked for Olympic athletes, health coaches, sports rooms, psychologists. Even smaller teams like Atlantis have managers like Heijmans who take away any inconvenience for the players. Ordering taxis, arranging food, offering a listening ear when the parents of a very young player are divorced.
A good thing, says Manuel Schenkhuizen, now 33 years old. Under his alias 'Grubby' he joined the then fledgling esports world back in 2003. For thirteen years he fought as an Orc in the virtual world of Warcraft III, winning six world championships. Meanwhile, in the real world, he travelled for tournaments from Paris to Shanghai, from Los Angeles to Singapore.
It was an intense lifestyle, he says now, but he got a lot out of it. After 12 years of putting everything aside for gaming, he said enough was enough. Now he earns his living as a streamer, someone who plays at a high level but mainly for entertainment, attracting a paying audience with jokes, techniques, stories.
His advice for aspiring e-athletes and today's top players? Decide what sacrifices you think are worth it. If you want a balanced lifestyle with a wide circle of friends, then live accordingly. But if you want to be the very best, then you will definitely go to a few less birthdays. As long as you enjoy your journey to the top, and as long as you can accept it when you don't make it, then nothing is wasted.
A blow of money
Five minutes after the end of the Grand Finals, that Sunday evening in September, Dave is hanging in the semi-darkness downstairs on the sofa with his mother. She has taken a break from Expedition Robinson , calmly waiting to see if her son will come and tell her that his team has won half a million dollars. Dave is wearing sweatpants and thick socks in his Gucci slippers. There are dark lines under his eyes and he looks a bit pale. Because I am hungry,' he says with a smile. Nerves, Dave doesn't do that.
And yes, he is disappointed: his team finished in seventh place. That earns them $19,200, $6,400 each. Well, boy, I think it's a lot of money to sit up there for three hours,' his mother tells him. I don't deserve it. Huh-huh-huh, Dave laughs. It's just how you look at it', he says. 'I was hoping for a top 3. I want to win. And the cash prizes were much higher in the top 3, of course.'
Halfway through the evening, he has played seven hours non-stop, interrupted only by a few bites of food. And now? To bed? He smiles, as he opens the front door and the mouse-quiet night of Andijk slips into his twittering world for a moment. Just one more game. Just for fun.
And yes, he is disappointed: his team finished in seventh place. That earns them $19,200, $6,400 each. Well, boy, I think it's a lot of money to sit up there for three hours,' his mother tells him. I don't deserve it. Huh-huh-huh, Dave laughs. It's just how you look at it', he says. 'I was hoping for a top 3. I want to win. And the cash prizes were much higher in the top 3, of course.'
Halfway through the evening, he has played seven hours non-stop, interrupted only by a few bites of food. And now? To bed? He smiles, as he opens the front door and the mouse-quiet night of Andijk slips into his twittering world for a moment. Just one more game. Just for fun.