I learned that if you want to be good at anything you have to practice ur brains out.

at first i was absorbed into competitive tf2 to the point where it was affecting my social and daily life, like i would be in school and just think "man i wanna go home and hit that GRIND BABY"

then the more i played the more frustrated i got with the game, and all i did was play tf2, and i was essentially freaking the fuck out after every single death i had in the game (~ late 2014)

took a break for a few months, came back, and it made me realize this shit is for the side. like, life comes first, doin cool shit irl is a lot more fun then doin cool shit in video game. i also realized how many people are still absorbed in this game as i used to be, and how it affected them in their daily life (good or bad)

long story short it sucks to make your first priority in life video games, especially because you dont even realize your doing it. it was mostly a negative experience for me honestly, which i guess is uncommon.

but i like pc video games because my irl friends all play them now tho so is coo

Honestly speaking, it's desensitized me to the idea of furries.

x

I couldn't speak English at all
Now I can, sometimes

-

a bunch of losers hang out in my mumble now

I have met some of the most amazing people that I will end up talking to for years and had a great time playing competitively. I think also since the comp community is giant mix of different people I've come to learn and accept every type person so long as they aren't assholes.

I live with a friend I met through tf2 about 6 years ago

It gave me hope that I can actually be good at something if I work hard.

its taught me i might have a learning disorder

I can put my UGC Iron experience on my resume under "leadership"

started playing overwatch

met my best friend in a skial dustbowl 3 years ago
shes annoyed me every day since

You used to be a bigger asshole????

tf?

I did amazing in middle school in terms of grades, but when I found tf2 in highschool my grades started suffering and I stayed up till 2 every night playing. Haven't regretted it much though, I now live in a very boring place with people I can relate so little to.

All started because I wanted to stay home and play games with friends without spending a dime. Literally changed my life and what I've been doing for the past 4+ years now with TragicServers. It never really hit me until GXL when pinkkushin (iirc) came up to me and said thank you for everything I've done. It was an awesome experience. Thank you everyone, you're all awesome.

i met some of my best (and worst) friends through it

also it got me into editing videos which i now do for a living (barely)

Learned that sometimes you won't be good at something no matter how many hours you want to put in. I've also learned to brush off negativity and toxic people, and not to take things personally sometimes. And not to be afraid to speak over the mic.

But that's eclipsed by the fact that I've met some wonderful hardworking and creative people, who are amazingly dedicated.

I have a diploma in printing & graphic design. I've been trained to work on packaging & press estimating. There's like about 25% - 45% of that diploma that gets utilized for what I do nowadays? I also almost failed in my last year of college because I found TF2 and SFM. There's a lot I've missed out on because I decided to commit to live events first. I still have second thoughts to this day. But SFM was the coolest adventure I've taken, and TF2 was the most interesting way to take that adventure.

I've met so many people - friends, lovers, acquaintances, colleagues. People and players who liked the same game, characters, and story that I did who I could gel with and relate to - people from all around the world who could come together for a common interest, and support each other when necessary. A few years ago I had no belief in myself that I deserved anything good or that I'd let down people - to this day, that thought still lingers every now and then when the stakes are high. But since then, my confidence in my abilities is no longer as shaky. My self-awareness is less narrow. My name is more important than my gender. And I'm bad at this fucking game, I really am. To be honest, this was more than a game with players to me - these were the people I loved whom I didn't want to let down. That I wanted to hang out with, and learn everything from or teach things to. That I wanted to help put on a show for, or watch others put on a show for us.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks this way, and I feel for those who've had less-than-pleasant experiences or attitude adjustments because of some facet of TF2. I've had anons & usernames tell me to quit TF2, quit being involved in it, that I was contributing to its death more than its life, that I needed an asylum for how much it meant to me, etc etc. I don't doubt some part of them is right. I don't doubt other people have gotten that shit too. I know what mistakes I've made, I know what decisions should not have been decided. To others, yeah, maybe it really should have stayed a game to me rather than the experience I consider it to be. Because of that, I can't say for sure that I know myself better - but for all the people I've gotten to know better, fuck it. I wouldn't change how it went down.

tl;dr shit was barely cash but it was still worth it.

Honestly tf2 taught me a lot of important lessons about leadership and helped me develop important skills in stress and anger management. I also met and got to know a ton of super nice people and gained a lot of important social skills and confidence that have had a big impact on my life outside of the game. I also found a lot of new music to listen to through watching tf2 videos on YouTube, from various tftv threads and streams and of course my friends. Hanging out in mumble definitely made it easier to hold a conversation with people in real life for me at least. Most of all though tf2 was just fun way to spend free time and i found it enjoyable to watch, and to practice on order to become better at something whether it be jumping, dming, surfing, pugging or playing on a team.

