Gaming Career: Start to Present

I’ve been apart of this competitive gaming community for nearly 5 years now and have always enjoyed reading gamer’s blogs about how they have pursued gaming. I recently read Eric Wrona’s (Snip3down) blog and it has inspired me to write my own. This blog is my story about my personal experiences with competing and the struggles I have had as a gamer (sounds funny but the struggle WAS REAL).  My story might not be as interesting as others; I haven’t reached that pro title, or get that unbelievable placing my first event like Snip3down. It has taken me 5 years to finally get recognized as a good player but there are plenty of people I’m sure that still think I’m a “noob”. I hope you find this worth reading, I know its not a success story but it might influence some to not quit and keep going for that professional title. Here is my gaming career: start to present of InStiiNcT.

            I heard of MLG when I was 15. At this age my parents hated gaming. “Get out and play a sport”. I heard that every day when I would walk downstairs to turn on my Xbox. I was pretty good when I was at that age and hated knowing my parents didn’t support me for something I was great at. They always threatened to turn the internet off hoping that would get me to go out and hangout with friends or go play a sport. I have tried plenty of sports, I have jumped from Soccer, to Baseball, to Football, and finishing my athletic life with Lacrosse. There was no sport I enjoyed more than video games. I would play every sport for a few years, drop it, then try another sport because that’s what my parents wanted. When I first started playing competitive Halo I was jumping from lacrosse practice to practicing with my team on Xbox. Once my parents knew they could never get me away from my Xbox they finally allowed me to go compete at an event. It was the opener for MLG’s season in 2010; it was hosted in Meadowlands. I can’t even explain to you the excitement I had when my parents told me they would allow me to attend. Immediately I jumped online searching for a team that was attending. I found a team that I thought would have done very well, we were pretty well practiced and had done well against top teams. Once my Dad knew I had a team and we were all planning on attending he dropped $1000 so I could attend this event. He bought 2 plane tickets, one for me and one for him (he wouldn’t let me go by myself, I was mad at him at the time because I didn’t want to be treated like a child). Later he bought the hotel for just him and me. If you haven’t been fortunate enough to attend a MLG event, you wouldn’t believe how expensive some of the hotels they had reserved for players. So right then he spent probably $400 on hotel. It was very costly! Everything was set! I was ready to compete for my first tournament! I practiced for another week and I got a text from my teammate that I was closest too. He said I was dropped, they dropped me for some kid who had placed Semi-Pro in Halo 2. I wasn’t even upset. I was more worried about how my parents would look at the Halo community. I knew he would never let me go to an event now. Luckily my Dad was very understanding and told me it was a learning experience. We ended up losing close to $1000 and my Dad didn’t get mad at me at all! I still thought I would never attend another event but I ended up having the balls to ask my parents if I could attend an event a few months later in Nashville, TN. It was the first combine event hosted by MLG and if you don’t know what that means, it means that only amateur players can compete. My parents didn’t seem to interested but in the end they gave me one more chance. I found a team last minute and I was pretty excited to team with these guys. It was all of our first event and I was super stoked to go compete. I got to go to this event; I teamed with Kaleido, Crossfire, and Enactive. We never practiced as a full team, 2 of my teammates were on vacation right before the event. In fact I never played with one of them! It was a very risky team to attend with. We ended up placing LBR4, like I said, my first event placing wasn’t anything special. I was proud of it but was still hoping to do something amazing like Snip3down. This had changed my parent’s thoughts about gaming. If I could do anything I would have to thank everyone at that event. All the people, the sponsors, MLG for hosting it at Gaylord and their great entertainment. This allowed me to attend my total of 10 events. Once I got home I immediately got ready for the next events.

            Shout out to my Columbus 2010 team. We blew so much.

            There was only one good thing that came out of that event. I met my future teammate at this event. Its kind of a corny story but I’ll tell you anyway! So my girlfriend at the time invited me to her youth group. She introduced me to all of her friends that attended the church and then she went up on stage to sing before the pastor preached. Obviously I was paying attention to her but the only other person I noticed was the guitarist who was also singing. Out of that whole night he was the only one I remembered. So a few weeks later I attended that event in Columbus, Ohio for MLG and during the event I ended up seeing that one guy at my girlfriend’s church! After that event we ended up teaming up for two events, both in Dallas. Thank God for you Jordan (IndyStriker), even though we aren’t teaming now those were great times. The first event I teamed with Jordan was the first event I got points and yes it was the exhibition event. After Dallas in 2010 we attended the Dallas event in 2011 with the most fun squad ever. It was me, IndyStriker, Precau7ion, and Attritionz. I’ve never had that great of a time at an event. I was entertained the whole time. Bad placing but that was such a blast!

