A former professional gamer gave me permission to write his story with the condition that I don’t mention his name. The story was too interesting to pass up so I agreed.
This story happened around 9 or 10 years ago when our professional gamer was hired by then ZPDee Cable Internet (now Sky Broadband) to play computer games such as Counter Strike.
This was the time of the dial-up and ZPDee was one of the first few service providers offering DSL-speed connections to residential subscribers (related: In 2005, ZPDee offered 64Kbps connection at Php690 a month).
Our gamer got noticed during LAN parties and gaming tournaments and was approached by people from ZPDee to be a professional gamer.
In order to increase sign-ups, they hired this 7th-grader to play Counter Strike and paid him Php500 per day. To attach the brand, the player was asked to append the brand name to his handle (e.g. cstriker-zpdee). Since our professional gamer is always online and played on public servers, other players would ask him why he’s so good at the game. He will have a canned answer — “Coz I use ZPDee at home!”.
The goal was to encourage others to sign-up to cable internet. In a way, this professional gamer is like an endorser. He did it for about 2 years while still going to school.
Unfortunately, professional gaming and going to school don’t really mix well. The kid flunked several subjects and had to take summer classes. That was the last of it — the kid stopped playing and joined “gamers anonymous”. It was a short stint but an exciting one.
I asked him how good he was and he answered he could do around 150 APM. Not fast enough to be a StarCraft champion but good enough to win a CounterStrike tournament.
Yeah I think this is only an ordinary story. Pero meron lessons learned. Don’t use ZPDee or you’ll plank on your subjects. Tama ba yun?
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