When i was younger I struggled a lot with depression and had a very negative and bleak outlook on life in general. In high school i used tf2 and pugging especially in order to cope with stress and anxiety. Looking back on it now it was really more of an addiction than a hobby--i would use tf2 as a sort of fantasy world in order to escape from all my problems in real life and try to clear my mind. In retrospect this obviously wasnt a very good way of dealing with things and as a result my life became more and more stressful as my grades dropped and i lost motivation to do pretty much of anything in real life because tf2 was the only thing that could make me happy anymore. Or so i thought at least...

Many a night would be spent staying up till 2am pugging and I even remember staying up late gaming on school nights before finals because i found it so hard to sleep. My habit of playing tf2 late at night led to pretty severe insomnia but I learned how to cope with it and do things like reset my sleep schedule or just pull myself away from the endless cycle of playing "just one last pug"

There was even a phase when my parents would turn off the internet or unplug my ethernet cable to get me to stop playing all night. Even then i found ways to get around it by using my phone or changing my IP and when that failed i would just grind jump maps offline late at night and listen to music to feel better. I developed a lot of bad habits from playing too much tf2 but honestly I dont know what I would have done without it to go to, it was my kind of safe haven where I could always go to no matter how fucked up the rest of my life was with grades slipping and tensions with parents and depression et all. Once i got past my way of using tf2 to run away from and purposefully avoid dealing with my real life issues, tf2 became something to look forward to and it definitely helped motivate me to finish my school work--and then play. It's definitely good to get away from things, at least for s little bit, but eventually real life problems have to take precedence.

I was fortunate enough to play with mgib, ktb and spello in my first team and they somehow tolerated the angsty 17 year old me and showed kindness and support through my shenanigans (like when i stayed up all night doing jump maps and had a nervous breakdown before an open match). I distinctly remember being petrified with anxiety during the rollout of one of my very first esea matches when mgib told me that I didn't have to let my emotions rule my life--which i quickly dismissed as being obvious but after the match I thought about it and it had a profound impact on me both in and out of game. Later on I asked spello what was his secret to being positive gamer and his response resonated with me:

At the time I didn't have a clue what mindfulness was but after a late night of reading and watching youtube videos I tried to meditate for the first time and was blown away by it. As cheesy as it sounds I've found that through practice (both formal and informal) I have a gained understanding of how to better adapt and respond to stress and live life fully. I remember my parents and teachers saying it was like I was reborn a completely different person and I felt the similarly but felt that I was more myself. As I continued practicing I felt more and more comfortable in my own skin and 'found myself,' so to speak.

I remember at first feeling insecure and embarrassed to tell my real life friends about how I played a cartoon shooter competitively, but eventually through meeting and talking to so many people in the tf2 community online I gained social confidence enough to be open about my passion in tf2 and not fear being ridiculed by my classmates who played LoL or CS (to think at one point I worried about what a silver 4 CS player thought of me for playing tf2 lol)

This year i found many of the leadership and teamwork skills I learned through tf2 could be applied to "real sports" as well. For example in s21 IM grand finals we were down 3-0 on gullywash after a convincing first half and I had zero ubers and one drop. As cliche as it sounds I remained calm and resisted the urge to give up or get all demoralized and as a result we ended up coming back 5-4 in the last few minutes of the second half. Though I didn't exactly go running through the hallways the next day boasting about my accomplishment it did bleed over into my ultimate frisbee games where I had a newfound confidence and trust in myself. Funnily enough in one of our biggest game a similar thing happened where we immediately went down 3-0 and when I was tempted to give up I thought of tf2 and remembered the concept of outome independence. I was proud to see that in this game too our team was eventually able to recover from this initial deficit and edge out a slight victory at the end of a hard fought game.

From my experience it is really easy to get carried away and let tf2 become the most important thing in your life/ignore your real life day to day problems, but in moderation and with the right attitude it can have an enormous positive impact on life. I've found that something that I really enjoy most about tf2 is using it to decompress and practice jump maps, because over time it is very rewarding to hone in and concentrate on mastering certain specific skills and tracking your progression as you are able to complete harder and harder jumps.