            Dallas 2011 was over. I started practicing for the next event; I wanted to be a professional player so badly and knew I had what it takes. I had practiced for a good three months and but still was team less for this event. I went on vacation for a week with my family chartering a boat through the Keys. During that time I was texting a ton of people about me being their potential 4^th. All of these options I was getting were better than I would ever expected, I thought to myself, “I am blessed”. I remember this part very well. I was texting the best option I thought I had at the time and he told me he was very interested. I was inside of the boat and jumped up and down with excitement. Once my excitement surpassed I came outside of the boat and my Dad told me we were tying up to a mooring ball to snorkel. He ordered me to the front of the boat to start tying up. My friend and his dad were already up there getting the ropes ready. The water was very hectic and the waves were fairly large, I’d say 3-5 feet in height. I took the rope and tied it on one of the cleats of the boat and put the rope through the loop of the mooring ball. I was then ordered to tie it up to the other cleat of the boat. I started to loop the rope and at the same time a huge wave came up to the boat and pushed us away from the mooring ball. The rope that was looped then wrapped around my thumb and tore it off my hand. I immediately fell to the ground and saw blood all over the boat. Luckily I had my mom and my sister come to the front of the boat to give me comfort that everything that would be okay. We were in the middle of the ocean and didn’t know how far away we were from land. My mom had left once my sister was with me holding my thumb in a towel. All I remember from me being on the boat is that I jokingly told my sister, “You will have to take over my Halo career”.

            We then arrived to a dock with the coast guard taking me off the boat and then quickly placing me in an ambulance. I arrived to the first hospital and the doctor placed my thumb back on top of my hand. That sucked. Unfortunately that is all the doctor was capable of doing for me. He then sent us to another hospital with a hand surgeon who was a pretty old fella. I was given medication but it was not even close enough to get rid of my pain. They took my parents out of the room to tell them the best solution to the problem. The old fart told my parents that the only solution was to amputate otherwise more of my hand would be lost. So I told you that my thumb was off. It wasn’t in fact off my hand; it was hanging by one artery and a tendon. The doctor told my parents that it must be amputated in 3 hours, if not that’s when I’ll start losing more. My parents told him no. They had only one idea, which was to fix me. They called our next-door neighbor who owns a car dealership and my parents knew they had an investor who is a hand surgeon. He wasn’t in Florida at the time but he hooked us up with two of the best doctors in the nation. Since we started counting down the three hours they had got me another ambulance to hurry me to the next hospital. The two paramedics ran into my room and picked me up and placed me on a stretcher. The one paramedic had asked me if I was okay and ready to go. I obviously said, “yes”! He then told me, “I hope you like fast, because I race bikes and I plan on racing to the hospital to save your damn thumb”.

            It has now been 8 hours later than when they told me I had 3 hours till I would lose more. Luckily I had no idea that I was on a time restrain. I thought everything would be fine but my parents just hid it from me. I finally arrived and I was put under. I woke up with my thumb on my hand but it was pretty horrific looking. I thought my life would change, no competing for video games, no sports, heck I won’t be able to hold a pencil for school! I had a pin that went through my whole thumb to hold all the tendons, arteries, bone, nerves, all of that together. For the next 5 days I was in the hospital being monitored to make sure I had enough blood flow to my thumb. They were also being sure my hand would be okay too. My thumb now has only one artery and one vein, where as a normal thumb has two of each. After the 5 days, I went back home and did nothing for the next two months. My gaming career was over. I was told I would never be able to play again and that was because my thumb would be immobile.

            A few weeks after I was home I went down to my room and looked at my Xbox. Not only could I not believe that I would never be able to play but I wanted to play right then and there so badly. I put in Halo, grabbed the controller and made up my own way to hold the controller. My pointer finger would move the right analog stick, my middle finger was used for the A, X, B, Y buttons and my ring finger was used for the two trigger buttons. I tried that play style for a good month and realized there was no hope. I quit from even trying at that point.

