Score some quick wins with this advice from recent OPL-Split 1 champion Legacy Esports
While it will come as no surprise to learn that gamers are one of the few demographics that have actually been enjoying lockdown, what may be more surprising is that professional gamers – those that compete in esports tournaments for big prizes across Australia and around the globe – have developed a work ethic and model that can teach all of us a thing or two about working from home.
Professional gamers need to balance their many hours of intense focus in front of a computer screen with healthy schedules that keep them capable of maintaining optimal performance, both physically and mentally, at all times. So, which techniques do they use, and which technology do they recommend?
To find out, we reached out to Legacy Esports – one of the most successful esports organisations in the burgeoning Oceanic Region with teams and streamers currently competing in games including Fortnite, Hearthstone, Starcraft 2 and the hugely popular League of Legends. Its techniques have been proven in the field too: in April, its League of Legends team was crowned Oceanic Pro League (OPL) Champions.
We asked Tim Wendel, Head of Esports for Legacy Esports, what we could learn from their success. After all, as he puts it, “Working from home under quarantine hasn’t really changed much for what we do… we’re very used to operating in this space.”
Many office workers will have been getting to grips with Zoom for meetings and communication, but pro-gamers are already well versed at coordinating with their co-workers remotely. Winning means sharing information quickly – calling out enemy positions with military-grade efficiency, for example – and operating as though your teammates (who could be many kilometres away) are sitting right next to them.
Legacy Esports uses the gamer-oriented multi-channelled Discord app for voice and text communications, but Tim’s experience with it translates to all web conference-related communication software. His first point is to ensure that everyone has very good microphones for clarity – it’s neither professional nor helpful to others to sound like you’re talking from the bottom of a well. He adds, “For people now working from home, the key is to become familiar with the software that your team or company uses. It’s going to save you a lot of time being able to fix your own problems as opposed to going to IT every time something goes wrong. It could be that your microphone was on local mute as opposed to muted in the software – any number of issues.”
Microphone and speaker problems are certainly regular bugbears for the new world of conference calls: being able to diagnose whether an issue stems from computer settings, headset buttons/dials, another attendee, the local network or third-party cloud service, is important. Meetings can quickly become derailed by key participants not having functional audio or video, and providing remote tech support can be difficult, especially when it comes to explaining how to navigate hidden settings in apps (and operating systems) to those who are not tech-savvy.
