by Ani Nrusimha
On the 5th and 6th of this month, an incredibly talented student of Williamsville East went to New York City to compete in an e sports tournament. This was the Hearthstone Americas Qualifiers, in which 16 of Americas finest players battled as tens of thousands of viewers watched live over Twitch. Jason Niu, under the pseudonym DeerJason, competed in a series of matches to go the Blizzcon, Blizzards annual convention. There is a lot at stake; a 250,000 prize pool to spread among those who qualify.
This is not the first competition Jason has been in. He has had to go through a lot of competitions to get on the national stage. First, he had to qualify in ladder. “Ladder” is a gaming term for a system that ranks players by skill level, and matches them with players of equal skill level. Only the top 16 on the ladder for the first 4 seasons qualified for the preliminary tournament. In addition, those who won certain Blizzard – approved tournaments qualified. This preliminary tournament took place a week before the actual competition, and the players competed from their own homes. Jason ended in the top 16 slots at this tournament, which allowed him to get a free ticket to the North America Qualifiers. The North American Qualifiers were broadcasted to a live audience, with peak viewership exceeding 80 thousand at one point. This was not including the hundreds of people watching in the auditorium. Jason faced off against multiple opponents to this large crowd, and was the youngest person who made it to the second stage. However, he unfortunately lost in the round of 8, one round of making it to Blizzcon.
If you think that this is a surprisingly high number for a simple tournament, this is one of the smaller prize pools. In fact, the Dota 2 International had a prize pool larger than a whopping 10 million dollars. The first place team alone earned 1.5 million, 300,000 each. For anyone thinking that gaming is a waste of time, it is not only possible to earn money, but someone from our own school almost did.
