Mac team members who have never met
But, they’re a finely tuned eSports unit
After nearly a year playing together, they’ve become a tightknit group. They know each other’s tendencies, anticipate each other’s moves and call each other by their nicknames. They’ve become so strong a team, in fact, that they’re heading to California this weekend to compete in the North American championships.
That said, it’s a little unusual that the captain has never actually met roughly half his squad.
“I’m meeting two people for the first time,” Lucas Shanks laughs. “One in the taxi (en route to the airport) and I’ll meet one when we get there.”
He’s not kidding. When McMaster’s eSports team settles in front of their computer screens in Huntington Beach on Saturday morning to take on the Rochester Institute of Technology, it’ll be the first time they’ve all been in the same room together. Until now, they’ve never had to be.
It’s really cumbersome to lug your powerful desktop computer from place to place and then find enough juice to power them all, so the quintet — Shanks, Stefan DiNunzio, Andrew Kostysko, Jesse Manson and Brin Uthayakumar — has become a unit playing online. Each from their own homes.
But if they’ve never all been together, how did they become a team?
Shanks grew up playing League of Legends.
For the uninitiated, it’s an online strategy-heavy, multiperson fantasy battle game that’s reportedly played by more than 100 million people each month and has spawned competitive leagues. The purse at the world championship last year was more than $4 million.
Yet, after a couple years at Mac, the software engineering student redirected his passion to Dota 2, another multi-person strategy battle game. When he did, he went looking for other players at the school.
That’s when he found a McMaster Dota page on Facebook.
“It was kind of a dying group, to be honest,” the 20-year-old says.
Undeterred, he asked the university’s eSports club to put out an all-call for players. Meanwhile, the B student — “with occasional A’s” — kept playing. A lot. After school, late at night, basically whenever he had time. Then, as he was leaving a class
one day, he noticed DiNunzio watching a live match streaming on his laptop. Shanks did a double take to be sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. Then approached him.
“Hey man, we’re trying to make a team,” he said. Suddenly, there were two. Two more players were found through the eSports club. A few others joined and left and were replaced. Until they arrived at the five they’ve got now. Screen names luki luki, Vinar, High End, Brin City and December.
The Mac side joined the Collegiate StarLeague in the fall and started cleaning up. They finished the regular season as the top seed before beating schools from Georgia, Texas and the two-time defending champs from the University of British Columbia in the single-elimination playoffs through March. Which brings us to this weekend.
If they beat RIT and then knock off either UC Davis or Stony Brook University in the final — each match is two out of three with each of the games typically taking 30-45 minutes to play — their team receives a $10,000 scholarship. If they lose, they still bring home at least $3,000. It’s decent money. Almost athletic scholarship level money.
Which raises an interesting question. The club is called eSports. Do they consider themselves athletes?
“I don’t really think I’m an athlete,” Shanks says. “I play Dota competitively. It’s important to me.”
OK then, would he call himself a gamer? He isn’t thrilled with that term, either. He thinks when people hear gamer they probably picture a seldom-showering teenage boy who plays computer games in his mother’s basement.
“Nah,” he says, reiterating this is an activity he takes seriously. “We’re cool.”
He starts laughing.
“I’m pretty sure we’re all cool.”