Pro-gamer wannabes find life can be rough on Level 1
Bare walls, little furniture and big dreams: A year inside Team NRG’s houses
In most regards, the new Zillow rental listing boasting a “marble masterpiece” for $6,000 a month in upper northwest Washington, measures up to expectations. To those that stroll past on the sidewalk, the million-dollarplus, 4,000-square-foot house appears like the rest in the well-todo neighborhood: large and enviable, rimmed by manicured laurel hedges and with siding of stone.
But for the past 12 months, the interior looked like anything but the home of an upper-class family. The walls were barren. Footsteps on tiled floors echoed around the vaulted ceilings and through the mostly empty rooms. The bedrooms contained virtually nothing besides beds, but those who slept in them hardly minded the sparse conditions. That’s because lining the perimeter of a spacious basement were a collection of high-end gaming computers and high-backed leather chairs, the tools of professional competitive
video gaming.
For a year, the house was the home of the professional esports franchise Team NRG. The organization began using the residence in March 2018, after an invitation from Events DC, to develop up-and-coming talent in the minor-league Contenders division of the Overwatch League (OWL), a newly formed esports league built around the sci-fi, firstperson shooter game “Overwatch.” Backed by software publisher Blizzard and featuring teams owned by traditional sports owners such as the Patriots’ Robert and Jonathan Kraft, the top-tier OWL flaunts player salaries in the six figures and prize money in the millions, as well as team-provided housing, often with plush accommodations such as swimming pools, home theaters, ping-pong tables and fitness rooms.
None of those things could be found in the Team NRG house, its setup designed for functionality and not luxuriation. The basement ceiling was punctured by two-inch holes, wires dangling down and snaking across the floor to the computer terminals. Two portable air conditioners bookended the room to keep it cool, their exhaust vents trailing up toward two windows. In the corner, what was designed to be a wet bar was instead topped by a collection of aspirin and Glade, far more useful than booze for those who spent dozens upon dozens of hours each week in those confines.
The house’s inhabitants cared little for the aesthetics,
more focused on using the house as a launchpad for an enduring career in esports.
“Personally, all I do is wake up, play games and then go to sleep,” Riley Taylor, one of the house’s former residents who plays under the nickname “Fahzix,” said in a recent phone interview. “Stuff like that doesn’t bother me, honestly. I’m there to do a job, and we don’t really ask for much.”
The bare-bones setup may not have been much to look at, but after a little less than a year since welcoming Team NRG it had served its purpose, helping the young men inside showcase their talents and launching some of them toward their dream job.
Gaming houses
A kind of “Silicon Valley”like incubator for players, gaming houses are not uncommon in the world of esports. Such configurations
are immersive, with players’ lives revolving heavily around their training. The benefit, to both the team and its players, is a high dose of hands-on development with coaching staffs either nearby or living on the premises.
For the players, who ranged in age from 17 to 23, the residence represented a significant upgrade over their previous playing and training environments. And drawing a paycheck from an esports franchise represented a more appealing alternative than the more traditional paths toward which they’d been trending.
Eoghan “Smex” O’Neill, 20, started his pro career during his final year of high school, playing “Overwatch” matches on the PC in his family’s London home. After some additional family members moved back home, O’Neill found himself sleeping on a couch. Because of the different time zones of
his teammates, he needed to play at 4 a.m. local time, trying not to wake his sister, who was sleeping nearby, as he issued instructions into his headset.
“I had to like angrily whisper for [my teammates] to do things, which was frustrating because people wouldn’t hear me,” O’Neill said. “And my sister would always wake up and tell me to shut up.”
Players average a grinding six-day-a-week practice schedule. Though most understood the schedule came with the territory of a professional gaming career, it did exact a toll. Burnout is an oft-cited problem for esports players in a field that demands constant and repetitive play to hone team communication and strategy, in addition to exercising individual response times and reflexes.
The Team NRG practice schedule peaked at the end of the 2018 summer, near
the conclusion of the second stage of the Contenders season. As they made a run to the semifinals of the playoffs, with a shot at a $40,000 grand prize for the title-winning team, Team NRG flew in the coaches of their OWL affiliate, the San Francisco Shock, to oversee preparations. Some felt the strain.
The team’s bid for the Season 2 final fell short, but the ultimate goal for the players exceeded a mere prize purse. After the second season’s conclusion came the start of the Overwatch League’s signing window, when the major league squads could lay claim to new players. The addition of eight new franchises to the OWL further boosted the opportunities for players to elevate themselves from Contenders.
After their successful second campaign, measuring themselves in scrimmages against OWL players and receiving feedback and critiques from coaches, those on Team NRG knew they’d attracted attention, though not all of it was positive. By November, only one of the original Team NRG members who first moved into the house remained.
Moving in
The night before Taylor received his offer to join the OWL he couldn’t sleep, the uncertainty and strain from trying out for new teams weighing on him.
“It’s very stressful . . . waiting for a call to see if you get a job or not that determines the next year or even more of your life,” Taylor, 23, said. “I woke up really early in the morning, and I saw on my phone that I got the offer, and I couldn’t get back to sleep after that.”
Taylor was offered a contract
from the D.C.-based Washington Justice, one of the OWL’s expansion franchises. Team NRG’s Ethan Yankel, 17, also received a spot with the Justice.
Now the two will travel to live and work in Burbank, where the Overwatch League will hold its 2019 matches. They again will live in a team house, this time a more furnished version, with a pool out back.
After trialing for five OWL teams but failing to secure a roster spot, O’Neill returned to Washington in November, back for another season with Team NRG, the only returning member from the group that first moved in last April. Ideally, he’ll be able to latch on to an OWL team during the league’s first transfer window.
Sitting on the couch in what passes for its living room back in November, he looked around the mostly empty room and offered a remark that summed up the structure around him, a building that existed for the team as more of a waypoint than a home.
“It’s hard to add personality when people are leaving every two months,” O’Neill said. He and the rest of Team NRG moved to a new team house in Calabasas the first week of February.
The team did add one lasting item to the house before the players struck camp. Last summer the power drain from the PCs during practice sessions overloaded part of the home’s electrical system. The ensuing repairs, and upgrades, are now a selling point in the Zillow listing.
“ATTN: GAMERS,” it reads. “Dedicated electrical outlets, ensuring uninterrupted play.”