            Before all of this had happened I had made plans for my buddy Drew to compete with me for a gaming tournament that was being hosted by the National Gaming League in St. Louis, Missouri. He had already booked his flight from Texas to get up here and couldn’t cancel so he decided to visit. Two weeks before the event I visited the doctor and he pulled the pin out of my thumb. Recovery was looking good and all of a sudden I had a sense of hope that I was going to be able to compete. A week before the event I was able to move the thumb stick just enough to be able to move around the game but was still very difficult to play competitive. I then started playing every day for that past week as “therapy” and conditioning my thumb for that event. Once Drew arrived I preceded to tell Drew that I was able to compete but I didn’t know how I would perform. My squad for this small event was Drewsmentality and Striker. Since I had just recently found out I could play we didn’t have a set fourth and had to pick out someone from my local friends who rarely played the game. We ended up picking up iinceptiion, a Call of Duty player. For that event we got 4^th out of 10 teams. The most important part of this event was the FFA. This was the first event of the weekend for Halo and I knew this would show if I am still going to be a competitor even after this trauma. Each round I placed 4^th and I was pretty lucky to make it to the finals. The final round consisted of me, Zipcode, Ninja, Reflex, Vidas, Infinite, Hoax, and Kobe. I had played with Ninja throughout the whole FFA event and he had won every single round by a landslide. I also had heard of Hoax and knew he would be a for sure top 4. I was worried that I wouldn’t even make a top 4 finish, especially with my condition. Once the game had started I had gained an early lead, I had held that lead for the whole game but the lead had slimmed down by one to two kills with one-minute left. I was able to maintain that lead for the last minute and won the FFA. This was the first Halo tournament I had won in my Halo career. Once I had won I was so ecstatic! I had my best friends watching me and they all congratulated me. Nothing was better than winning a tournament against some top FFA players and doing it at home where my friends could watch. I told myself after the event, “No thumb, no problem”.

            Without that event I would have stopped playing Halo competitively but luckily it gave me the motivation to keep competing. The next event I had in my sights was MLG Orlando. I was pumped about finally winning something and was hoping I could accomplish even more. For this event I was a team of two with Carefree Cito and we almost backed out of going because we couldn’t find anyone worth attending with. Finally we met Infinity and Risks. When we practiced for the event we did fairly well and thought it would be worth a shot to compete with this squad. I got LBR5, tied with my best placing. I performed very well at this event and this had some of the best competition for Halo so I knew I still had it. Very disappointing, because my squad was pretty legit and Cito left to team with locals. Shout out to Infinity, Risks, and Inherent for sticking with me even though we got screwed over. We pulled out some insane stuff for what happened.

            I was so pissed about what happened at Orlando I nearly quit gaming because of how immature some players are in this community. MLG then dropped Halo from the pro circuit and I lost all drive to compete.

            About a year later I decided to host a LAN at my house. I had finally realized that MLG was done with Halo and thought I would just enjoy the game like I did when I was younger. I had 30 people come throughout the weekend and had some great competition. The best part of this casual LAN was that I met my greatest teammate of all time. He was one of the two people that were new to the gaming group that attended the LAN and we ended up teaming for three events. You are no longer considered a Halo kid to me, you are considered a friend. Not known as Ali but as Ryan Meeks.

            After this LAN, Striker, Ali, and me realized we had natural chemistry. Arena Gaming League announced their first event in August that was being held in Chicago. This gave us all something to play for and we were searching for a 4^th. About a week before the event we ended up finding another local, TheOneTheyFear. We didn’t get much practice but we all knew that this squad had potential and that we could do well at this tournament. We had struggled through most of the tournament but when it mattered we pulled out on top and got top 8. It was pretty satisfying, my first time playing with the professionals and it made it so much better knowing we were the only team that wasn’t pro playing on Sunday. Once I attended this event I knew I would never stop supporting Arena Gaming. I love you guys and will support you till the end. I hope to be a success in your league and prove myself as a top player!

            After Arena Gaming Chicago, Ali and I broke off from our team to be a team of 2. We attended AGL Columbus and it was a pretty small event. Once again I got my squad last minute and to be honest I thought this was the best team I had ever been on. It consisted of Ali, Illusery, BananaCognac, and me. We had destroyed so many teams online but at the event some very unfortunate events happened to us. The power went out during 3 games and when we had to replay the games we ended up losing. Those 3 games would have secured us a top 8 placing but what can you do?

