Transcriber: Michael Queener Reviewer: Hélène Vernet
(Video) Commentator 1: This is going to be it! No defensive play in hand.
Commentator 2: We've crowned a champion!
Commentator 1: Amnesiac is going to take the series if he sees it!
He absolutely sees it, slams the Grom!
Grom's going in there with the Shield Maiden,
and Amnesiac is going to be the Americas Winter Champion.
He has punched his ticket
to the Hearthstone World Championship at BlizzCon this year.
Congratulations to Amnesiac!
(Applause)
How many of you have heard of e-sports?
And how many of you think that people
who sit behind their desks all day playing video games
are wasting their time?
Hello, I'm William Barton.
Before we begin, allow me to paint a picture for you.
So if you would indulge me and listen,
imagine your biggest athletic achievement and the way you felt leading up to it.
No doubt you were nervous, heart racing,
as your instincts allowed you to compete at your highest possible capacity.
You likely had friends and family there to cheer you on,
spurring you forward to victory.
Now imagine that rather than hearing the support of friends and family,
hearing the steady hiss of white noise
as you competed on your biggest stage ever.
A few weeks ago, I attended the Hearthstone Americas Winter Championship.
For me, it was easily the most stressful and draining experience of my life.
To be put on a stage in front of 80,000 people,
left with your thoughts as you play against your opponent,
is beyond unsettling.
However, as I'm sure you can all equate,
the elation of watching months - no, years - of work pay off
is also unspeakably satisfying.
A few weeks ago, I became the Hearthstone Americas Winter Champion,
securing myself $25,000 and a direct seat to the World Championships.
This cemented me as a top competitive player
and propelled me to the pinnacle of my gaming career.
Today, I want to talk about something important to me.
I want to talk about gaming, not just what I may think of it
but also what you all may think of it as well.
For many of you having grown up in a generation different from my own,
your stereotypical gamer is one with bags under his eyes, abysmal posture,
and a diet not even one of the Rugrats could subsist on.
(Laughter)
That's how gamers have been long portrayed in the media
almost to the point where being a gamer was taboo.
I'm a professional gamer; however that's not a complete, all-inclusive definition.
I'm also a student athlete, in that order, and a world traveler.
Gaming is a huge part of my identity,
but no more than, say, my love of math, tennis, basketball
or even getting to see the world with my family.
Some of my competitors are equally well-rounded,
with one Championship opponent being the National High School Chess Champion,
a solid tennis player, and just a generally well-rounded, nice kid.
Many people see gaming as a blemish on smart young people's identities,
but I'd argue that it's an integral part of a holistic definition of myself.
My experiences through gaming have been like no other.
They've shaped me and given me the comfort and confidence
to even do a talk like this.
So let's talk about gaming, first with a definition.
Gaming is simply defined as the act of playing a game.
So this could range from classic board games such as Life or Monopoly,
to classic card games such as bridge or poker,
to online games played on a computer.
So while you may not know it, most of you have been gaming your whole lives.
(Laughter)
However, when people refer to gaming nowadays,
they're talking generally about electronic gaming.
If you take electronic gaming one step further, then you have e-sports.
E-sports is basically just competition
that's facilitated through an electronic device
such as an Xbox or a computer.
But e-sports isn't just a way of competing.
It's an industry and a rising one.
In 2010, the total prize pool across all major e-sports events
came in at about 5.5 million USD.
In 2015, that number has increased more than eight-fold
to over 45 million USD.
As a result, established sports coverage companies such as Yahoo and ESPN
are looking to get their foot in the door on e-sports
and starting to carve out sections of their websites devoted to it.
But who's involved in this industry, and who's competing in these tournaments?
The answer is primarily professional gamers.
People have been gaming for a living for a long time
in other parts of the world, as far back as the 1990s in South Korea.
Recently however, this has become more of a Western trend
and is spreading to Western continents such as Europe and the Americas.
