My Year in eSports

It all started at PAX Prime 2012. I originally went to the annual gaming convention to simply have a good time with some friends playing games and getting free swag. I'd been playing League of Legends for about a year and a half before attending PAX, and a friend of mine recommended I watch a player named Scarra stream due to our mutual appreciation for the champion Katarina. I checked him out a couple of times, but the concept of watching a stream was at first lost to me as I preferred to just play rather than watch.

While at PAX I thought, 'wow Riot has such a huge booth, I'd better go check it out,' so I sat down as Team Dignitas played Counter Logic Gaming in the semi-finals of the North American Regionals. At this point in my League career, I was no expert, but watching the heated best of three matches was more fun than I thought it would be, especially when Team Dignitas won the final match and IWillDominate (the Team Dignitas jungler at the time) threw his headphones down, brought his fists up and screamed in victory. I'd never watched a pro match let alone a live match, but at that moment I realized, 'holy hell that was fun.' I felt like it was something I could easily become a fan of and follow as it grew, so I decided that Team Dignitas would be 'my team.' Later I found Scarra in the hallway and got a picture with him to send to my jealous friend back home.

Fast forward to the Season 2 World Championships in mid October 2012. Looking over my shoulder at the stream was my younger brother, who decided to pick up the game after watching the incredible presentation put on by Riot at the Galen Center. Since then he's played to the point where he finds himself at a higher rank than I, at gold. Fast forward again months later to the middle of a particularly boring class in March of 2013.  Since the World Championships and PAX, I'd been playing League and coasting along through my college classes, not really finding them interesting. While scrolling through my Facebook feed I noticed a post from Team Dignitas about some article or another, but it was another advertisement on the site that caught my eye. It was an ad from the editor-in-chief Sui, looking for more writers to join the website. I contacted him telling him that I had been a fan since PAX, that I was a journalism student at my university, that I played League and that I'd like to try writing for them.

After about a month of trial writing, I found myself officially on the [writing] team. I wrote blogs, guides, and eventually began churning out interviews with players like Imaqtpie, Xmithie and Crumbz. With every project I took on, I gained confidence and experience. At the point I'm at now I still consider myself to be a rookie in the scene and while I have my opinions and thoughts on different League topics, I'm nowhere near as knowledgable as some of the best.

Finding like-minded college kids in the spring of last year, some friends and I created a small League of Legends club under the guidance of Riot's Collegiate program. Since then the club has grown each day and will hopefully one day become recognized by our university and rival organizations like the eSport associations at University of British Columbia or University of Texas. 

I traveled to PAX Prime 2013 in an effort to further my newfound love for eSports writing. I talked to Rioters, pro players, team managers and traded a ton of business cards. I met and talked with Travis, met the always wonderful Team Dignitas owner ODEE and even got to connect with Riot Magus. All the Rioters I gave cards to mentioned that they would pass them on to the person at the office most relevant to my queries. When I got home after PAX I laughed at the thought of that one guy or gal who may have actually recieved the ~10 cards, wondering 'who the hell is this guy?' I also got another picture with Scarra!

I bought tickets to worlds, and with the help of Team Dignitas I talked to Riot PR about getting a press pass to cover the event for Team Dignitas. While there I got to meet a couple other writers I had only talked with over Skype, I hung out with Scarra, Crumbz and Patoy and catch up with my favorite non-Team Dignitas jungler (and now Best Lee Sin NA) Xmithie!

I spent way too much money, took a lot of pictures to help with the gallery, had a hellish road trip there and back, but it was an awesome experience and helped me to once again put a face to the virtual handle Roscoe Thorncage. At this point I find myself a Author with Team Dignitas, roughly a year since I first watched my favorite team play live. Finding a passion for eSports journalism has made me take my education much more seriously, and I have a lot to learn from typical reporting that I can apply to my articles on League of Legends. It's hard to believe that all happened within a single year, I've grown and experienced so much in the rapidly changing eSports world. However mark my words, the name Roscoe Thorncage will become known in eSports as one of the best writers and personalities in eSports!

Until that day, follow me on Twitter @robertwery for past articles and many more to come!