Gaming: How Pakistani youth are earning millions from e-sports?

 

Your family can never digest that a girl is streaming on YouTube with a face cam.'

 Let's say you belong to a family with a large number of doctors and you yourself are a homeopathic doctor, but you leave the profession to follow your heart and take up gaming not as a hobby but as a profession.

 Amber, known as 'Medic' in the gaming world, did just that.

 Talking to the BBC, he said that it was very difficult for people to understand that my family, sisters-in-law, and father are all doctors.  I am also a homeopathic doctor, so my father was that there is an honor in the society, you are going to the clinic as a doctor.'

 However, Amber's life changed after marriage as her husband encouraged her to continue gaming.  "My husband encouraged me a lot, I had a passion for gaming and he supported me in that."

 "Then I didn't even know that money can be earned from YouTube, but my husband gave me confidence."

 Amber aka 'Medic' is one of the Guinean women who are part of the booming e-sports industry in Pakistan and are making money through streaming and organizing tournaments, apart from gaming.

 

 "Pakistani parents are not ready to go beyond the fact that a daughter will become a doctor and a son will become an engineer."

 'People let you down'

As a woman, breaking into an industry dominated by boys was particularly difficult for Amber.

 "People let you down, but with time it took me about a year and a half to get better and then I saw so many girls come into the field which I'm very happy about," she says.

 However, she is not the only one in this field who is making good money sitting at home and the interesting thing is that she learned this skill not from anyone but herself.

 He said that 'this skill is in you, you need a platform, 12, 13 year old children are also playing games with me, they are also studying and playing games with me.  '

 "They are not just educated children, but they have the ability to think faster."  Your mind becomes very active by playing this game.

 Ambar suspects Pakistani parents that they are not ready to go beyond the idea that 'a daughter will become a doctor and a son will become an engineer.'

 However, according to him, now the young kids who have created their own YouTube accounts "also earn so well that they don't need to go out."

 So the question arises that how much you can earn by gaming and how much you have to invest to learn this skill.

 How much can you earn from eSports?

 Of course, even your parents would stop you from going to gaming centers as a child, but now e-sports has become a global multi-billion dollar market.  According to the data, in the year 2021, the global e-sports market size exceeded one billion dollars and the prize pool of Dota 2 was more than 48 million dollars.

 Pakistan's biggest e-sports event ever had a total prize pool of Rs 2 crore.  Pakistani e-sports players Smile Hasan and his brother Yawar Hasan have earned a total of $4.5 million, while Tekken 7 player Arsalan Ash has earned more than $100,000 so far.

 Some of the YouTuber gamers who have made it big "are earning 15 to 2 million a month," says Amber.

 She says that 'Earlier in Pakistan, no one understood anything about e-sports, but now we people have got a little awareness, the reason for this is also games like PUBG and Free Fire.'

 It should be noted that among the earlier games in eSports, games like Tekken, Dota and FIFA, which are games played through consoles, were more popular.  However, the specialty of games like Pubg, Freefire is that they can be easily played on the phone.

 "Earlier you needed a good computer, but now the situation is different, now you have a good mobile phone and headphones, you can still do a good job," says Amber.

 However, if you play other games that can only be played on a computer or console, then the situation is completely different and then you need a computer with a powerful processor and gaming card, headphones, a webcam and a comfortable chair.

In the year 2020, PUBG was banned in Pakistan.  It was the time of the global pandemic of the Corona virus, and during which students of schools, colleges and universities were confined to their homes.  Amber says that it was a difficult time and we were about to organize a tournament which was being held on a very large scale.

 An e-sports player named Qasim Mir said that if you are sponsored by a good company, then we advertise those companies, so we get paid by the company, but also if we win the tournament, we also earn from it.  And if they win an international tournament, it becomes good money.'

 However, Dawood Sikander, an e-sports player, said that it is easier for you if a company is sponsoring you, otherwise it may be difficult to meet the expenses.

 

 'Money can be earned through coaching'

 You will be surprised to know that like any other sport, coaching plays a very important role and gamers take coaching to improve their game.

 Arsalan Ash is a famous name in Pakistan but now other good players are part of the gaming industry and one of them is Bilal who has been playing Tekken 7 for the past seven years and represents Pakistan in international tournaments.  have come

 Talking to BBC, he said that the situation of e-sports in Pakistan is quite slow, but in the rest of the world it is developing very fast.

Awareness is also being created in Pakistan now and young people are coming into this sector.

 Bilal is one of those players who not only play e-sports but also coach it and earn money from it.  He said that 'I started my coaching career by coaching a girl from Japan, I learned from her and also coached her.'

 He further said that 'seeing their flaws within the game and planning for them is part of it.  I coach in America, Europe and the Middle East.

 He said that the trend of coaching in Pakistan is less because I charge 35 dollars per hour in foreign countries.

 Bilal advised youngsters entering the field that they should first decide on their game.

 "My best experience is with Tekken, and most people know that Tekken is more popular because other games require internet but Tekken is played offline so it has problems like that," he said.  Are not.'

 Elaborating on this, he said, "Each character has at least 30 to 40 moves that you have to remember in Tekken, so Tekken is a bit difficult."

 According to Bilal, you should keep watching the matches and by analyzing them you can identify the mistakes of the next player, it gives you confidence and makes you easier when you face these players or any situation.  Is.

 "You can play this all day."

 Qasim Mir, another Tekken player, talking about the daily work of gamers said, "You can play all day, it's up to you how you improve yourself."

 He said that as we study and we have problems or pressure, it is the same here, we don't sleep a day before the match.

 He further said that 'health problems arise because you eat and drink and sit for gaming and you don't do any movement so it looks like you are getting fat so then let's join the gym together.  Take and run.  Some get glasses but we are fine for now.'