Millions of dollars are being won and billion dollar organisations are being built from the ground up, but you’ve probably never heard of or seen any of these events, or the people that star in them.

League of Legends. DotA2. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Smite. Call of Duty. Hearthstone. Some of these video games you may have heard of or recognise, but what you may not know is that the best of the best gamers in each of these games are becoming role models for people around the world, and are going up against each other, with millions of dollars on the line, for a chance at stardom, history and fame.

Electronic sports, or eSports as it’s better known, is a billion-dollar industry, and is a worldwide phenomenon that is taking the world by storm. The Staples Centre, the South Korean Olympic Stadium, Key West Arena, the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin. All of these traditional sporting venues are being packed to the brim with spectators watching these gamers go head to head.

eSports is fast becoming a massive industry. ESPN has broadcast a DotA2 tournament called The International, the BBC has broadcast the League of Legends World Championships, and even Foxtel has broadcast a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament in Australia.

It was held at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, with $55,555 in prize money to be given away.

The developers of Counter-Strike have struck a deal with a cable network in the United States to bring a weekly tournament to television. There is little question that eSports is becoming mainstream.

Competitive eSports is divided into regions, with North America, Europe, Korea,China, and South-East Asia dominating the games. The Oceanic region is recognised, by is considered smallfry in the global scene.

With organisations providing a backbone for the young Oceanic scene, I spoke with Jake ‘Bizz’ Brooks, a professional gamer and graphic designer, who has been involved with the region’s top organisations, including The Chiefs eSports Club, Avant Garde and Integral Nation, and asked him what could be done to help the region’s growth.

I think our major setback is commitment, and I guess the financial funding from big organisations and sponsors. I think overseas in America and in Europe there’s a really really big backing for it, and with Cloud 9, CLG and TSM etc there are very big organisations behind it which is the break we need really. We just need those big organisations to notice us, even just pick up one team and it’ll go from there.

Oceanic eSports has always strived to achieve worldwide recognition, to play and compete on the same level as the world’s elite regions.

A milestone was recently reached by HiRez, the developers behind a game called Smite. HiRez increased the prize pool for the Oceanic regional championships from $50000 to $65000, which made it the highest prize pool for a live event in our region.

Jyles Lulham, an administrator for Cybergamer’s Smite division, and content creator for SYF Gaming, spoke with excitement when he heard the news.

It’s great, HiRez is the developer of Smite and they’re announcing $50,000, which was insane originally. We had no inkling that we were going to get that much for our first ever regional championship. Them increasing it to $65,000 was equally as insane, so I can see a lot of support coming from HiRez as a developer for smaller scenes and smaller regions.

And our region’s hard work is being recognised in other games. In Counter-Strike Australia’s two top teams, Team Immunity and the Renegades, have already beaten some of the world’s top teams in the tournaments around the globe. Sarina, a CS:GO player for the organisation Team Immunity, told us about both the team’s and the region’s successes.

We’re definitely growing overseas as a region, especially our [Team Immunity] CSGO team, and like, before, Australia was really far down the ranks, so we were always doubted, but now we’ve proven that we can beat teams like DIG, FNC, NiP, all that kind of stuff, all the best teams overseas.

The Renegades are Australia’s biggest success story so far. After playing under the Australian organisation Vox Eminor, they were picked up by the LA Renegades, which is partly owned by Christopher ‘Montecristo’ Mykkles, a commentator for the Korean League of Legends region.

The Renegades, consisting of jks, Havoc, Spunj, AZR and yam, are the first full Australian team to be picked up by an international organisation and are currently living in the United States, playing Counter-Strike full time, and will compete in the TV broadcasted Turner CS:GO tournament, a weekly tournament held in Atlanta, Georgia.

Along with Counter-Strike, the region has been getting more chances in other games. The Oceanic regions has been given a spot at the Smite and Call of Duty World Championships, while in League of Legends, we’ve been given a chance to represent some of the lower regions in the League of Legends World Championships. Event organisers and game developers are including the Oceanic scene in their tournaments, believing that they can compete on the world stage.

Jyles: I think it really comes down to the fact that we just push ourselves harder because we’re a smaller region. You see teams like Renegades and Immunity in CSGO, they’re really pushing themselves. Mindfreak from CoD, and I’m sure whichever team represents us for Smite, will do exactly the same and go over there and hopefully show up on the world stage.

I spoke to Seth Touchette, an eSports enthusiast and the former co-owner of the Avant Garde eSports Organisation who told about the role organisations like Avant Garde play in the professional gaming setting.

eSports at it’s most basic is electronic sports. You’re talking online video games, competitive video games. What eSports organisations do is essentially the same as a marketing company, a marketing business; they market these players to themselves, they are their sponsors and they also kind of act as agents as well.

Zack ‘Blaze’ Watson from the organisation Team Immunity also put his ideas about what eSports is, and what the Team Immunity organisation does for their players.

eSports is just pretty much the same as real sports except, you know, it takes away some of the physical factors. Obviously, physical factors still affect your performance, but it’s a lot more about what’s going on in your head rather than how hard you’re being hit by people.

Sarina was sure that the concept was here to stay.

eSports is definitely a real sport now. You have to put in the hours to practice, have plenty of dedication, all that stuff [to succeed].

Kieran ‘Warblegubul’ Brown is a League of Legends player for the Avant Garde organisation. He competes in the Oceanic Premier League, the top flight of League of Legends in the Oceanic region. As one of the youngest players to ever play in the League, he spoke to me about what he does as a professional gamer and what it means for him.