            Now that Halo: Reach had reached its end, Ali and I decided to take a break until Halo 4 was released. Now that Halo 4 had been released we decided to attend the Arena Gaming Chicago event. Once the event was announced we immediately picked up Nigh4tmare. He use to be our coach and he had improved so much that we couldn’t pass him up. As a team of 3 we had been doing so well and knew we would get a great placing. We were on the search of a 4^th but then AGL updated their event stating that they were changing the main weapon from DMR to the BR. I converted very easily while my two teammates were struggling. It was such a big struggle that I almost didn’t attend because I was so embarrassed by our performance online. While we were in our slump we added RP Flash to our team and had a good week of practice. Flash didn’t play the game but he was sick in Halo 3/Reach so we picked him up without even running. Even the day before the event we still had that same slump but we all had faith we could pull some miracles during the tournament. On Friday we had to play through pool play. Long story short, we got destroyed. We had tied for the last spot and it was also a 3-way tie. We had seen no improvement, that night we just talked about how we played and thought of ways for us to improve enough to get to the next day of the tournament. Early the next morning we had to play those tiebreaker matches and we came out on top. Finally we had performed like we wanted and just had to keep the momentum. Now that we got done through pool play and we received our seed, we started the bracket play. We had won our first match in winners bracket round one, I wish I knew who it was against but good games. Next we played Cryptic, we lost to them in WBR2. Now we moved onto losers bracket, the team we had to play beat us earlier in the tournament. Since we had changed over night I knew we had a chance to beat these guys even though they beat us the day before. We ended up winning the series 3-1 with ease. Then we moved onto the next round against a team that we played very often online. We knew it was going to be a challenge because they had taken a majority of the games online. This game was for top 12 and that was one round away from our goal. All I remember from this series is that every game was very close. We would win the slayer games by no more than 5 kills and all of the objective was won by one cap. The series was 2-1 in our favor and we wanted to win this next game type because we knew we would struggle if it went to game 5. The last game was Dispatch Ball and we won it by a pretty good margin. I played one of my best games of my life going 45-35-35 with second most ball time. We had guaranteed ourselves top 12 and had to play Underrated next for top 8. We lost this match 3-0. My team played really well but we couldn’t get anything going against these guys. Shout out to you Underrated. Sick squad, I love you guys!

            Now here I am today. I just got done with my first year of college. I’m 19 years old and am still striving to become a Halo professional. I have a few years left in me and then I’ll be done. Not because I’ll want to stop but because I have too. I was informed by my doctor that in my early twenties I’ll have arthritis in my thumb which will make me unable to game for long periods of time. My time is short and I hope to receive the title “Halo Professional”. I finally have been noticed by top players because of my performance at the Chicago event and am so stoked to compete in Knoxville, TN with my team.

            Don’t let anything stop you. I wish you luck with your dreams. Thanks for the read! I hope I will start seeing more blogs out there! I want to read your story.

All of my teammates throughout the years, thanks for making me!

Hustla, Saiyan, Bay Bay, Entry, Kaliedo, Crossfire, Enactive, Shinobi, Striker, Precaution, Recoil, Attritionz, Inherent, Infinity, Risks, Theonetheyfear, Ali, Nigh4tmare, Flash, Illusery, Bananacognac.

Alyson & Brian Hall – Thanks for the support you have given me over the years, not only gaming but also everything that I have wanted to accomplish. Having you alongside me has made it so much easier and has made it such a better experience. You guys are the best! I couldn’t ask for better parents!

Ryan Meeks – The greatest Halo player. You have taught me everything I know today. Without you, I would still be a nobody. That Summer grind was the best, I’ve become this great player because of your knowledge and support. You always knew I had it. Keep your head up. Keep competing! I love you so much.

Jared Goedeker – Don’t quit. College is tough. You have improved so much and I’ve seen it first hand. Don’t be wasted talent and just throw it away. Never back down ;)

Jordan Gonzalez – Great team we had back in the day. You always kept pushing me that extra step in getting better and it worked out for me. Thanks so much!

Real Life Friends – Thanks for supporting me even though I’ve had to ditch you so many times to practice for a video game. I love every one of you and couldn’t ask for better friends. It means a lot to have you guys behind my back.

Illusery, Triggod, Goatzi – Lets tear it up at Knoxville. This is my time and thanks for giving me this opportunity!

Twitter: @CHInStiiNcT