I originally downloaded tf2 because it was free to play and something to do in the summer to kill time but I never expected to get involved in such an amazing community or to meet so many nice people both online and in person (courtesy of GXL and a small local meetup in boston last year). Even as i started playing competitive my goal was always just to have fun and i never imagined I'd even make it past ugc silver, not to mention esea invite. All in all I think tf2 has had an immensely positive impact on my life and though if I may have benefited from spending a little less time on my computer I don't regret any of it.

Edit: I wrote this mini novel on my phone appologies in advance for grammar/spelling errors

tl;dr: gained social + leadership + teamwork skills & confidence, discovered mindfulness & learned to better control my emotions & handle stress (in and out of game)

I met my best friend who I'm going to finally meet IRL in two days after three years!

Surprisingly I've become significantly less shit at social situations by playing competitive TF2. It also made working in a team (beyond the classic 'you do X I do Y' kind of thing) feel a lot more natural. Circlejerks have a very high impact on finding a team, and it actually prepares a bit for networking in general which you might need to do professionally. Leading a team can be incredibly frustrating at times, but is also a useful thing to have experienced.

So I guess I would say playing a videogame helped to teach me some people skills.

Originally started playing on a sever called TF2 Newbies Only, now discussing TF2 as an esport at length in work.
Went to i52 because I thought it might be fun, but had only 1 season of div6 6s under my belt.
Did a 6 hour round trip to get to i55 just because our team mate couldn't make it.
Drove 8 hours to GA just because it might be a laugh
Travelled to finland for a week to visit someone because flights were cheap.

Now I'm looking at team holidays to Disneyland and shit.

As with anything there are pro's and con's with gaming especially if you're going 'pro'. I've realized after playing games for quite a considerable amount of time, the turnover isn't worth it. At least for me it wasn't. Met some great people and still hang out with my friends online because I met them via TF2, but if you put this in respect to reality and life, only 1-2% of all professional gamers have made a reasonable profit and sustainable income and for those that tried, in return for their life (so far) some properties such as appearance/health/hygiene/studies/job/career would of been negatively affected, in most cases at least 2 out of the 6 mentioned there.

With regards to TF2 career, it's been great, no direct profit really made, money here and there, alot of free peripherals here and there, met alot of people, gave me a taste of what being well known is like back in the early/mid years of TF2. if anything it strengthened my confidence and ability to talk infront of more than 1k ppl. Managing a casting org also helped my rl career and it's one of the very few positives that was worth spending time on in comparison to what I was having to do for it.

Did TF2 change me? yeah only slightly, made me stronger as a leader for rl, and stronger in confidence because what I was doing for the scene just cemented what I thought I was good at. I do feel sorry for those just joining the scene though (in the last couple of years or so) because the community is not what it was, and the ethos of it is definitely not what it was. Players clutching at straws to find positives within a community and the introduction of 'cj'ing' within this community never existed until 2013 for TF2. I'd love for ETF2L to do a comparison of match comments/topics made and replies made back in 2007-11 against 2012-present, would be interesting to see what we'd see.

Would I do this 'professional' gaming career all over again? Hell no, isn't worth it, affects too many properties in my life which matter to me (those mentioned above), only thing I'd do again on the side is managing a casting org =)

Cheers

Byte

Overall my attitude towards the game's impact on me is neutral. I could use my time on much more productive outlets for sure (playing music mostly), but tf2 has been really useful as a tool for me to bide time until I can move away from my unfortunate home situation. As well as that, the friends I have met through it are irreplaceable. I have regrets that aren't really attributable towards playing tf2, but I wont deny that playing the game compounded the problems at hand by a fair amount. In reality the only way to have really solved them would've been for my younger self to have had much more mental fortitude, but if I could go back, choosing to get into the game again would be a tough decision.

I wont really say the game has helped me be better in social situations, in fact I would say my internalization of memes is more of a detriment irl, but I will say that it has helped me realize the importance of first impressions and not being a toxic retard. I think one of the best lessons that competitive tf2 players learn is that built up reputations are really hard to dismantle- mostly due to the playerbase being too small to outrun your reputation. While it might be possible to "reset" your identity by starting fresh with a new IP and account (a real life equivalent would be moving far away and cutting ties I guess) it certainly isn't easy or something one would personally want to do.

.

It led me to find people I felt like I can talk to about anything and it's a bit comforting.

i've realised using a lowercase name is hip for some reason

tf2 helped make me more confident, it's pretty funny to say but before this game I was always deathly afraid of talking to people, it also helped me make the final steps I think in learning how to act in social situations after spending pretty much my entire life trying to learn (aspergers is a bitch)