It’s just translating playing at a high level to a level that’s professional. It’s really been amazing because it’s not something you hear all that often in our region, so it’s something of a rare achievement and to be lucky enough to be one of the few people in Oceania that can make it to that professional level because the scene is so small. It’s really quite amazing to be one of the few people that actually has the opportunity to do that.

Those involved in the Oceanic eSports scene have a united goal, to expand scene and foster its growth in the years to come. Organisations such as Avant Garde, Team Immunity, The Chiefs eSports Club and many more are providing financial support and gear for players.

And it’s not just the organisations that are trying to help the scene grow. With only a small number of established leagues, such as the OPL (League of Legends) and SPL (Smite) I competition is fierce, yet hard to find, websites such as Cybergamer and Doesplay give gamers a chance to compete on the next level, in the hopes of attracting team’s interests.

Doesplay regularly hold Call of Duty and Halo tournaments, where players can create teams and enter themselves into a bracket, while Cybergamer does the same with a larger selection of games. Cybergamer also has forums where gamers can discuss competitions occurring in the Oceanic scene, as well as worldwide events.

I asked Jyles to explain how the Cybergamer platform works.

Cybergamer’s like an online platform you can go on there, make an account, find leagues and ladders that you can enter. Some of these are just for fun, some of these have rewards at the end of them, so it’s a nice way to ease yourself into eSports. Cybergamer is a platform for professional gaming; a great way to ease yourself in and even to get to the next level.

But Kieran and Seth issued a word of warning for those looking to become professional gamers and follow in their idol’s footsteps.

Firstly, I would just say be very careful, it’s amazing if you can make it, don’t get me wrong, if you can actually make the leap between just being very good at the game to being a professional, but there are several key factors that are very important.

For one, the whole legal side, signing contracts and whatnot, which is inevitably involved. Oceania is very much still a developing eSports region, and there’s no guarantee of anything.

If someone was to say that eSports could not exist in ten years time, it’s a possibility. There are the things you have to consider, you wouldn’t want to jeopardise your career for something that may not exist in 10 years time, you have to make absolutely sure that you’re 100% passionate about it.

ut if you are, and you do believe you’re good enough, absolutely make the jump, it’s just not something that should be rushed into by any means. And of course, there’s no escaping the fact that you won’t be a pro gamer forever, so you do have to keep your normal career in the back of your mind, never completely push it aside.

Seth:

A lot of the time parents don’t exactly understand what’s involved. And I know that a lot of the time we need to actually contact our players through sponsorships and we’re investing money, gear, there’s a lot of money going into these players to represent our sponsors, so we have to contract them.

And often times, parents would see this contract and be like, ‘what is my kid doing’. That could sometimes cause problems. So, often, either myself or my business partner at the time Wes would do, is we would sit down with the parents and we would describe what we were doing, and it made it a lot better for them and it was a good start.

I think the thing I have to touch on is that you have to be the best to really make a lot of money, especially in Australia.

But the mood is high around the players and owners, with high expectations about the growth of eSports in the Oceanic region.

Jake: We had OPL earlier this year in Luna Park, which, obviously, thousands of people attended, which is massive. I just think if we keep going the same way we’re going, it should only get bigger and bigger. I think it skyrocketed a lot in the past year especially, obviously with ACL now partnering with ESL that’s a huge opportunity for us.

Next year will probably be the biggest year by far for eSports. In general, so far I think it’s getting bigger and bigger and it’s becoming mainstream, which is what we all want.

Jyles: The number of tournaments that have been announced, leagues, invitations for the Oceania region to go to world championships and being involved in that spotlight, is really quite significant. I think it’s only going to grow from here and hopefully we can start seeing a lot more spotlight in Oceania.

At the moment you do your regionals here and you go overseas where you get the really noticeable stuff, so hopefully we can have more massive homegrown tournaments. I think that’s what where we need to push it in the next five years.

Kieran/Warble: I’ll just say that it’s going to be interesting to watch eSports grow, it’s interesting to watch it in other regions where it’s already grown so much but to see it grow in OCE as well, you know, on my home soil essentially.

I’d be interested in the rate at which it will grow, and whether or not I could continue being a professional gamer, into my life. Maybe by the time I’m 40, eSports would be huge and it’ll be interesting to just monitor its progress.

Sarina: Crown’s gone into the events like CSGO. Sponsors are definitely interested now, you’ve got business people going out to things like Upgrade Australia, and they’re learning more about eSports.

Zack/Blaze: I’m not quite sure about the future of OCeSports is, I guess it all depends on the developers like the Call of Duty ones. They’ve got huge support monetary wise with Activision so that’s obviously going to grow and expand, there’s a million dollar Halo competition coming up of course, that’s going to bring a lot of people back for that.

It’s not necessarily game specific, but I think the growth of OCeSports will greatly follow where it gets the most support because, with having such a small population it’s hard to support a game that doesn’t get actual support from the developers and sponsors.

Seth: Video games are becoming a much bigger thing among youth, especially growing up, I’m really excited to see what happens in the next 10 years, things are getting bigger, technology develops, new games get introed, oh, the potential, it’s fantastic.

I think eSports, especially in Oceania has developed really really quickly in the last couple of years. and that’s the case of money in the scene, so more money in the scene, it develops and gets bigger and now that there’s more money, it’s happening, so I think if more money gets invested, we’ll see bigger growth, hopefully our infrastructure gets better, especially the internet, Government please, NBN where are you at, but aside from that, I’m really excited for the future.