Young Guns by Austin Moorhead

Author:Austin Moorhead [Moorhead, Austin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2020-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

Back to the photo shoot now completed, Super and Sinatraa, the two not-yet-eighteen-year-olds, had no good reason to stay at Blizzard Arena while the rest of their team scrimmed. So I offered to give them a ride to their apartment. Jaime came with me, likely more to keep an eye on the kids and the writer than because he actually needed a ride. On the way, I got a sense through Super of why the fast movements of gaming became his passion.

Obviously brilliant, Super spoke quickly, almost impatiently, beginning to answer any question I asked him immediately as it ended, with no break, like he had been preparing his answer while I long-windedly and needlessly finished the question. He also spoke in the manner of someone whose mind is running well ahead of the speed a mouth can move, someone who can process information at twice the rate of a normal person.

I asked him when he thought he might be able to play. “Soon,” he said. His skills were ready for OWL. “I was playing Team Fortress,” he added, “and I thought my mechanics were pretty good. Competitive Season 1 I got Top 500 with my old computer, which was great given how shitty the computer was.” His old computer had been able to process the game only at a rate of less than thirty frames per second, which made reacting to opponents a challenge.

Super and Jaime proceeded to compare their former rankings and bicker about who had been better back then, while Sinatraa ignored them, looking at his phone.

“Shut your mouth,” Super said.

“I’m just saying I was better,” Jaime replied.

“Who’s better now?” Super said. “And who was always better?” he added in rapid staccato. It was true that Jaime had once been ranked higher than Super in North America, but there were mitigating circumstances: Super’s computer. “The minimum hardware you need is 144 frames per second with a 144-hertz monitor,” Super explained. “That’s the minimum for pro gamers these days. Thirty FPS was fine for playing with my friends, but there would have been no way that I would have been able to compete at the top level.” Even with a 30-FPS computer, Super was one of the top few hundred players in North America, so Super and his father had decided to upgrade it, spending about $1,200 on top-of-the-line hardware. “The GPU [graphics processing unit] I got was $450 alone,” Super said. “It’s more now, because of the demand from Bitcoin miners.”

When he got his new computer, he started quickly getting better. “We used to watch Overwatch tournaments all the time,” he said. Eventually, he and his friends decided to form a team. The first tournament they played, they were matched against Complexity, one of the best teams at the time. Super’s team ended up winning the first map but losing the series. Still, winning that first map showed his potential, and he and his friends started practicing every day.

Super did not, it turns out, need to convince anyone that he should be a pro gamer instead of going to college.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.