People who have been gaming there have been primarily supported
by third-party teams such as Team Archon, one of the teams I play for.
But also, game developers are looking to support
the competitive sides of their games more and more lately.
These teams couldn't exist, however, without sponsors,
and those sponsors are generally people who're providing gaming ware
for professional gamers and just casual gamers.
They're providing things like mice, mouse pads, keyboards, and headsets.
And just to name a few big companies, those would be Razer and Funk.
However, due to the rise in the industry as of late,
more generic big-name brands are looking to get into the sponsor game
with Geico and Honda being a few I've come in contact with.
There are many types of professional games played.
The game I play, Hearthstone, is unique in that it's a digital card game,
the first and by far the most prominent of its kind.
It's different from a regular card game
where two people face each other with one 52-card deck.
Rather, each player gets to construct their own unique 30-card deck
and go against each other.
If I were to compare Hearthstone to a regular card game,
the closest comparison would be poker as both require to evaluate
what your opponent may or may not have in their hand
based off their play and subsequently play accordingly.
The main competitive format across all competitive games
revolves around tournaments, both put on by the game developers
and by third-party organizations such as Red Bull.
I had the privilege to attend such a tournament in February,
and I must say, I was treated exceptionally well.
As an experience, I would value it way more highly
than the one day of school I had to miss to attend.
(Laughter)
While there, I was extremely nervous going into our first match,
but I was interviewed, and I knew I had to keep my cool during it.
After the tournament, although I didn't make it particularly far,
I was interviewed once again,
and I knew again that I'd have to keep cool and composed,
teaching me an invaluable lesson about grace and poise even in defeat.
Gaming was something I grew up with.
My brother Gene and I bonded over games,
and ultimately, he introduced me to competitive gaming and e-sports.
I always marveled at the speed at which people can manipulate their hands
while maintaining such a high-octane level of critical thinking.
Imagine trying to outrun a train while being pelted by minivan-sized hail
and trying to write and solve a math equation at the same time.
That's about as close a comparison as you'd get
for the amount of things coming at you at once during some of these games.
The sheer pressure of having 45,000 pairs of eyes on you,
as you compete for a spot in the World Championship,
is incomparable.
The pressure I've felt at points during my career
completely trumps the pressure of any other competition in my life.
Likewise, the elation of watching yourself succeed
under such a high level of stress and pressure
is also unlike anything I've ever felt.
Afterwards, having to verbalize yourself in an interview in front of 38,000 people
when you're still shaking with excitement,
has taught me an invaluable lesson about grace and poise in victory.
Gaming for me has always meant much more than just playing.
I consider myself to be a bit of an autodidact or a self-teacher.
I've always done well in school but at the same time felt
it didn't have everything I wanted offered to me.
As a result, I've been likely to branch out
to find different ways to educate myself.
This has consisted of me playing chess, bridge, and poker
with my family and friends and eventually branching into gaming.
Gaming has been a great outlet for me,
for someone heavily interested in learning outside of school,
especially Hearthstone as it's primarily decision-making-based.
I feel I've learned more than just how to play a specific game,
but also about how to evaluate certain situations,
keep my cool under pressure,
even how to value certain things over others in my life.
I feel as though gaming gets a bad rap from a lot of generations
mostly just due to a lack of information.
There have even been recent scientific strides
showing that the correct games engineered by neurosurgeons,
may help reduce or even eliminate Alzheimer's disease.
In reality, gamers aren't people who are underachieving
because of spending time gaming,
they're in fact people who are seeing unique perspectives
and thinking in different ways because they're gaming.
This goes from anyone, from someone who's playing once a week
to someone who's playing every day competitively.
Bottom line, gaming is here to stay, as an industry and a pastime,
and it deserves your respect.
So, who here has heard of e-sports, and who here thinks
that people who sit behind their computer all day
and play video games, are wasting their time?
Thank you.
(Applause)