Inside The Life Of A Gamer
Back in those days, if you were to ask the uninformed, they would likely roll their eyes and shake their heads in utter disbelief upon hearing ‘gaming’ or ‘streaming’, associating it with an anti-social stigma. They might have even had impressions of gamers being a loner, spending nights playing games with zero social life as well as being counterproductive without investing any physical labour. However, after seeing the popularity of gaming among millennials globally, e-sports have taken over the world by storm. In Malaysia, 2019 could very well be the year for gaming to go from novelty to mainstream success after the federal government officially recognized gaming as an official sport and even allocates RM20 million to develop the local e-Sports industry for 2020.
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Nurman Hakim, also known as oLo_Nurman96 in the virtual world found his love for gaming when he was young. Before working alongside a professional team called The Face Gaming, Nurman started off his journey into the gaming world by playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare on his PlayStation 3 (PS3). Little did he imagine that one day the Malaysian gaming industry would emerge as a key player in the digital gaming industry. “At first, it was more of a hobby or a free time activity that I did to kill time. I never had any intention to make money, let alone a career out of it. Besides, I was pursuing a different hobby back then,” says Nurman.
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“I was an athlete and used to race road bike after schooling days. I would go out and do a 120km bike ride every day to make sure that I am fit enough for competitions, but at some point after four years, I decided to bid goodbye to the hobby as it was hard to allocate my time into studying, projects and training,” he said. For him, e-Sports and any casual sports are pretty much similar as it requires the same mentality of an athlete to play. “You cannot simply be good at something without hard work and training. Those two are crucial,” stressed Nurman.
Khairol Feizal (from the left), or better known as "KARL" and Nurman Hakim are playing as a duo team in Player Unknown Battlegrounds (PUBG).
Streaming
Gaming is a billion dollar industry and up till last year, it made more than RM423 billion worldwide. However, live video game streaming also constitutes a growing slice in the industry. According to Nurman, streaming is where the players will go live on an online platform such as twitch or Facebook to share their gameplay as well as interact with the viewers. “I have been streaming for almost a year now and it is super fun as I get to interact with my viewers while playing. Some of them would support me by giving a donation,” he explains. “The dominant platforms for video streaming is Twitch but most of gamers would agree that they earn more money on Facebook rather than on Twitch and Youtube,” added Nurman.
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Whether going professional by participating in e-Sports or filming while playing games, it has opened up new opportunities for people to generate a lucrative income. This is no exception for Nurman as he manages to make some interesting means of side money. “Besides my main job, I fund my hobby through streaming and sponsors while a part of it is from the crash prizes I win from participating in various tournaments,” he explains. “Sometimes, random people would join my live stream and donate a ridiculous amount of money. That is insane, is what keeps me going,” he said.
Normally the hardware changes from time to time due to technological upgrades. His current PC equipped with other peripherals (in photo) cost him RM 12,000.
Skill & Cost
Becoming a pro gamer is not as easy as it looks. The life as a gamer requires discipline and perseverance as the industry is getting competitive day by day. According to Nurman, to become a good gamer, one needs to have a good hand to eye coordination, hearing, awareness and communication skills which can be honed through rigorous training. “There are a lot of genres in games such as Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), First Person Shooter game (FPS), Role Playing Game (RPG), Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) and many more. I play mostly FPS games and currently playing competitive PUBG. On top of that, I also play COD and Apex Legends when I’m not training with my team” says Nurman.
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He also agrees that establishing a budget is really important for those that want to venture into the hobby. “It is crucial for you to discover what kind of games you want to play since there are a lot of games out there. From there, depending on whether it is online gaming, or just offline (campaign mode), you can choose your platform. It could be on Playstation4 (PS4), Xbox, PC or Mobile Phones. In my case, I mainly play online gaming and basically super-fast internet and a really good hardware contributes to the requirements needed.” says Nurman. “My hardware also changes from time to time due to upgrades and currently my PC cost me around RM8k+ including other hardware such as peripherals like a monitor, keyboard, mouse, headset, webcam and microphone that cost me around RM12k. The Cost for the tournaments are mostly handled by the organization or team I’m playing for so I don’t need to spend on it,” added Nurman.
Challenges
Working as a system engineer does not stop Nurman into pursuing his hobby. “It was super challenging at first, but after a few months I finally manage to balance my work and hobby by making a schedule. I would normally play up to 4-6 hours, but due to my limited time I would try my best to allocate around 3 to 4 hours during night time”, he says. Besides time constraints, one of the challenges that he is facing was his decision to move out of his family’s place. “Early this year I was still living with my family and we moved to the countryside where there was no internet connection at all. After few months of going hiatus from this hobby, I finally decided to move out of my family house and live in the city instead. This was a hard decision, but I am glad that my family was fully accepting of the choice I made,” explained Nurman.
Finding a schedule and balancing his work life and hobby is the biggest challenge that Nurman faces on a daily basis.
e-Sports in Malaysia
Nurman believes that there are a few reasons why e-Sports in Malaysia hasn’t experienced the same popularity as in South Korea, United States and China. “E-Sports in Malaysia is just as it is in the beginning. Other countries have gone very far and Malaysia has just started. One of the reasons is because the industry before this did not get too much attention, although Malaysia has a pool of great e-Sports players. But things are starting to change this year,” says Nurman. “In making the industry to be successful, it takes everyone to contribute especially on the management side. By improving that, I believe the e-Sports scene in Malaysia can grow on par with other countries in time to come,” says Nurman.
