June 14, 2009

Inzane quit school for CS

While getting my eSports fix and stalking the armory profile of the highest ranked rogue/priest 2v2 team on SK-Gaming, a video of caught my eye. It was of Inzane from the Female CS team Zinic and the headline read: "I quit school for CS."

I am a believer in people doing whatever they need to do to be happy. Well, to the extent that it doesn’t hurt me. However, I really have to question this young woman’s decision making process. Let’s take a step back here and look at the forest and not the trees.

This young woman is trying to make a living as a professional FEMALE Counter-Strike player. Now think about that. Take a few moments to let it soak in. I guess how ridiculous this sounds depends on what you consider “professional” to be. I consider being a professional to be about bringing home the bacon. You can be professional in your attitude, practice, schedule, or whatever else but unless you’re making money off of it you’re an amateur. Hell, most Olympic athletes are amateurs.

My big question is how can you be a professional anything when there is maybe one event that pays out any sort of prize money? That sounds to me like being a pool shark at your local bar. Even in Counter-Strike’s heyday there were maybe two female tournaments that paid out any substantial amount of cash. To be professional in female gaming back then you had to win all the tournaments or your team had to perform some serious public-relations work (aka booth babes).

Now I’m all for a young woman chasing her dreams, but in all seriousness all a sponsor wants is a return on their investment. For a good team the draw is having their brand associated with the team and rock star players represent their brand when need be. For a team that is average at best, it’s pretty clear what the plan is ... especially with how the interview was produced. Sex sells and the people behind Pink Zinic have goods and services they want to sell to you.

To me it seems like a case of Anna Kournikova versus Maria Sharapova. The former is smoking hot but on the tennis court kind of a dud. The latter is smoking hot and is pretty damn good. While the comparison isn’t fair, female tennis has a much larger player pool than female CS and who knows how Sharapova would fare versus male tennis competition, the point is if you can’t perform all you are is a sexual object to be used to promote your sponsors products. How the hell is that professional and how is there any future in that.

Right now I would question the judgment of anyone quitting school to play CS for any reason, but a 17 year old girl to play with an all girls team in one tournament a year? I think I’d be staging an intervention if I were her parents right now.

3 comments:

  1. I hurd jesticle was gay.

    <3 myley

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  2. Oh I'm sure she can be very "Pro"...just maybe not in front of a computer with a mouse and Keyb in her hands..

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  3. I remember the good ol' days of being used only as a sex symbol... Stay away from the chebbins and his "sniffable diet dust" inzane, and you will be ok.

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